Facade retention, Hungary

Part of a redevelopment project in the heart of Budapest, our task was to come up a temporary façade retention solution, to maintain the façade of the building in situ, whilst the internal structure is remodeled as required to suit the new concept.

The steel structure was expected to be modular, light, yet robust.

We had to deal with many challenging boundary conditions and construction stages. To name one, it was not possible to support the steel structure in front of the building enclosure due to dense public utilities underground.

To achieve the required stiffness of the steel structure we used orthogonal (vertical/horizontal) truss framing with supplemental bracings on the front. Up to approximately 10m/s wind speed this orthogonal framing has sufficient strength to maintain the structural integrity of the complex system. In order to fulfill the integrity requirements of the wall in case of higher wind speeds, we implemented long diagonal kickers in the back that are anchored to pile foundations.

In order to get reasonable wind pressures on the walls, as an alternative methodology, we used Computational Fluid Dynamics (ANSYS Discovery).

Local spectra was also considered for seismic analysis.

Finite Element Analysis and steel member design was done with AxisVM software package.

For steel drafting we used Tekla Structures.

Visualization is done by Ansys Spaceclaim.