Renovation of the Canal de Marseille

"Starting a project in an unknown place generates a whole series of expectations that will surely make you grow on a personal level. At the beginning of the 2018 academic year, during the thematic workshop about infrastructure and city, an exercise is proposed, where selective and intentional drawing will be used, elaborating an analysis comparing the cities of Barcelona and Marseille, and make it possible to understand the scale of the chosen place, identify patterns of identity in each city and highlight the differential facts."

Author	Ramon Espelt
University	Polytechnic University of Catalonia UPC, Spain

Timber and Concrete Frame

The discovery of the Canal de Marseille motivated me to start a project with the essential ingredients: city, history, and water, which I needed for my final year project to add a new layer to the territory. From this moment, everything was built taking into account the exhaustive study of the place and the desire to recover an element of its own identity such as the Canal de Marseille, which was falling into second place, due to the growth of the populations that accompanied it.

The passion for discovering something that was there, something that had happened, the transformation of the place where a project had to be planned, was the common thread of it, and represents the way in which I understand that architecture has to position itself within the city, as an element that generates more city, and that the immediate context always gives results."

The main program RFEM 5 allowed for modeling and analysis of a representative section of the channel with the reinforced or post-tensioned lightweight concrete slabs, as well as a nave composed of GL24h glued-laminated timber trusses with concrete columns. For the design of the timber, concrete, and connection elements, the RF‑TIMBER Pro, RF‑JOINTS Steel to Timber, RF‑CONCRETE, and RF‑STABILITY add-on modules were used, taking into account Eurocodes 0, 2, and 5. This excellent project obtained the ex aequo award from the Cátedra BatlleRoig of the UPC (Polytechnic University of Catalonia).

Links

Premio Cátedra Batlleiroig

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Extract from Project Recovery of Canal de Marseille

11.27 MB

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