Palazzo Meridia Office and Retail Building, Nice, France

Palazzo Meridia is a 10-story office building, of which 9 stories are constructed with timber. With a total height of 115 ft, its ground area is 181 ft long and 56 ft wide. The basement, which accommodates 31 parking spaces, the ground floor and two staircases, is made of reinforced concrete. A remarkable, open metal facade supports the corridors and allows the plants to climb the facade.

Calculation and Modeling

The concrete staircases act as bracing for the entire timber-frame structure consisting of visible glulam beams and CLT facade elements. Large CLT panels with dimensions of 11 ft x 56 ft and 9 ft x 56 ft were used for the facade walls and floors to speed up assembly. The building construction was reduced to 5 months, saving a total of 10 days per story.

For comparable results with the reinforced concrete design carried out by a partner engineering office, CBS-Lifteam created a multi-material timber and concrete model including all structure stiffnesses. The Dlubal Software RF-DYNAM Pro add-on module was used to determine seismic effects and deformations.

The structural analysis of the CLT elements was carried out with the RF-LAMINATE add-on module. RF-TIMBER Pro designed and dimensioned the timber frame structure. Since the office building is located in a region prone to earthquakes (in Nice, earthquake zone 4), seismic analysis was considered, assuming the horizontal forces would be transmitted by the CLT floors acting as diaphragms to the concrete staircases. The timber facades would not contribute additional bracing to the structure.