High Point E - Franklin Village Mannheim, Germany

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High-Rise Apartment Building Made of Reinforced Concrete

The building's sculptural shape forms an "E", one of four letters in the word HOME. Turning the word into reality through a total of four different high-rise buildings is one of the creative guidelines of the FRANKLIN conversion project in Mannheim, Germany.

The ground and the upper first floor include maisonettes with significantly larger floor plans than those on the upper floors. As a result, in addition to the architectural reasons, the building has an inward offset and the base area decreases to 65.6 ft x 157.4 ft, beginning with the second floor. From the second floor up, the building's floor plan is modified every second or third floor due to these offsets. This leads to multi-story overhangs on both sides of the building. Within the first basement floor, there are cellar rooms for rent in addition to underground parking spaces; the second basement floor is used exclusively for underground parking.

Structure

The apartment building, consisting of fifteen upper floors and two basement floors, will be constructed with concrete. The upper floor’s load-bearing exterior and interior walls will be made of reinforced concrete, while the exterior walls in the basement will be constructed with water-impermeable reinforced concrete. Biaxially stressed reinforced concrete slabs with integrated ventilation ducts are used as intermediate floor slabs.

The majority of the gravity load, including the loads from the floor cantilevers, is supported by six shear walls arranged in transverse axes. The third floor’s longitudinal exterior walls include a unique structural feature. Because these outer walls lie outside the load-bearing axes, they are decoupled for loading purposes.

The two-story underground parking garage in the basement levels results in a large-scale grid for the load-bearing structural components. Wide passages and necessary maneuvering radii restrict the arrangement options for columns and walls as structural load-bearing systems. However, the principal support system in the above-ground floors is largely congruent with the basement floor grid.

The required seismic design for the building, located in seismic zone 1, was carried out entirely in the RF-/DYNAM Pro add-on modules. The graphical output was an advantage concerning the structure's natural vibrations, internal forces, and moments. Furthermore, the seismic design results were integrated into the main program, RFEM, where integral design and verification were possible for all design combinations.

The 3D structural modeling and analysis allowed the engineers to determine the result peaks and internal force maximum values. Therefore, problematic points could be discussed at a relatively early planning stage and reasonable solutions were found.

In addition to the structural challenges described above, the design's main focus was on thermal, noise, and fire protection requirements. Because of the cantilevered floor plans, a large number of loggias, balconies, and roof terraces were constructed. With these structural components, close coordination between all involved parties for static, structural-physical, and fire protection requirements was needed for an optimal design. The 3D model was particularly useful for the thermal insulation design considering the balconies and loggias.