Marqués De Riscal hotel was designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry, which is an utterly unique hotel on one of Spain's most esteemed winery estates.The hotel structure is typical Gehry, looking like a bundle of metallic ribbons left by a giant in the middle of the countryside. There is no doubt that the hotel building is architecturally significant but the inside has fixtures, fittings and services to match. The hotel required an investment of €60m to construct and outfit to the required luxury standards.

 

BUILDING CONSTRUCTION
The construction contractors for the project were Ferrovial of Madrid who constructed the shell of the building. Umaran S. Coop and Barakaldo provided the expertise for the construction of the roof and facade. PERI Spain provided the formwork and scaffolding solution for the building. The building basic structure is several cuboids which are pushed into one another. Formwork and scaffolding specialist, PERI, provided a comprehensive concept for the skeleton and finishing work for this very unusually shaped building.

From the construction of the foundations right up to the assembly of the 1,800m2 titanium roof area, PERI Spain supplied the formwork for walls and slabs, the required shoring systems as well as safe working platforms. Three 16.50m high reinforced concrete cores form the backbone of the complex and are designed to safely transfer the loads from the slab construction positioned above. Forming operations were carried out using PERI TRIO panel formwork for the complete height and concreting done in one pour. The areas with rounded wall sections were executed using polygonally-arranged TRIO elements.

The construction of the slender reinforced concrete columns, consisting of different cross sections, was also carried out with TRIO column elements. The loads of the floors positioned above rest on a solid, up to 1.30m thick, reinforced concrete slab and are transferred through the three cores and seemingly indiscriminately arranged columns for almost 10m into the ground. The almost 55 × 20m large twisting surface was constructed as one single casting segment without any concrete joints.

As caves and cavities in the underground had to be taken into consideration, the PERI UP falsework assembly was supported on cross-wise positioned steel profiles which guarantee an even distribution of the loads. For added safety, the accessible cave areas as well as the concreted wine cellars were braced throughout by means of lightweight aluminium Multiprop post shores.

ROOF CONSTRUCTION
For the construction of the elaborate roof landscape, spatially arranged working platforms were required after completion of the reinforced concrete work along the building's longitudinal sides. Assembly of the props and steel girders took place from the bottom up and, as assembly work for the roof construction progressed, the height of the scaffold also kept pace. Installing the dyed titanium plates on the roof girders took place in reverse order from the top downwards.

The frames for the roof structure consist of two main beams (I sections), highly deformed about their minor axis, supporting T sections – 90% of which are straight. These T sections are supported at a variety of angles along the main beams, thus producing a face curved in two directions without the need for bending beams in two directions. The roof construction was a time consuming process as the material used is expensive and easy to damage. After the completion of each upper section, the scaffolding was immediately dismantled and suited to the next working level.

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