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- La Grande Arche – Facade Construction par excellence
Heat, frost, moisture and air pollution – the ravages of time gnaw at the proudest buildings.
"At the La Grande Arche office skyscraper in Paris, high wind loads and rain also caused visible signs of wear and dirt on the facade", says Steven-Henrik Maier, Market Manager France at the fastening specialist fischer SystemTec.
"Deformations, chipping and cracks appeared on the facade made of white Carrara marble. As a result, in 2015 the responsible parties finally decided to renovate the facade, after having considered it already back in 2009."
Since its completion in 1989, the „Grande Arche“ has been one of the most popular viewpoints in Paris. No wonder, as the building is located at the end of the approximately eight-kilometer-long sightline stretching from the Louvre art museum via the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe to the office skyscraper.
The monumental structure was designed by the Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen, who wanted the cube-shaped arch to be understood as a „gateway to the world“. With a height of around 110 meters, the 35-story office skyscraper offers so much space that the Notre-Dame de Paris church, including its crossing tower that collapsed during the major fire on April 15, 2019, would have easily fit underneath.
When the request came from France in 2015, Steven-Henrik Maier was still in the middle of his studies.
“Basically, the responsible architects wanted a more robust stone that has a similar color to white Carrara marble and a fastening method that works both discreetly and securely”,
summarizes the requirements according to the now 26-year-old civil engineer.
Finding the new stone was the lesser problem: After a short time, the responsible parties agreed on the white granite "Bethel White," which is quarried from a quarry in Vermont (USA).
With the technical solution to attach façade panels made of granite using undercut anchors from fischer, the way was clear to implement the project. A project team of up to six people from fischer took over the coordination of all involved international companies. “Thus, for the West/South construction section (carried out by EDM), we coordinated the timely delivery of the granite in the correct dimensions and thickness with the stone supplier in the USA.
At the same time, we coordinated all necessary matters with the drilling company in Spain. This ranged from defining the drilling rig and drill bits to the drilling drawings and permissible tolerances,” summarizes Market Manager Steven-Henrik Maier just some of the tasks.
“That’s typical fischer,” says the 26-year-old, “we take care of everything from start to finish of the project and provide customers and partners with all necessary information.”
The fischer Zykon panel anchors FZP-II are mounted on the back, not visible in the joint, and ensure a form-fitting and completely expansion pressure-free fixing in the conically undercut drilled hole. Compared to edge-near fixings (dowel, plug dowel, and groove fixings), this technique achieves lower panel bending moments and higher load capacities.
Furthermore, individual panels of a facade can easily be replaced if necessary. Since color differences can be particularly noticeable in natural stones, the French architectural firm Valode & Pistre gladly took advantage of this possibility during the renovation of "La Grande Arche." They rearranged the panels according to their preference, as they thought fit the best.
