REFURBISHMENT OF ESPAÑA BUILDING IN MADRID

The Edificio España is an emblematic building located in the center of Madrid, built between 1948 and 1953. It was primarily intended for residential and administrative use, with the ground floor used for commercial use, and basement floors for parking.

Its adaptation to the current structure codes and the increase of loads, with a significant increase of the areas destined to commercial use and the hotel use in the rest of the building, required a series of structural interventions of different magnitude. The heritage protection and conservation assigned to the structure of the building, imposed, as far as possible, the conservation of the existing structure and, in the need of reinforcements, maintain the essence of the existing structural system.In this way, in floors where there is no increase in load due to the change in use, the actions are simply based on executing and closing openings to fit with the new architectural requirements.

In the case of floors with change of use where it is possible to respect the level of the existing slab, reinforcement is done by the provision of reducing span concrete beams and reinforcement of existing beams where necessary.

Finally, in the case of floors with change of use that require significantly modifying their current level to adapt to the new commercial areas, the existing slab is demolished and it is replaced with a similar unidirectional slab of concrete beams.

Related to support interventions, where necessary, consist of reinforcements by means of concrete jacketing, elimination of certain supports by active load transfer and reinforcement of foundations by means of micropiles.