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Aker Tech House, Norway
In this seven-storey high-rise office building “Aker Tech House” in Fornebu, Norway, ZAZA TIMBER designed and manufactured all load-bearing timber structures and assembled all timber structures of the facade and two large skylights.
Our services:
- Construction
- Detailing
- Engineering
- Production
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LocationFornebu, Norway.
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Year of construction2022-2023
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DimensionsFacade: length – 78.9 m, height – 33.8 m, width – 4.0 m. Skylight: 2 x 428 m2.
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ClientAker Property Group (develeoper)
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ArchitectWingårdh Architect AB
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Built byHent AS and Lindner Scandinavia AB. Timber assembly: ZAZA TIMBER Construction
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DesignTimber part: ZAZA TIMBER Engineering
Engineering part of the project
At the design stage, ZAZA TIMBER created the design and detailing of timber structures, developed shop- and assembly drawings.
The main load bearing structure building is made up of a prefabricated reinforced concrete elements with a glulam atrium roof and a supporting structure for the main facade.
The skylight structure is made up of glulam beams that are supported by wall plate-type beams and columns. Given the height of the supporting beam required to ensure structural stability, the challenge was to ensure the beam's torsional resistance, which included both the resistance of the beam itself, connection solution, as well as its load bearing capacity.
The main facade is made of glulam column and beam system. The roof structure is made up of glulam beams connected by steel hollow section ties that ensure the roof plane's stability.
Prefabricated concrete panels connect the reinforced concrete structure to the facade on floor levels, with one end resting on the building's main structure and the other on the steel HQ beam. The steel HQ beams are connected to the glulam columns. Because the span of the HQ beam exceeds 10 meters, HQ steel beams are suspended in pre-tensioned steel rods to maintain a low beam height and ensure small deflections determined by the facade structure (less than 10 millimeters). The pre-tensioned steel bar system was chosen to avoid massive columns with small spacing in the facade.
Our design responsibility also included control of the tensioning works on the construction site. A single rod system was tensioned in three iterations, at each end of the system. Between repetitions, the load from the reinforced concrete floor panels was transferred to the tension rods via the HQ beam by removing the reinforced concrete structure's temporary supports. Additional equipment was used to monitor the relative elongation of the tension rods. The tensioning was done primarily to reduce the deflections caused by the loads on the steel HQ beam.
The challenge of connection design was to deal with construction tolerances between glulam, reinforced concrete, and steel structures. Connections had to accommodate construction tolerances in all three directions while minimizing on-site welding jobs.
Production part of the project
For Aker Tech House, ZAZA TIMBER manufactured pre-fabricated glulam (limtre, limträ) columns and beams. The total amount of parts produced – 464, volume 216 m3, strength class – GL28H, made of spruce. The longest beams were 16,2 m, the longest columns 14,84 m with 0,88 m width. We also installed required steel parts in the beams and columns enabling faster assembly of the construction site. The surface treatment included two layerrs of Akzo Nobel SIKKENS CETOL WF 771.
Construction part of the project
ZAZA TIMBER's team of seven did the assembly in 18 weeks. Timber in this project also serves as an important interior element so we additionally assisted on finishing of all timber structures (including secondary ones) to ensure required visual quality and premium feel.
