Tall & Urban News

Austrian construction company Porr announced that it has completed excavation work for the construction of the 80 meter Franklinturm building to be located in Zurich, Switzerland.

The company has completed the excavation pit for the underground floors, marking the first milestone in the construction of the building.

Porr secured the €75m (US$88.5 million) design-build contract for Franklinturm from SBB Immobilien.

Located next to the Zurich-Oerlikon railway station, the 22-story Franklinturm building along with neighboring high-rise buildings such as Swissôtel, Neumarkt and Andreasturm is expected to shape the skyline of Zurich’s booming economic district.

The Franklinturm building is expected to offer 14,800 square meters of office space along with retail and catering outlets planned on the ground floor.

Work on the site began last August and after 11 months of construction, Porr has completed the technically demanding excavation work for the project. The company claims that as the pit was in direct proximity to the working SBB railway tracks, the work required exceptional precision.

The company further said that due to extremely tight space in the pit, it had use cranes from the outside of the pit to place and move the construction machinery.

Construction on the building is expected to be completed in 2022. SBB Immobilien, the owner of the building, aims to inaugurate it December of that year.

For more on this story, go to World Construction Network.