Le Germain Hotel - Downtown Montreal - additions of 6 new floors

The expansion of the Hotel Le Germain Montreal located in the heart of downtown Montreal is a daring project in many respects that required the design team to have a good capacity for innovation and ingenuity. The project initially consisted of renovating all existing interiors, from the entrance to the lobby, through the restaurant, the bar and the rooms. The Germain Group also wanted to expand the already 18-storey building by grafting it 6 additional floors in order to offer 136 more rooms to its clientele. In an urban context, we knew from the start that it would be impossible for the City to allow the installation of a crane for the construction of these floors. It was therefore necessary to build differently.

This is why the construction technique had to be ingenious and efficient. The challenge was entrusted to the Quebec company Upbrella. The floors were therefore slipped one by one under the new roof using hydraulic cylinders. At first, the new roof was installed over the existing roof. This new roof was then raised floor by floor, as they were built below. Technically, hydraulic cylinders were put in place, lifting the entire weight of 200,000 lbs of the roof in order to slide the steps below. Apart from designing a structure respecting the many constraints of the Upbrella construction system, the other main structural challenges that EMS noted were: Seismic reinforcement of the existing building dating from 1967 in order to bring it up to new seismic standards by including the mass of the floors added | Limitation of the mass of new floors in order to avoid reinforcement of existing foundations. | Anchoring new floors on the existing roof using UHPF (ultra high performance fiber concrete) was an important issue because it was not designed for that | Reinforcement of several existing slabs due to certain changes in use and / or increase in loads on them (mechanical room and gym).