UHPC façade for the Manateq administration building in Doha

The Manateq headquarters in Doha consists of four buildings encompassing an inner courtyard that looks like an oasis. The ornamental façade structure surrounding and shading the building reflects the Arab logo of Manateq.

DCS Doha Cladding Solutions, the local manufacturer of GFRC façade cladding, has executed the contract awarded for the production and installation of the shading elements. For reasons of a long service life, the client requested a design using ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC). The aggregates, admixtures and fibers were procured in Asia; Nanodur Compound 5941 made by Dyckerhoff GmbH was imported from Germany as binder. Just one visit in Germany and one visit of the durcrete GmbH concrete specialist in Doha were required for enabling DCS to produce the self-compacting concrete formulation purposefully and to further develop the formulation themselves to obtain compressive strengths up to 180 MPa. In the beginning, a drum mixer was used for the production, and a simple pan mixer at a later stage. Dosing was done manually. The elements assembled at a tilt are up to 9 m long and 3 m wide and are visible from all sides, therefore a horizontal production on tables was not possible. For the vertical formwork that was manufactured by DCS internally, they used GFRP or glass-fiber reinforced plastic. The structural analysis was carried out by the tensile strength of the concrete in the linear-elastic state exclusively; fibers and reinforcement were only used constructively. Undercut anchors mounted subsequently were used for a constraint-free fastening of the elements to the steel substructure allowing for tolerance compensation on site easily.