The Towers orchid is, without a doubt, an emblematic building for Bucharest, due to a bold vision and architectural concept and far beyond the architectural pattern of current office buildings. For the concept of architecture – developed by a company from Austria – it was necessary to find complex and ingenious solutions, so that it can be implemented in an area with seismicity such as that of Bucharest.
The innovative architectural concept has led, as expected, to a series of major difficulties in shaping and designing the resistance structure, in a seismic area such as Bucharest. The design of the Orhideea Towers building was a real challenge, and the team of engineers and technicians who worked on this project was extremely large and included specialists with a very high level of knowledge and experience.
The extremely difficult elements of the project led to the need to develop or implement innovative solutions in Romania.
The system of foundation piles with injection on the side surface, which allowed to greatly increase their load-bearing capacity compared to the values ​​calculated by prescriptive methods, following properly instrumented test runs.
The instrumentation and monitoring of the test pilots represented a project in itself, extremely elaborate and technically and technologically advanced, at the level of other emblematic buildings in countries with a much more economically developed construction market.
The use of viscous fluid dampers as (exclusively) passive seismic devices is a pioneering solution, and not only in Romania. Today the Orchid Towers is the first building in Europe equipped with such seismic devices.