Among Metal.Ri’s latest projects is a residential building in Monopoli, a small town near Bari. The residential building, developed over a total area of 1,500 sq m distributed across six floors, was constructed in the town centre.
Requirements and Residential Building Design
The construction of this residential building presented three main structural, design and logistical requirements:
- completely eliminating the formwork for the floor-bearing beams;
- achieving maximum construction speed, also given the central location of the construction site;
- avoiding downstand beams throughout the floor slab.
The MTR® System Response
Our MTR® designer engineer Gianluca Sciancalepore handled the structural calculation, finding the most suitable design solution for the commissioned requirements.
The choice was made to use MTR® A beams (fully self-supporting) in combination with predalles slabs with a brick soffit, an ideal floor system for civil use structures. This floor system is particularly suitable for residential buildings as it allows electrical systems to be routed through it and facilitates the plastering phase.
Advantages of the MTR® A Beam for This Building
The MTR® System solution proved to be a valid alternative to traditional construction systems and cast-in-place beams, bringing several structural and design advantages.
Thanks to the MTR® A beam the cross-sections of the beams were reduced both in width and height.
We used flush-slab beams, 30 cm deep, replacing the downstand beams present in the design before the adoption of MTR® System. Furthermore, where the beams in the project were already flush with the slab, the MTR® beams present a smaller cross-sectional width.
Only for a particular area of the fifth floor, intended for the installation of a swimming pool, did the floor slab thickness reach 35 cm. This area also entailed the need to withstand significant floor loads (up to 1,000 kg/sq m of variable loads).
Why Choose the MTR® A Beam
Using this type of beam brought a range of technical and economic advantages, including:
- increasing the construction speed of floor structures;
- eliminating the use of timber formwork;
- significantly reducing the use of props;
- decreasing the stresses on the columns thanks to the self-supporting nature of the MTR® A beam;
- using a smaller quantity of concrete.
MTR® System, in combination with prefabricated floor slabs, represents the optimal solution for completing the prefabrication of the floor structure of any type of building, in order to reduce construction time and costs while simultaneously increasing technical and structural performance!
