RETROFITTING OF BUILDING IN PLAZA CATALUNYA 10 IN BARCELONA - IBEROSTAR HOTEL

The building, object of this remodelling and retrofitting project, presents a trapezoid-shaped floor, occupies a plot of 1200 m2 and consists of three basement floors, a ground floor, seven floors above ground level and a tower of five additional levels, reaching a height of 60 m. Its adaptation from administrative to hotel use, in order to house an Iberostar hotel, required a series of structural interventions of different magnitude:

• elimination of existing columns;
• execution and closing of slabs openings due to the modification of the vertical communication cores;
• reinforcement of ribbed slabs to be able to face the vertical loads increase, and so on.

The project carried out by MC2 is a modification of the original structural design for its constructive optimization and adaptation to the real structure.

The vertical load increase in most of the floor slabs has required the reinforcement of the concrete columns, whose screed has been materialized by reinforced concrete sleeves between 5 and 20 cm thick.

The floor slabs, consisting of ribbed slabs with compression layers 4-8 cm thick and inadequate amount of reinforcement, have been reinforced by executing an additional compression layer and by reinforcing the slab ribs through different systems, based on geometric constraints and stress increases: U-shaped screed in reinforced concrete, steel plates, carbon fibre laminates and free-standing vertical bars. When it was not possible to act below the slab, the load increases were considerable and the free height was not a determining factor, composite floors on steel beams were executed above the slab and without any contact, supported by the columns only.

The elimination of existing columns has been carried out through active load transfers, using hydraulic jacks.