WALLOON BRANCH OF FORESTRY REPRODUCTION MATERIAL: MARCHE-EN-FAMENNE, BELGIUM

摘要

The Forestry Branch, at Marche-en-Famenne in the heart of the Ardennes Forest, houses the processing facilities for sylviculture seeds from the Walloon Region forests. It is essentially made up of a workshop, a series of cold storage areas and a few offices and laboratories. A framework of "composed" arches, clamped at the edges in an apron of reinforced concrete, constitutes the structure which covers the whole building. Two secondary buildings stand inside this shell, running lengthwise along the sides. They help support the arches of the external structure. The central "nave" is reserved for large machines which treat and pre-dry seeds. The building is covered with 1,691 large tiles of laminated, pyrolized transparent glass. The basic element of the structure is a double layered arch composed of various wooden rectangles between 6.14 and 6.21 meters long. The arch, formed of circular segments, approximates a funicular curve. The axes of arches all lie on radian planes forming a totus section to create an economic structural design requiring a limited number of different wood sections. The initial idea was to use fresh wood for its capacity to relieve pre-bending stresses from constant curvature.