Intensive underground building work at Park Meadows

It almost feels as if we are entering the crater of a huge volcano. At the edge of the Park Meadows construction pit are steps leading downwards, and it is only as you descend these steps that you realise the scale of the pit. Even the steel pipes of the strut frame – which keeps the sheet piling on either side of the pit in place – are gigantic. ‘The largest pipe weighs 32 tons’, explains site manager Eric Slabber of Boele & van Eesteren, as he points up towards the colossal structure. ‘We had to bring it into the construction pit in three parts. They then had to be attached to each other.’ He smiles briefly. ‘And remember, they will all have to be taken back out again in due course.’

It perhaps explains why work has been going on for such a long time on the underground part of the future residential towers. ‘The process of preparing the site alone took a long time. Because of the high groundwater level, the area resembled a large bog. Every loader kept getting stuck’, says Slabber. ‘We then decided to remove an entire layer of mud and to replace it with a layer of sand about half a metre thick. It is still in place around the construction pit.’ Only then was the sheet piling inserted, followed by the driving in of the piles and the construction of the strut frame. ‘No small tasks, any of them – see how many piles are sticking out of the ground. There are around 620.’

In the heart of the construction pit, the workers are busy twisting rebar for a large concrete foundation block. We will be pouring concrete here before the end of 2024, firstly for the basement floor. Slabber: ‘This foundation block is for the sunken basement. The automatic underground car park will be located here. Cars will be driven onto a plateau and a lift will then take them to their designated space.’

After the Christmas holiday, the focus will be on building foundation blocks and pouring the rest of the basement floor. ‘Building the basement is a very laborious task’, explains Slabber. ‘That’s because the car park has many levels, but also because of the strut frame. Only when part of the basement floor has been poured and reinforced can part of the strut frame be removed from the construction pit. Keeping the construction firmly in place while continuing the building work is an intricate operation.’

Foundation blocks will be built at various points on the basement floor, of which two larger core blocks will be for the individual residential towers. Slabber expects to start pouring concrete for all these blocks in January 2025, followed by the floors in March. ‘From then on, we will gradually be dismantling the strut frame. The year 2025 is about building the basement up to the second floor of the towers. We will then be moving decidedly upwards in 2026, after which we can start on the outer walls.’