Harsco Infrastructure

Case studies

Berlin Central Station, Germany

Project challenges

Berlin’s new Central Station is the largest ‘crossing station’ in Europe – accommodating the intersection of the two main rail routes through the city. Built on the site of the historic Lehrter Bahnhof, it is also Europe’s largest two-level railway station.  The main concourse, flanked by two towers, provides roughly 44,000 m² of commercial space.

The project began in 2005 and Harsco Infrastructure supplied formwork solutions for the construction of the two 46 metre tall office towers (each 183 x 22m in plan). Work on the building fabric had to be completed within 13 months.

Insight onsite™

Because of the tight schedule, the stairway towers were constructed in advance, with the floor slabs trailing behind. For eleven of the fourteen towers, CS 240 L climbing scaffolds were used. Platforms up to ten metre long were required - with bracket clearances of almost six metres. About 800 m2 of MANTO wall formwork (3.90 meter high) was combined with the bracket scaffold to form units that could be moved by crane. The geometry of the reinforced concrete cores demanded a special solution to take account of the vertical changes in wall thickness. To accommodate this, the MANTO inner shaft formwork stood on a special platform of latch platform girders.

The steel skeletons of the 12-storey office buildings were then erected around the completed concreted stairway towers and their slabs shuttered and poured. The ten metre high ceilings on the lower floors were conventionally shuttered with the aid of H 20 timber beams. ID 15 frame supports were used to support loads of up to 160 kN on a ground plan of only 1 x 1 metres. The ten main floors of the office buildings have a ceiling height of 3.60 metres which proved an ideal application for beamless TOPEC® soffit formwork system.