Designed by the architecture studio Daniel Isern, the team led by Blanca Boira, with the collaboration of Lara Sierra and Lali Salleras, carries out the design of the structure and the site supervision. The executive management is in charge of ACRUM and the construction of UNITS-4 AND Steelinnovation. The estimated budget (PEM) is 6.000.000€, and the gross area is 5.000sm.
It has been necessary many years to obtain the agreement between the Council, the Fisherman’s Association, the Owner of the below grade construction, where a three level car park was already built years ago, and the Developer of the (above grade) hotel. Finally, it has been achieved and the construction of the Hotel in the symbolic Posit square, located in the old fisherman’s neighbourhood in Cambrils, has started.
The building is set up in Posit square where there is an existing structure of a three basement floor car park. The car park structure is made up by reinforced concrete solid slabs, supported by a grid of concrete columns, typically with seven meter span bays.
Between the upper slab of the car park, which supports the public square, and its pavement, there is currently a land fill approximately one meter thick, which has the function of helping to balance the upward hydrostatic force to which the building is subjected due to the fact that the water table is located at a very high level, close to the street grade, and significantly above the base level of the mat slab of the third parking floor. This fill cannot be removed during the construction of the building.
The new building is made up of a ground floor, four typical floors and roof. Due to the asymmetry of the architectural project and the pre-existing conditions, the structure does not follow resounding order, so existing frames in both main directions. The structure has been designed in steel to reduce as much as possible its weight, so avoiding the reinforcement of the basement columns.
The issue of the self-weight of the structure was very important during all the design process. It moved between the need to construct a building that was heavy enough to compensate at 100% the water force once the fill was removed, but at a time that did not exceed the maximum bearing capacity of the existing columns of the car park to avoid their reinforcement. This had to fit with the need to achieve a minimum number of rooms to make the project viable.
On the ground floor, located at the level of the square, large concrete dropped beams become the transfer structure between the existing car park and the new building. Despite the significant achievements of the architectural design for making both grids fit, it was not possible to achieve it in the main façade elements and the communication cores.
These concrete beams are, no doubt, the most characteristic elements from a structural point of view. They consist of elements of variable section by making them work together with the existing upstanding plateaus on the top of column areas of the concrete slab that covers the car park, achieving enough section to support the loads of the transferred columns. However, these beams are detached from the slab outside those screeds, working as pure cantilevered elements.
