REICHSTAG BUILDING, BERLIN

THE PROJECT AND ITS REQUIREMENTS

The Reichstag building on the River Spree has been the seat of the German Parliament since 1990. The building achieved international attention in summer 1995 when the artist couple Christo enveloped the building for two weeks with a silver-coloured tarpaulin with a surface area of about 100,000 m². With this artistic stunt the Reichstag became a crowd puller, drawing in millions of visitors, and is still regarded as a popular tourist attraction today.

Extensive rebuilding work took place from 1994 onwards and, among other things, the building was given a striking, accessible glazed dome. This dome is made of steel and glass, weighs 800 tonnes and is 23.5 metres in height with a diameter of 40 metres. The dead loads and traffic loads occurring in the dome had to be transferred into the components located below it. For architectural reasons, the limited space available for force transmission as well as the planned high angle of rotation represent a challenge to the statics.

THE SOLUTION

Due to the high compressive stresses resulting from the cramped spatial conditions, a solution with steel-reinforced elastomer bearings from Calenberg was the only one considered. In addition, these needed to have an adequate thickness in order to prevent resting of the adjoining beams located above due to the high angle of rotation, as this leads to spalling in the element located below. The Q sandwich bearing was deemed to be suitable for this and was installed. In addition, bi-Trapez bearings are installed in the Reichstag for impact sound insulation and vibration protection.