| Category | Commercial Projects |
| Year | 2017 |
| Country | Benelux, |
| Organization | Bedrijfsbouw Verelst |
| Author | Architect: Fréderic Quertainmont (ProtOtype) - Structural Design: Stabilogics, Bedrijfsbouw Verelst |
| Place of construction | Belgium, Braine l'Alleud |
CMA Imaging supplies a range of inkjet papers for the commercial, professional and graphics industry.
The company purchased an existing building which was also constructed by Verelst in 2008. They wanted a bigger building for their office space but keep the existing warehouse. The existing office buildings where to be demolished. The architect was challenged to design an innovative 3 storey office building right next to the existing construction. One of the difficulties was that the existing building had to be separated from the new building by a new cast-in-place firewall. Because there was no optimal way to place the formwork we decided to replace this by prefab hollow core walls.
A special challenge was that the architect designed the building in a way that the main structure of the highest part of the building was placed on the outside. We had to redesign a lot of our standard steel details
Another challenge was that the foundation of the building was designed so we could keep as much of the existing foundations as possible. Both of these problems made detailing a lot more difficult.
Due to the collaboration within our own company group, where everybody worked with tekla structures on this project, and the external suppliers who communicated with us via IFC instead of the usual 2D plans, problems where detected very early in the design status of the building.
