Sustainable timber construction in large: Rächtenwisen cargo hangar
11.30 p.m., Zurich Airport. Air traffic is at a standstill. Instead, huge wooden beams float through the air. For the construction of the new Rächtenwisen cargo hangar, a large pneumatic crane is lifting 20-meter-long glulam beams. They form the supporting structure for a building that sets new standards in freight infrastructure at Zurich Airport and shows how the use of wood can also make large industrial and infrastructure buildings sustainable and fit for the future.
Flexible use thanks to large spans
The new cargo building is being built in the Rächtenwisen area to the east of the airport site, adjacent to the current General Aviation Center (GAC). It is located within the airport perimeter, bordered by Flughafenstrasse and Fahrschulstrasse to the south.
With the new hall, the client, Flughafen Zürich AG, wants to meet the new requirements in the freight business with increasingly small, highly varied goods. A single-storey warehouse with two-storey fixtures for offices and technical rooms is planned. The planning focused on large spans. The construction method is also forward-looking in other respects: the freight hall is planned as a high-performance concrete column construction with a timber supporting structure, executed by Implenia Holzbau.
Planning to the millimeter
The dimensions are impressive: The main dimensions are approx. 151 x 62 m, the roof area including canopies measures approx. 181 x 71 m. The roof structure consists of the aforementioned glulam beams, up to two meters high and 31 meters long, which are supported on prefabricated concrete columns in a grid of five meters. In addition, the roof structure comprises a total of 12,600 m² of prefabricated ceiling elements, manufactured by Implenia Holzbau.
