Office building in Hamburg

Building use

Office building

Country/Region

Germany

Overview

The new concert hall building is placed on the old historic Kaispeicher A, extruded from its shape and placed precisely on the brick block of the Kaispeicher with an identical footprint. The wave-shaped building roof structure with a maximum height of 110 m at the top of the quay is visible from afar. In contrast to the stoic brick façade of the Kaispeicher, the glass façade transforms the superimposed structure of the Elbphilharmonie into a crystalline glass volume with a constantly changing appearance.

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

Construction date: 2007-2017
Number of stories: 25
Gross floor area: 120,000m2
Adopted design code: Eurocode
Engineer(s): Jappsen Ingenieure, WGG Schnetzer Puskas, Rohwer Ingenieure VBI GmbH
Contractor(s): FHH represented by ReGe Hamburg

Issue and/or innovation

The building is among the most complex buildings ever built in Germany. Its several functions required a very complex planning of the connecting elements to preserve the acoustic breaks that allow the philharmonic concert hall to work properly.

Reason for composite solution

The composite solution was the only one that could achieve at the same time, the incredible span of the building and the acoustic needs of the philharmonic concert hall that has to be completely disconnected from the rest of the building, acting as a separate building with its foundations consisting on a complex system of springs that isolates it from the environment.

Specific solution/technical details

Thall roof outer shell spans the concert hall of the Elbphilharmonie with a span of 50 × 55 m². The construction consists of a 600 t steel composite space frame or space frame with variable construction heights between 2.0 m and 9.0 m and a supported concrete shell. The space framework consists of a total of 21 individual trusses, an inner ring truss (max Nd = 22,000 kN), two prominent star nodes and a ridge truss connecting the star nodes (max Nd = 30,000 kN). Six truss belts are connected to the star nodes in an area of 180° and are in balance with the ridge truss. Since it is a space framework, there are star nodes for the compression and tension belts. From the heavy support components in the surrounding solid outer shell at a height of 72.48 m, the space framework in the middle area with the ridge framework shoots up to a height of 91.5 m. The construction is stressed by the building roof, the technical level that creates the space between the building. A 20 cm thick, hat-shaped concrete shell is placed on the more ascending part of the truss, which is also connected to the top chords via head bolt dowels. This ceiling consists partly of prestressed precast concrete elements that span from truss to truss, and areas that could only be constructed using in-situ concrete.