fbpx

The Common Tower : A Technical First in France to Meet the Challenges of the Tour Alto !

4 minutes of reading
Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France, Parisian subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, is the first construction company in France to set up a common tower, which is on the Tour Alto construction site in La Défense.
Due to its daring architecture and the narrowness of the plot, the Tour Alto build is taking place in a particular restricted environment. Bouygues Construction Matériel is setting up the common tower to meet the challenges of lifting and access at great heights, while maintaining the pace of the build. The common tower: a tool at the heart of innovation strategy A common tower is a secure platform of lifts, that can be put up and taken down independently. The common tower, which was studied and put forward Bouygues Construction Matériel, the guarantor of its safety and compliance, tracks the construction site’s progress. It is separate from other lifting equipment and can manage logistical flows of staff and materials on complex façade constructions such as the Tour Alto thanks to the adaptable length of its scaffold floors. The four outside lifts are all grafted onto the common tower – hence its name – and are digitally connected to consolidate analytical data on this first, emblematic project. Alongside these two productivity criteria (lifts independent and centralised) is the narrowness of the structure that was designed to make as much vertical surface area available as possible. As such, it speeds up the construction work and makes vertical transport and final structure access safer. The Tour Alto: an ambitious project With a complex façade and inverted cone shape, the Tour Alto’s unique shape flares upwards, with varying surface areas ranging from 600 m² at the bottom of the building to 1,900 m² at the top. With a downward angle of 2°, the tower’s circumference increases by 75 cm per level without any additional façade blocks being added. The Tour Alto will be highly energy-efficient with its insulating double-layer façade. Having been awarded HQE® “exceptional” and Wellcore shell “silver” levels, it will be the first high-rise building to be certified BREEAM® Outstanding.