Trees of steel

The company was commissioned by Bouwbedrijf van de Ven to make the steel structure of Building 60 on the Vanderlande campus. A nice order that got a ditto follow-up....

"The project is composed of three parts: the main steel structure of the building, the parking deck and the canopy," explains director/owner Noud Hendriks. "Three structures with a total weight of about 320,000 kilograms. In the building, heavy trusses weighing about 8,000 kilograms each were installed on the second and third floors. The trusses are composed of 300x300x16 millimeter tubes in S355. In short, a challenging project with complex details in which our craftsmanship was perfectly expressed."

Staalbouw Hendriks was also asked to make the five trees composed of Corten steel that support the canopy of the building. Specifically, this involved four small trees, each weighing about 2,500 kilograms and a large tree weighing about 3,500 kilograms. "The imposing structural forms, 8 meters high and with cross sections of 4 and 7 meters respectively, are true works of art. They were manufactured completely from 12-millimeter-thick sheet steel by our sister company Van Grinsven Metaalbewerking B.V.," Hendriks said. After the trees were finished, they were sprayed with salt water on site to accelerate the corrosion process. Then they were transported by special transport to the construction site for "planting".