Application & Construction
Hotel of the future
Expanding Europe's largest innovation campus with AAC
Loading...Xella has been a partner of Europe's largest innovation campus "Living Tomorrow" for more than 30 years. The "Building of the Future" in the heart of the campus serves as an exhibition and conference venue for industry, academia and other interested parties. Various working groups have come together to answer questions relating to building technologies, which provides a forum in which Xella also contributes its know-how. The working group “digital twin” focuses on how digital building planning will adapt to the new circumstances. Applying BIM (Building Information Modelling), Xella already works with a digital twin in many projects.
What will the building of tomorrow look like? Where and how will we live in the future?
Visitors at the innovation campus in Vilvoorde will soon be able to stay overnight in the Hotel of the Future, where they can experience some of the features of tomorrow's living: according to the visitor’s preferences, entirely digitized walls will show a forest, the ocean, or impressions of an action movie - sounds included. The goal is to bring the meta-world into a living space. But the hotel also serves as a platform for forward-looking ideas. For example, the Xella building materials that make up the hotel will also be on display, along with a QR code that introduces visitors to the sustainable properties of Ytong and Silka.
Peter Lesage, Digital Enterprise Software Architect BIM at Xella Group: “There is no question that digital construction technologies will prevail on the market. Our blue.sprint planning service ensures problem-free digital implementation on the construction site, regardless of which planning tool is used by the client. We see ourselves not only as a supplier of building materials, but rather as a sparring partner for the entire construction project.
Not only in the planning phase, but also in the construction phase itself, the digital planning service can save time, materials and staff resources. In this way, we also avoid waste . Furthermore, the workers no longer have to search for the building materials, as everything can be easily located digitally on the construction site. A packaging service also helps the client to precisely position building materials on the construction site.
We see the additional effort we have as a supplier of building materials as an investment in our clients. Naturally, both parties have to initially make an investment, but in the long run both will also benefit from it, considerably! Basically, our product works like a modular IKEA kit. The client receives dimensionally accurate components that can be installed on site without any further measures.
The rapid development of BIM technology has contributed greatly to the fact that larger companies no longer want to do without this type of project implementation.”
Constructing tomorrow’s buildings with the help of digital innovations
BIM stands for Building Information Modelling, a data-driven planning method visualized in a 3D model. In the planning process, BIM can significantly improve the cooperation of the numerous parties involved in the project, as all participants work with the same three-dimensional model from an early stage. Changes can be easily passed on to all project participants via the model, the error rate is minimized, and material and labor costs are reduced. This is also how the hotel on the innovation campus was planned.
Bart Thijs, Architect of the new Living Tomorrow:
“Digital planning methods and tools make the design and planning phases easier for us as architects. Initially, a little more time is needed to get everything in place, but then you gain all the more time in the implementation. We have experienced this very clearly here.
The risk of errors occurring can almost fully be eliminated. As architects, we can make very good use of the benefits of prefabrication in our planning task. Efficiency is an increasingly important component for everyone involved in construction. There were no delays in the construction process at all. We completed each floor in just three weeks. Information on the installed AAC panels is listed and retrievable in the BIM model; the position of the elements is available with millimeter precision. As far as we know, this is the first time that digital planning aids have been implemented on such a scale in a construction project. We are glad to have been part of this milestone.”
As one of the pioneers in the industry, Xella has also been researching the application of Mixed Reality on construction sites since 2018. With the help of a HoloLens, an untethered mixed reality headset, the location reality is enriched with digital information. The information gained in this way can be the basis for necessary further process steps on the construction site – a strategy that was also implemented for the construction of the Hotel of the Future on the Living Tomorrow campus.
The Hotel of the Future is made of future-oriented materials; weatherproof Ytong panels are therefore used in the construction. Entire partition walls, from floor to ceiling, are manufactured in the factory, provided in packages, and installed during the construction phase. The technical specifications of the AAC panels are:
· Type: G5/800
· Thickness: 100 mm
· Width: 500 mm
· Height: 2580 – 3400 mm
· Weight per m2: 80 kg
· Thermal conductivity: 0.195 W/mK
· R-Value: 0.51 m2K/W
· Sound insulation value: Rw 37 dB
Filip Lammens, Sales Director Xella Projects, Belgium: “All partition wall elements of this project were prefabricated to the exact dimensions according to floor height at the Xella factory in Vuren in the Netherlands and delivered to the construction site. Already in the production plant, we can gain significant benefits from the digital planning method. We can produce the building materials more efficiently and store them in the factory and on the construction site. Basically, even in the execution phase, a rough indication of the quantities to be produced is sufficient for us and we can manufacture very flexibly according to requirements. This enables us to react flexibly to customer requirements at any time without interrupting our own processes.
The partition wall panels are 10 cm thick and have a bulk density of a remarkable 800 kg/m3, which is unusual for AAC but necessary for this project in terms of requirements. The panels are used as partition walls between the hotel rooms, resulting in very high demands on sound insulation. A total of 500 m3 of AAC, representing 5000 m2 of wall panels were installed in this project. Each partition wall is a sandwich construction and has been built with two AAC panels with 30 mm insulation and 10 mm air cavity.
We only sell these panels in combination with assembly by specially trained Xella personnel, which significantly reduces the construction time from the very first moment (no training phase). In addition, the construction quality is improved and the error rate is reduced to a minimum. This special service also counteracts the prevailing shortage of skilled workers.”
For all parties involved, the Living Tomorrow project answered the question of whether building with digital planning aids is the future. The unanimous answer is – yes!
In particular, large construction companies and building material suppliers have to face this challenge. In Belgium, there is a great deal of openness to innovative construction methods, which has made this project a prime example of modern construction. Especially in times of exploding construction costs, the benefits associated with this type of industrialization of the construction industry are massive. Of course, this is only possible in combination with prefabrication, which is promoted by the building material AAC.
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