You can take a structural engineer on holiday, but you can’t stop him looking at the structures…!
Our Founder John Staves recently celebrated his 60th birthday with a trip to the beautiful Olang, South Tyrol.
Surrounded by the spectacular Dolomites, it’s was a wonderful place to relax and switch off. Although, for a structural engineer, there was one feature that was always going to make that slightly difficult.
Suspended 14 metres above the landscape is the hotel’s extraordinary Heaven & Hell spa an architectural statement with some seriously impressive engineering behind it.
Heaven & Hell
The spa cantilevers 11 metres from the main building, creating the illusion that the entire wellness space is floating above the mountainside.
Designed by Bolzano-based architects NOA, with structural engineering by IPM Engineering, its concept is as unusual as its structure.
Above the platform is ‘Heaven’, with whirlpools, panoramic showers and outdoor relaxation areas overlooking the mountains.
Below is ‘Hell’, where a collection of upside-down huts hangs beneath the structure, containing saunas, another whirlpool, a shower and an ice-mist bath.
Architecturally, it looks beautifully simple.
Structurally, it is anything but.
So, how does it stay up?
Behind that seemingly effortless floating structure is some substantial engineering.
The primary structure incorporates two 40-metre-long steel I-beams, supported by inclined tubular steel columns. Secondary steelwork supports the platform, while additional steelwork suspends the inverted cabins below.
It’s a complex hybrid structure combining steel, reinforced concrete and timber. Concrete foundations extend down to the rock, with steel bored piles used where this wasn’t possible.
And then there’s the small matter of putting several pools up there.
Water is heavy, and pools can be particularly sensitive to movement and deflection. The three whirlpools, with their infinity overflow channels, required exceptionally tight limits on deformation.
The engineers therefore had to consider not only whether the structure was strong enough, but precisely how it would behave and move under load.
It’s a great example of the engineering that visitors will probably never see but which makes the whole architectural concept possible.
Making the extraordinary look effortless
That’s perhaps what makes Heaven & Hell so fascinating from an engineering perspective.
Standing there, you see a beautifully delicate structure apparently floating above an Alpine landscape.
A structural engineer sees something rather different: loads, cantilevers, connections, foundations, deflection and some very clever engineering.
The project required close coordination between the different materials and specialist trades involved in its construction. IPM Engineering used ALLPLAN and FRILO to develop and analyse the structural design, including detailed deformation analysis while minimising the amount of material required.
It’s a wonderful demonstration of what can happen when ambitious architecture and thoughtful structural engineering come together.
The architect can ask:
“Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could do this?”
And the structural engineer gets the rather enjoyable challenge of working out how to make it possible.
And then there’s the Sky Pool…
As if Heaven & Hell wasn’t enough of a distraction from birthday celebrations, there was another extraordinary piece of engineering.
Heaven & Hell isn’t the hotel’s first piece of head-turning engineering.
A few years earlier, the spectacular Sky Pool was added a 25-metre-long swimming pool that cantilevers dramatically out from the hotel towards the mountains, giving swimmers the sensation of floating above the landscape.
Was it the spectacular South Tyrolean scenery that brought John to Olang for his 60th or the opportunity to admire some rather impressive structural engineering? We’ll let John answer that one!
Either way, it seems a very fitting place for a structural engineer to celebrate a milestone birthday.
Happy 60th, John, proof that even on holiday, a good cantilever is difficult to ignore.
