Tall Office Building in Brasilia, Brazil

An 18-floor building has been erected in downtown Brasilia for the headquarters of the National Confederation of Commerce, a private professional association. The upper three floors house the headquarters of CNC and contain an internal lift and stairs, while the other floors may be rented as offices and can be divided by means of partition walls. The building also has three underground levels, which are used for parking purposes and an auditorium. The programme for the architects was very ambitious. The owners wanted open spaces for the offices with no intermediate columns. At the same time, the municipal standards for construction in Brasilia were very rigid: the floor-to-floor height should be no more than 3.0 m; and all the building services and air conditioning should be placed in a very short space. For these reasons, prestressed concrete was chosen as the structural material.