Completed in 1975 and left almost entirely unoccupied for fifty years, Piraeus Tower has been brought back to life as a 22-storey mixed-use building behind an entirely new envelope. The façade, designed by PILA studio, is wrapped in a shading structure of vertical and horizontal fins that rotate from 0° to 60° as the building rises.

Our appointment: support for system design definition, structural analysis of the typical unit, thermal analysis and condensation risk.

Technical highlights: Units hung from the existing slab edge, restrained in plane by stoppers and out of plane by a continuous interlocking shear block, accommodating movement of the primary structure. Wind loads from wind tunnel test, increased by 33% on the fins; fatigue verification of the fin brackets — governing over ultimate strength at the connections. Thermal transmittance to EN ISO 12631 with a dedicated model for every thermal joint, aggregated over full representative elevations.