Extension Bernapark, Deisswil

The Project

In Deisswil near Bern, more than 250 employees once produced cardboard for the whole of Switzerland before those responsible shut down the machines in 2010.

Today, a new quarter is being built with 173 apartments for around 300 residents as well as 25,000m² of office and commercial space.

The venerable factory buildings are still of good quality.

They were therefore not demolished, but refurbished and converted, and extended by two stories with a wooden extension. In this way, a new, diverse neighborhood was created. For more information, visit www.bernapark.ch.

The Construction

The listed factory buildings consist largely of reinforced concrete structures with large window fronts. For the extension, wood is used almost exclusively: all walls and floor slabs are made of prefabricated wooden elements.

The Challenges
The elevation always had to adapt to the winding factory buildings. Consequently, the derivation of the acting forces is not quite trivial. The structural engineers defined points where the forces of the extension could be introduced. Different load-bearing directions of the floor elements with sometimes large spans were the result. Stuberholz called in Timbatec for the development of the demanding structural analysis concept and for quality assurance.