Scaffolding tower cloudwork, Zürich

The project
For the construction work on the three high-rise buildings of the Wolkenwerk development in Zurich, a scaffold tower was needed on each side of the facade. A temporary wooden construction placed on a concrete slab proved to be the best solution. One platform per floor enables the building materials to be loaded and unloaded. The 70-meter-high scaffold towers are designed to be attached to the buildings only for bracing. All loads are transferred in the wooden structure so that the high-rise buildings are not loaded with additional weights.

The construction
Timbatec's engineers planned the towers as skeleton structures. For each structure, the timber constructors needed 27m³ glulam, 32m³ structural timber and 560m² three-layer panels. This results in a timber volume of around 200m³ per tower. To ensure the shortest possible construction time, most of the towers were delivered to the construction site as prefabricated elements.

The challenge
With a height of 70 meters, the high-rise limit of 30 meters is clearly exceeded. As a result, increased fire protection regulations also apply during the construction phase. Accordingly, conditions were imposed by the authorities. To prevent a possible fire from simply spreading from one floor to the next, fire barriers were planned for all platforms.