November_1970 — Page 7

world news

Tallest office block in Europe

At 230 metres high, a new office block now under construction in Paris may soon rival the Eiffel Tower as a city landmark. Due to be complet- ed in 1972, the Maine Montparnasse Tower will be the tallest office block in Europe and the third highest building in the world.

The US$122 million development was initiated in 1968 as a joint Franco-American enterprise by the Societe d'Etudes Financieres et de Realisation

Model of Maine Montparnasse complex

FL

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Immobilieres and Collins Tuttle International of New York. The architects are E. Baudouin Urbain Cassan, M. Louis de Hoym de Marien, and M. J. Saubot, with A. Epstein & Sons, Chicago acting as consulting architects. Carl A. Morse, Inc., New York are the consulting engineers.

In all, the building will have 56 floors at 3.3m

Far East BUILDER, November 1970

intervals. It will have aluminium and glass curtain walls and a concrete internal core. This will contain staircases, conduits, and a total of 24 lifts rising at a speed of 6m per second.

Offices will take up the main part of the floor area, but there will also be cafes, restaurants, a swimming pool, sports centre, and skating rink. A basement garage will have room for 5,000 cars. The lower floor of the basement, resting on longi- tudinal concrete beams, will be 18m below street level.

The whole building will weigh 132,000 tons and rest on 14 small diameter piles. The large piles are 4.8m long and 1.5m wide. The smaller piles are 2.2m long and 1.2m wide. They go down 50m below base- ment -- that is 68m below ground level.

Each pile carries 80kg per 10sq. cm. The large piles carry 5,960 tons and the smaller ones carry 1,930 tons. Longitudinal concrete beams complete the foundations and carry the concrete walls of the

core.

Curtain walls are supported by metal piles which are tied into the longitudinal beams. Floors are to be finished with a 90mm layer of concrete.

Serious difficulties were encountered during the foundation works. The first 13m consisted of very hard calcareous rock making the use of plant im- possible and excavations were started with pick and shovel. Below the rock strata were 20m of clay and below that was chalk.

When the first 100m of the core and 80m of curtain walling are complete there will be a three- month pause during which internal work will be started.

Computer designed homes

New techniques of computer-aided design, which could result in better value for money in Scotland's housing have been pioneered in Edinburgh by the Scottish Special Housing Association. The Associa- tion say that research financed by them has produc- ed results which could mean the speeding up of Scotland's house-building programme, an improve- ment in the costing and organisation of house pro- duction and the better use of professional staff.

The research was carried out at the architectural research unit of Edinburgh University. This estab- lished that an architect, using an instrument called a 'light pen' on a cathode ray tube screen connected to a computer installation, would be able to draw a house design much as he would with a pen and

paper.

On the screen are a series of symbols each repre- senting a feature of the plan. By pointing to the required symbol 'wall', 'ceiling', 'flooring' etc. and utilising the ancillary facilities, the architect can 'draw' on the screen a required plan.

The computer can be programmed previously to criticise the plan and will do so during the actual

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