View from the top

With a striking façade and planned to stand 220m high, DC Tower 1 in Vienna will be the tallest building in Austria when it is completed later this year.

Designed by French architect Dominique Perrault, the DC Tower's façade alternates between indented slabs and protruding slabs, meaning the floor plans constantly change and the formwork and falsework must be able to adapt to the geometry. In addition, the core of the building was also designed to be constructed in three different parts.

Contractor Max Bögl is using Peri formwork and falsework to support construction of the core, as well as the building's ceilings and pillars. The equipment must be flexible enough to cope with the tower's complex architecture, but also simple and efficient enough to enable the project to stick to its tight construction schedule.

To produce the three different core blocks for the tower, Max Bögl used Peri's self-climbing formwork ACS (Automatic Climbing System) in combination with its Trio panel formwork.

The ACS bracket uses hydraulic pumps to climb smoothly and evenly on climbing rails, and each segment can move independently of the other - offering greater flexibility during the construction work.

Peri said the construction workers had managed a four-day cycle per concrete pour, resulting in three parts of the concrete core taking just two weeks each to build.

Meanwhile, Peri's Rail Climbing System (RCS) provided a moving barrier covering three-and-a-half floors that shields workers from the elements and protects them from falling. Peri also designed the RCS system so that the inclinations of the barriers could be varied to allow the hydraulic system to climb over the constantly varying façade of the building.

The building columns also had different dimensions, with diameters ranging between 0.6m and 1.2m and heights of between 3.25m amd 6.50m. Peri's Maximo, Trio and Rapid formwork were used to produce the columns, which were delivered pre-assembled to the tower in order to minimise the amount of work on the construction site.

Vienna DC development

Tower 1 is the first of two planned DC towers that will stand next to each other on the northern bank of the Danube. DC Tower 2 is planned to be 168m tall - a height that will make it the fourth tallest building in Austria.

The office Towers will be the centrepiece of the Vienna DC (Danube City) development - a new business district in the city. The Donau-City covers a total area of 18.5ha on which approximately 1.9 million m³ of building space will be constructed, corresponding to a gross floor space of around 550,000m². At present, almost more than two thirds have been completed and commercialised, according to developer WED Vienna Danube Region Development Corporation (VDRDC).

WED VDRDC said around €2 billion had been invested in the project, making Vienna DC the largest current Austrian real estate development.

A healthy business

Peri was founded in 1969 by Artur Schwörer, and remains a family-run company today. CEO Alexander Schwörer said it produced revenues of €976 million in 2011, up from €825 million in 2010, and had ridden out the crisis well.

He said the company expected to see stable progress this year, with growing revenues in the field of falsework systems. Peri is developing new products to launch at Bauma 2013 in Munich, Germany, and has also concentrated on its offering as a service provider with the launch of a new digital platform, MyPeri, which is an online project management portal for contractors.

"We are focusing on opportunities to develop organically," Mr Schwörer said, explaining that the company was targeting both developed and developing markets with different product lines.

And, in the light of interest from Chinese equipment manufacturers in the German private equipment manufacturing sector, Mr Schwörer was adamant that the company would remain family-held.

"I think the whole industry was shocked by the acquisition of [privately-held German concrete pump manufacturer] Putzmeister by Sany. I think it was a shame that it happened. That will never happen to us - we will never be bought out by the Chinese," he said.