Offices with élan: the Filadelfie is the latest addition to Prague's skyline

Prague's Central Business District is under-going a transformation with a plethora of high-rise office buildings springing up almost overnight and the 17 storey Filadelfie is the latest addition to the Czech capital's ever-changing skyline. Richard High reports.

The 17 storey Filadelfie Administration Building in the heart of Prague's Central Business District (CBD) will provide the Czech capital with over 30000 m2 of office space, 5000 m2 of retail and restaurant space and an additional 1000 parking spaces when complete.

All of which is nothing unusual, however, the building features a rather interesting floor plan; being constructed in the form of a four-blade propeller. Delivering a formwork solution that could cope with the demands of the curved upper floor and massive basement slabs fell to Peri's local dealer.

Peri's local engineers delivered a formwork and scaffolding solution that was flexible, adaptable and precisely tailored to meet all of the tower's structural and logistic requirements during the construction window.

For the construction of the walls, the contractor used Peri's Trio panel formwork system and Vario GT 24 girder wall formwork. Elsewhere, the square-shaped reinforced concrete columns used the Rapid and Quattro column formwork systems, while for the 200 to 300 mm thick floors used the Multiflex girder slab formwork.

Two formwork girders were also used in combination, the GT 24 lattice girder as a stable, load-bearing main beam and the VT 20 solid web girder as an inexpensive secondary beam.

A transition slab was integrated within the base levels to distribute the structural loads evenly over a larger surface, which prevents settlement differences. As a result, underneath the standard ground plan the slab thickness is a huge 1500 mm. In the laterally-arranged open floors, a 600 mm thick section is in place to ensure additional load distribution.