Vertical City goes to Melbourne and to the tallest residential building in the world the 300m Eureka Tower, the most exclusive address in the Southern Hemisphere. But is living the high life destroying our traditional city communities? Are these Vertical Villages changing the way we live forever? Architects: Karl Fender and Nondo Katsalidis.
Eureka Tower over Melbourne’s exciting South Bank Precinct is one of Australia’s tallest residential buildings the Eureka Tower. At the time of ground breaking the Eureka Tower was to be the highest residential tower in the Southern Hemisphere. It would require concrete practices and types, of which the likes that have never been seen before in Australia. Before construction began now over three years ago Sika approached Grocon’s Concrete Technical Manager Howard Titus about the advantages that Grocon would gain from producing SCC using Sika ViscoCrete® Technology, a polycarboxylate superplasticiser.
At first Mr Titus a very experienced Concrete Technologist, believed that there would be little advantage in using the new technology, as he was currently producing a very high standard of concrete using other Sika admixtures. After several demonstrations of SCC, Mr Titus acknowledged that SCC produced with Sika ViscoCrete® could be advantageous.
Mr Titus explained that the building would require concrete strengths of greater than 100 MPa and workability of up to 2.5 hours even in the summer. Grocon had produced similar high strength concrete before for Melbourne’s Crown Casino using traditional naphthalene sulphonated based admixtures, but the demands for pumping over 300 metres vertically, and the increasing traffic congestion in the CBD would have put increasing demands on the concrete. After extensive trials it was clear that Grocon could produce SCC, transport 1.5 hours and pump vertically 300 metres and importantly achieve strengths greater than 100 MPa.
As a fully integrated property developer Grocon have seen the advantages SCC produced with ViscoCrete® provides them. These advantages include, but are not limited to, consistent high quality concrete batched in a fully deliverable and receivable condition, faster concrete discharge times into pumps due to lower pump pressures, less time needed in placement into congested steel and higher than previously thought possible
ultimate strengths. Grocon have now adopted the ViscoCrete® Technology, in all their building projects including the recently refurbished MCG.
So it is now clear that the Eureka Tower has set a new standard in high strength concrete construction and admixture technology in Australia, and provides outstanding clear views of Victoria.
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