Torre Anboto Dorrea

Torre Anboto Dorrea, a 119-meter-tall residential skyscraper located in the center of Bilbao, Spain, was designed by the team of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Luis Vidal + Arquitectos, with structural engineering by SOCOTEC.

General information

Date: 2018 - in Development

Collaborators: Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners y Luis Vidal + Arquitectos

Location: Bilbao, España

Photo property: Luis Vidal + Arquitectos

The building will consist of five basement levels and a tower with 32 floors, for a total of 166 cooperative apartments. The first three floors of the tower will be dedicated to commercial amenities, and the third floor will include community amenities.

Wind loading has been a challenge for this project due to the building's height. SOCOTEC, with its expertise in complex structural engineering, was essential in ensuring the stability and safety of Torre Anboto Dorrea in adverse conditions.

Talk to our experts

Antonio Sánchez

Cities & Building Madrid Director

STRUCTURAL CHALLENGE

reinforced concrete

The tower's structure is designed in reinforced concrete (RC). The concrete strength of the supports varies depending on the tower's height, being 30 MPa, 40 MPa, and 50 MPa. The slabs of the upper floors of the residential tower and the tertiary commercial basement are flat RC slabs. The foundation is supported directly on the rocky substrate. And the lateral stability of the building is provided by the inner RC vertical circulation core and the RC walls.

SOCOTEC, with its team of structural engineering specialists, used CFD aerodynamic simulations to evaluate the tower's behavior in extreme wind conditions. In addition, it underwent a wind tunnel study to determine the precise global wind loads on the structure.

MAIN ACTIVITIES

Due to the flexibility of its structure, wind loading on Torre Anboto Dorrea cannot be treated as a quasi-static phenomenon. Therefore, a dynamic structural analysis is required to account for the interaction between the wind and the structure

SOCOTEC conducted a numerical-analytical study to evaluate the potential adverse responses of Torre Anboto Dorrea to wind loading. The study focused on the following fundamental aspects:

Vortex shedding resonance
Torsional effects
Top-of-tower accelerations

A structural analysis model was used to determine the tower's fundamental dynamic characteristics.

The wind loads obtained from the wind tunnel study were applied to the structural analysis models. This allowed for the understanding of the tower's global behavior and the sizing of the elements that contribute to the lateral stability of the building, such as the columns, bracing beams, walls, and foundation.

Torre Anboto Dorrea