Hotel in Padua

Building use

Hotel

Country/Region

Italy

Overview

The building is a office tower, built from 2005 as part of a larger redevelopment project worth 150 millions of Euros in Padova, in the Veneto region. The tower is surrounded by a series of shorter (5 story) buildings used as office spaces.

Basic information (construction date, number of stories, gross floor area, adopted design code, engineer(s), Contractor(s), etc.)

Construction date: 2005-2010
Number of stories: 22
Gross floor area: 14,000m2
Adopted design code: NTC/2018
Engineer(s): SPC
Contractor(s): Ecoedile srl

Issue and/or innovation

The building is supported by rc concrete core and 8 steel columns bade of hollow steel tubes. 4 of these columns are perfectly vertical, 4 are slanted, creating the unique shape of the whole building. Due to this architectural feature, each of 22 the floors slabs of the tower has a different shape. The cost of building a conventional steel structure with beams and metal decking would have been too high due to the need to create too many unique elements.

Reason for composite solution

The composite solution was therefore used to facilitate the construction sequence, providing a much more economic construction technique. The steel beams (welded non-symmetric T shapes) that create the perimeter of the tower work compositely with a concrete slab by means of shear studs. A thin steel sheet is welded to these beams to provide the lateral containing element of the concrete poured on site. The construction sequence was much facilitated by this unconventional design solution, by creating a standard formwork system supported by the floor underneath.

Specific solution/technical details

1800kg/mq lightweight concrete used to create a 25cm thick slab for unobstructed floor spans up to 14 meters from core to windows. The slabs act compositely with the steel beams thanks to Nelson studs, disposed on two layers near the columns and one layer in the midspan. The steel beams are created by welding together two different T shapes, with the lower one (tension) thicker and broader than the above (compression) one.

Impact or effectiveness

The use of lightweight concrete allowed a decrease of the building weight up to 175 daN/m2 per square meter of slab equal to about 2400 tons for the whole building.