Europaallee - a new city quarter in the middle of Zurich

Construction area F is located along the tracks of Zurich's main railway station and is therefore exposed to noise pollution through airborne sound. However vibrations caused by passing trains would also have been clearly noticeable in the building as vibrations and structure-borne noise. 

The design by Boltshauser Architekten (Zurich) envisaged not only public uses such as gastronomy and commerce on the ground floor, but also residential use in the high points of the building complex with a view of the railway tracks and the city centre. This requires effective vibration protection of the entire structure for flexible uses and high living comfort.

The requirements in construction area F were multifaceted: the pile foundation of the building complex, building physics specifications and the special geometric conditions on site. Therefore, a combination of elastic point bearing of the pile foundations and full-surface bearing on our material Sylodyn® was used.

In cooperation with the engineering company Basler & Hofmann, a tuning frequency of 12 Hz was defined and the Getzner elastic bearing was dimensioned accordingly. This resulted in a bearing thickness of 28 mm for the surface bearing and 37.5 mm for the pile bearings at loads of up to 10,000 kN per individual pile bearing. The optimisation of the design is achieved by the customised use of different elastomer types, which can be recognised in the installation plan and also on the construction site by the different colouring of the material. This ensures effective dynamic shielding and permanent vibration protection.