Transformation

Exciting designs and challenges

Are you planning to convert office buildings into housing or a heritage building a new lease on life? Breathing new life into buildings leads to exciting designs as well as challenges. There could hardly be anything more thrilling to a structural engineer than giving an ‘old’ structure a new use!

Repurposing a building: two methods

One method to look at what we can do with an ‘old’ building; the other is to start by thinking about what you want to achieve. Our philosophy in a transformation like this is to combine both methods. Making the greatest possible use of the existing building and designing additional structural facilities where necessary. To determine the feasibility of such a transformation we start by examining the framing, for which we conduct archive research, possibly in combination with an inspection of the concrete.

Thanks to our reinforcement scanner, we are able to take an accurate look at concrete structures beforehand. This gives us a good impression of how the structure is reinforced and ensures that our designers are adequately prepared.

An additional a storey can make a big difference

If the purpose of a building is to be changed, we take into account the floor load and the load-bearing capacity of the foundation. However, we also look into the possibility of adding one or more storeys or another form of expansion. Applying the NEN 8700 standard – which is based on the fact that an existing building has already proven itself – we almost always manage to add one or more additional storeys. Financially speaking, this can be very interesting and could be a determining factor in terms of a project's feasibility.