Renovation and rehabilitation of the Altis library in Cerdanyola del Vallès

The Altis building is located at Enric Granados Square, nos. 1-2, in Cerdanyola del Vallès. It was designed to be used for sports purposes and was built in 1990. Cerdanyola Town Council now wants to give it a new use and turn it into the town’s main public library. The building is slightly above street level, has two basements and is three stories in height. It is rectangular with two attached buildings, one of them square and the other rectangular and lower in height. The works program will encompass 3,185 m² of gross floor area which will be divided into 4 areas:
• Reception and promotion area
• General area
• Children’s area
• Internal work area
As the project consists of the refurbishment and remodeling of an existing building there are only isolated instances of work on its frame.
A new small underground construction is to be built in basement -2 to house the heat pumps the building requires so that they can receive air from the outside.
Footings will be added to the foundation floor to hold the metal frames placed at the base of the HEB 140 pillars on which rest 280, 340 and 380 IPN beams supporting the composite slab flooring.
As a result of the change in the location of the elevator, the existing elevator shaft has been closed up using composite decking and a new one made with concrete walls that go down to basement level -1. On this floor the frame changes to a braced metal one consisting of 140 structural pipes and HEB 140 pillars at one end as it has to support the additional load of the walkway that connects the buildings. The new metal frame staircase connecting all the building vertically begins on the basement -1 floor. The existing facades are formed by a stone veneer with touches of mortar and bolted with galvanized bolts. Work on it consists of closing up some glazed sections of the wall using solid sections with the same stone finish. The current building has a large glass surface area consisting of a curtain wall with single glazed windows and no sun protection.
This problem has been resolved by replacing the existing curtain wall by a new one that can support the weight of the new glass along with an additional frame installed to support the metal flooring providing access to clean it and the brise soleil which reduces the amount of heat that enters the building.