Hotel Nagold - ein komplexes Stahlbetontragwerk in innerstädtischem Umfeld

Hotel Nagold - a complex reinforced concrete structure in inner-city environment

At first sight, the newly built seven-storey hotel in Nagold, Germany, appears to be of only average complexity - that is at least from a structural point of view. However, as is often the case, the devil is in the detail. The extremely high number of support and load transfer measures required for this project place stringent demands on the structural design. The provision of supports for the bracing walls by means of elevation and the arrangement of the deep (cantilevered) beams are particularly worthy of mention. In view of the relatively small size of the building, the surprising level of complexity can be traced back to the fact that the structural design engineers were brought in at a very late stage of the planning process. The structural design engineers were not brought in until after the architectural competition, which envisaged a wide variety of different uses on the individual storeys, had been decided. The location in an earthquake zone and the extremely irregular geometry of the structure meant it was necessary to verify its structural safety utilizing the response spectrum method.