Orbit Tower

While most of high-rise buildings feature a core surrounded by a spatial frame defining the volume, one could envision a column-free plan where the perimeter structure is constituted of steel cables, working in tension to suspend the floor plates and transferring the loads to the core by means of story-high trusses located along the perimeter, as well as diagonally across the floor, at the mechanical levels.

The steel cables feature custom fittings to support the fully-glazed skin and allow for an optimized redistribution of the loads between the supporting members. The resulting hybrid scheme has beneficial impacts from a structural, sustainability, and indoor environmental quality standpoint.

Ending. The beginning of the article  see in TB  2/ 2018.

The custom suspension system designed for this project provides an integrated facade-structure scheme made up of a bundle of steel cables that wraps the building defining the panelization pattern and collecting the loads from both the slabs and the facade. The resulting envelope features a frameless system that has a beneficial impact both from energy and a sustainability point of view. This system consists of two main elements: the cables and the joint component. The cables deliver the vertical loads from the facade and - given the absence of perimeter columns - from the slab to the trusses, and ultimately to the core.

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AUTHORS: ENRICA OLIVA, WERNER SOBEK NEW YORK, MICHELE ANDALORO, WERNER SOBEK STUTTGART, WERNER SOBEK, WERNER SOBEK GROUP
ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIALS PROVIDED BY AUTHORS, WERNER SOBEK AND ODA ARCHITECTURE