The new 66 m high building with its special façade made of hot-dip galvanised sheet steel on the railway station square in Pratteln (CH) bears the majestic name “AQUILA”. The name is Italian and means “eagle”.

The 22-storey building with its wings, designed by the Basel-based architects Christ & Gantenbein, is deliberately reminiscent of the body of an eagle.

The AQUILA building is made up of a tower with rhomboid floor plan and three-storey wing structures attached to the side. Shops and office use space are located on the ground floor up to the third floor of the wing buildings. 76 comfortable rental apartments with 70 and 150 m² are available from the fourth to the 19th storey.

A special feature is the façade construction. It is made up of 900 timber elements and thus almost 140 m³ timber. The construction was then clad with a ventilated façade made of 3.3 mm thick, galvanised steel sheets.

Fire protection

PRIORIT, together with its system partner in Switzerland, JOMOS Rauchschutz AG, supplied and installed smoke control dampers for the pressure-differential type smoke control systems (RDA) for the AQUILA building. The entire pressure-differential type smoke control system was implemented by JOMOS Rauchschutz AG. Smoke control dampers normally open up in the shaft, so that they do not protrude into the escape route. Due to the shaft geometry of the rhomboid floorplan, the smoke control dampers of the type PRIODOOR ETX RDA had to open to the outside. Above the smoke control dampers a further inspection door of the type PRIODOOR ETX was inserted. All elements were framed with PRIORIT’s own PRIOWALL wall system.
In total, 16 units (smoke control dampers, PRIODOOR ETX and PRIOWALL elements) were installed.

A powder coated stainless steel surface was subsequently applied by the customer.