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Coldo opts for rooftop parking next to the ‘world’s tallest freezer’ in Kuurne

Coldo is building an immense fully automated cold storage warehouse on the industrial estate in Kuurne. It will have space for 60,000 pallets of food products. In doing so, Coldo is responding to the rapid growth of regional producers such as Greenyard, Westvlees, Eurofrost, and Clarebout. Skald was responsible for the design and engineering of the freezer floor slab and for the structural integrity of the front building.

Thomas Demuynck and Bénédict Soens are realizing this project at the corner of Noordlaan and Industrielaan in Kuurne. According to ChatGPT, the cold storage warehouse, at a height of 45 meters, will be the tallest in the world. With a length of 129 meters and a width of 58 meters, the other dimensions are equally impressive. The company will handle between 12,000 and 14,000 pallets per day.

 

 

Stepped floor

Because of the large temperature difference between the subsoil and the interior, extreme forces act on the floor slab of a deep-freeze warehouse. To prevent frost heave — the upward pressure caused by freezing subsoil — a floor heating system is installed in the subfloor. Insulation is then applied on top of the subfloor, followed by the upper floor. The two layers never come into direct contact with each other. At the locations where foundation piles are present, a block of azobé wood integrated into the insulation provides a highly pressure-resistant transition between the upper floor and the foundation piles, while also preventing thermal bridging.

The foundation slab (i.e., the upper floor) rests on piles. Each pile is assigned a spring constant so that if one pile settles slightly, the other piles automatically take on a greater share of the load due to the stiffness of the slab. However, this can cause the slab to deflect more in the middle than at the edges. This must not happen, as even a small deformation in the floor slab would have major consequences for the more than 40-meter-high fully automated lifts and shuttles operating inside the warehouse. Therefore, the slab thickness varies: from 40 cm in the central area, increasing through 105 cm and 145 cm up to 165 cm at the outer edges. To maximize pallet capacity, the thickened sections were designed downward. The only exception is a limited edge zone with an upward thickening, introduced for execution optimization. This required extensive and detailed engineering analysis.

 

 

Rooftop parking

Between the deep-freeze warehouse and the front building, a one-meter gap was left, closed off at the top with a canopy and along the sides with grilles. To allow conveyors to pass through, several enclosed passages were created between the two buildings. We ensured that no thermal bridges could occur in these areas.

The front building has two floors, consisting of a dispatch area on the ground floor and a storage level above. Remarkably, cars park on the roof (the second floor) of this building, as the remaining available space on the site is reserved for truck movements. The parking area is accessed via a car lift. To prevent water infiltration through the parking deck — a common issue — we opted for a system of precast slabs with a topping layer, insulation, waterproofing, and paving supports with PARDAK® 110 tiles. These are designed for non-intensive use and can be installed easily.

At the edge of the front building, an integrated three-story office section has also been provided.

 

 

Future-oriented span design

For the shorter spans in the front building, prestressed concrete I-beams were chosen. In the dispatch and storage areas, there are no columns, resulting in spans of 16 meters. This required the use of 50 cm thick precast floor slabs with an additional 12 cm polished topping layer. For the rooftop parking deck, we designed for a lower load than the 850 kg/m² applied elsewhere in the building, as it primarily needs to support passenger vehicles and potential snow loads. While a standard load capacity of 250 kg/m² is often used, we accounted for a future maximum load of 300 kg/m², considering the increasing weight of electric vehicles. In addition, several areas within the building have not yet been assigned a specific function. For these spaces, we applied the same design load as that of the rest of the corresponding floor.

Finally, the ground-floor slab is noteworthy: it is positioned approximately 1.05 meters above ground level to allow trucks to load and unload goods easily, while also providing space for recesses in the floor to accommodate conveyors and other systems.

 

Construction Partners: