GineersNow Oil Refineries, March2020 chemical, crude, fuel, drilling, exploration, LNG, energy, offshore, onshore, petroleum, lubricant, petrochemical, energy, refineries, upstream, midstream, downstream

FEATURE STORY
Prestigious Springer Quartier
Building Project
Weight reduced by 1,240 tonnes thanks
to much lower use of concrete
In 2015, the MOMENI Group acquired
publisher Axel Springer’s Hamburg
headquarters, built in 1956, intending to
create a premium property with office,
retail, restaurant and residential space in
the SPRINGER QUARTIER.
Internationally renowned architects
Gerkan, Marg and Partner (gmp) took on
the challenge of dynamically renovating
the Springer high-rise office block, listed
since 1997, and of expanding it into a
modern, contemporary, urban building.
The entire complex is to earn a gold rating under internationally recognised LEED system specifications.
In order to achieve this goal and be able to cope with the particular structural environment, void former
modules from HEINZE Cobiax Deutschland GmbH were included in the plans during the structural
design phase by WTM Engineers Hamburg, in order to reduce the amount of concrete and building
weight. As a result, it was possible for the main construction contractors, Ed. Züblin AG, as general
contractors, to reduce the amount of concrete needed for the new wing by 496 m³, and to achieve weight
savings of 12,400 kN.
The new building’s inner city location
and the various uses for the ground and
basement levels, compared to the
uniformly designed upper floors,
presented a challenge for the architect
and structural engineer. The proximity
of adjacent buildings, whose
foundations could not be disturbed
during the civil engineering work, also
had to be taken into account. In
order to achieve gmp architects’ ideas,
the structural design experts at WTM
Engineers Hamburg suggested using
Cobiax SL modules, since using void
96