The Strand East Tower
Wood Beton built a 40 m high timber tower, in London, for the 2012 Olympic Games: Strand East Tower is a symbol of the regeneration of the area of Stratford.
Elegance, transparency, lightness and great stability: these are the characteristics of the tower that it is composed of a grid of crossed timber laths and 16 horizontal rings made of galvanized steel.
The tower appear as an hyperboloid, hollow in the inside, with a 16 thick lattice, and divided in 4 segments for the constructive reasons: the first segment is about 3,5 m high and it is made of steel, while the other three are made of laminated larch wood.
The construction technique of the lattice is characterized by two layers of crossed laths: the first is clockwise and the second is anticlockwise, while they have a total torsion of 180° over the entire height of the tower, with an increase of 5° in correspondence of each steel ring along the entire length of the tower. The steel rings represent a hinge constraint to stabilize the joists along their height and they also are a template in order to apply the twist to the laths themselves.
The assembly was done in 1 month.
For assembly of the tower, a central 16 meters high temporary structure was used. This temporary structure was a working platform for the workers during the assembly, as it had safety parapets so that all the operations could be carried out without the risk of falling from height. Moreover it was a template with a variable configuration in order to put in place the segments of the tower.
Architectural designer:
Studio ARC-ML ed eHRW
Structural designer:
Ing. Giovanni Spatti
Realization time:
1 month
