Timber has played a central role in the redevelopment of Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
Pier
2E, the jetty attached to the terminal, has been refurbished in
ash-veneered birch plywood cladding and glulam supported by a steel
frame and covered in a glass shell, as part of a reconstruction
following the collapse of the original concrete structure in 2004.
The
660x30x20m jetty required 152 glulam beams and 18,000m² of cladding,
which took nearly seven months to install. Each beam was delivered to
site in six sections of up to 8.5m in length.
Finnforest Merk undertook the project for Aéroports de Paris (ADP).
FinnforestMerk project manager Josef Meier said that the development included a
number of demanding technical and reliability requirements, such as the
non-constant shape of the elliptical building, fire ratings, the use of
non-visible fixings and keeping the intumescent coating as thin as
possible.
ADP executive director and chief development officer
Bernard Cathelain said that timber had been chosen due to its aesthetic
qualities, bringing "a warm indoor ambiance" and "architectural harmony
with the steel and glass shell".
Pier 2E is due to open in the
spring with the capacity to handle six million passengers a year from
10 contact stands, before increasing to nine million from 17 stands in
2009.
