world news
Twin towers feature of office complex
NEW YORK architects, Emery Roth and Sons have completed plans for an office complex to be built at Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the Badger Company. The design features two 12-storey towers rising from each end of a four-storey base element.
Each tower will contain 220,000 sq. ft. of office space. Some 19,000 sq. ft. of shopping area will be provided in the base structure together with parking for 445 cars.
Landscaped plazas will extend along the 460 ft. main frontage and another will be laid out on the roof
Twin Tower office complex for Cambridge, Mass.
of the garage-store structure. In situ reinforced con- crete will be used for the base, while the towers will have a steel structure. The facade will be of precast concrete with gasket type windows.
Triangular core in new Hamburg office block
THE core of the new Unilever Building in Ham- burg is the shape of an equilateral triangle on plan with the side lengths each 83 ft. 4 in. long. The three 'legs' of the building extend from the angles of the triangle. Providing 420,000 sq. ft. of floor space, the 22- storey block is clad in curtain walling, an aluminium mullion and transome system supporting the glazing and the spandrel panels. The core of the building, con- taining sanitary facilities, equipment rooms, eight lifts and three emergency staircases, was slipformed. As the floors inside the core also serve as horizontal dia- phragms for bracing the core walls. it was found ad-
Far East BUILDER, May 1968.
Unilever Building, Hamburg
vantageous and economic to concrete them in situ and connect them monolithically to the walls.
To allow rapid construction and low dimensional tolerances, a steel structural framework was adopted for the floors surrounding the core. Stanchions are rolled steel sections, strengthened by means of welded plates and made fire resistant by the application of plaster with expanded metal embedded in it.
Floor girders are of lattice construction, while rolled steel beams are used for the longitudinal joists. These girders and joists were concreted into the 4 in. thick reinforced concrete slab to fireproof them.
Layout of the offices has been based on a 6 ft. 3 in. module, while the depth of the offices was deter- mined by the requirement of enabling three desks to be placed within the module for windows spacing (20 ft. 4 in.). A storey height of 11 ft. 91⁄2 in. was arrived at from a room height of 9 ft. 6 in. and a floor depth of 2 ft. 31⁄2 in. T-beam floors, with beams located to correspond with the internal layout module, take account of the possibility of installing partitions.
Hung floors on new London landmark
ONE of London's latest landmarks, a 30-storey office tower block being erected for an insurance com- pany in Leadershall Street, is now nearing structural completion. Almost 400 ft. high, it is among the first buildings in Britain to be erected by the "umbrella" principle of construction a central concrete core with office floors hung from it, starting at the top and work- ing downwards.
The entire tower is supported by the central core 75 ft. x 50 ft. in plan which houses 12 high- speed lifts, service ducts and stairs.
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Air conditioned and providing some 300,000 sq. ft. of office space, the building will be ready for oc-
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