Proyects
Below is a small selection of our projects that have had an atypical detail, either because of their architectural significance, a structural difficulty or a calculation difficulty.
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Prestressed Concrete
Reinforced Concrete
Metal Structures
Pathology and repair of structures
Development of Structural Programs
Design and Verification
Prestressed Concrete
Reinforced Concrete
Metal Structures
Pathology and repair of structures
Development of Structural Programs
Design and Verification
Prestressed Concrete
Casa Grande
of the People
One of its main structural characteristics is that it has an auditorium with an approximate seating capacity of 1,100 people, which contemplates an 11-meter cantilever overlooking Potosí Street.
The structural problem is that the cantilever causes a significant overturning moment on the building which, under normal conditions, would tilt the building. Therefore, it was necessary to design a self-balancing internal system to compensate for this overturning moment. Thus, the real structural solution is not in the cantilever itself, but inside the building. It is interesting to note that both the cantilever and the internal self-balancing system were designed in post-tensioned concrete.
The Casa Grande del Pueblo has 29 floors and a heliport. It has 29,492 square meters of floor area. Several floors, including the auditorium, have a service load of 1,000 kg/m2. The average floor-to-floor height is 4.5 meters. As the main government building, its design has a very high seismic-resistant capacity.
- Date: 2018 - La Paz, Bolivia.
BCP Office building
It has a striking architecture consisting of transparent windows to show the structure. The main structural feature is that it is made of 15-centimeter thick slabs of post-tensioned concrete, with 9-meter spans between supports and 2-meter cantilevers on the façade.
The building has 14 floors and a floor area of 8,500 [m2].
Our work consisted of the calculation, optimization and structural design, as well as construction supervision. Everything was in charge of our PhD. MSc. Eng. Mario Galindo Queralt.
- Date: 2004 - La Paz, Bolivia.
Olympic Pool
- Date: 1977 - La Paz, Bolivia.
Reinforced Concrete
Church of
San Miguel Arcángel
The Church of San Miguel Arcángel is an urban landmark.
- Date: 1967 - La Paz, Bolivia.
Corazón de María
parish
Located at Avenida Bush N° 1873 in Miraflores in La Paz, Bolivia.
The structure of the parish consists of two truncated cone-shaped domes of hyperbolic cosine generatrix facing each other. The truncated cone geometry gives the shells double curvature at each point, which makes them resistant to localized buckling.
The shells were built using the fiber cement technique, which basically consists of building a reinforced concrete formwork over which reinforced concrete is poured. The result is ribbed shells in which the exposed concrete formwork remains inside. Additionally, the roof deck has two small shells, also truncated cone-shaped, not ribbed. The roof covers a total usable area of 540 square meters.
The Corazón de María Parish was awarded the prize for the best monumental construction in 1972 by the “Amigos de la Ciudad” (Friends of the City). The architectural conception, structural design and construction were entirely carried out by the Bolivian engineer Mr. Mario Galindo Rojas.
We would like to make a special honorable mention to Father Pedro Riaño, who was the architect to promote the construction, obtaining the necessary funds only with alms and donations. The Parish is the result of the joint decision of Father Riaño and Engineer Galindo to build, in total adversity, a work dedicated to God.
Unfortunately the parish is unfinished because it had to be painted immaculate white both inside and out, the pews had a special design, the tower had to be taller and a sculpture of Jesus Christ was designed but could never be sculpted, among many other missing details. All the work stopped when Father Pedro was transferred to the small town of Bolivar by instructions of the church. However, the most important part of the parish could be built and, today, it is a reality that will last for many centuries for the praise of God.
Father Pedro was a great Spanish priest who did a lot for the salvation of souls in Bolivia. His legacy goes far beyond the construction of the parish. Another of his great feats is in the town of Bolivar, which he transformed from a small poor town to a large and thriving one. In spite of not being able to finish the parish, Father Pedro was very happy to go to Bolivar because he was able to do a lot of work in representation of our Lord Jesus Christ. With the greatest respect and affection goes our sincere greetings and eternal gratitude to such a worthy priest in heaven where he is.
We would also like to mention the master Florentino López who directed the construction workers and the master stonemason Pedro Argote who sculpted all the stones of the lower wall in an unprecedented work of art.
Finally, we cannot fail to mention the Bolivian artist and architect Don Ricardo Pérez Alcalá who helped in countless details and painted several pictures of the parish that we jealously guard at Galindo Ingeniería.
- Date: 1972 - La Paz, Bolivia.
Gundlach Towers
This is an office building consisting of two towers, located on the corner of Reyes Ortiz and Federico Zuazo streets in the city of La Paz - Bolivia.
One of its main structural features is that it has a concrete shell at the entrance (similar in span to the shells of St. Michael the Archangel Church, but much lower in height, making it structurally more challenging). The principle of a shell is that it is a continuous curved structure with very small thickness, which is supported by its geometry rather than by the strength of the material from which it is constructed.
The geometry of the building shell is generated with a succession of funicular polygons in catenary. This is why it could be built with a thickness of only 6 centimeters using concrete with a characteristic strength of 15 MPa.
Another interesting feature is that the glass skin of the shell is a structure that is supported by the strength of the glass used as a structural element.
- Date: 1996 - La Paz, Bolivia
Marbella Building
It is a building intended for three uses, the second floors are used for a shopping mall and a food court. The second part will be used as a hotel. And finally, the top floors will be used for private apartments. The building has 11 floors and a total built area of 7,100 [m2].
- Date: 2015 - La Paz, Bolivia
El Shaddai Tower
The building is on the edge of a 30-meter ravine, located on Avenida Saavedra, in the Miraflores area of La Paz, Bolivia.
It has a challenging architecture as it has a 4-story high cantilever and up to 6 meters of light.
The remarkable thing about this project is that the geometry is not what is recommended to be seismic-resistant, so special mechanisms had to be provided internally to resist the torsional stress produced by earthquakes. In this way, a building has been achieved that, with these structural requirements, is capable of withstanding earthquakes greater than those specified in the standards.
The back of the building has a panoramic view where you can see the Triplet Bridges, Arce Avenue, Poet's Avenue and much of our beautiful city.
- Date: 2013 - La Paz, Bolivia
Metal Structures
Soboce - Raw Materials Warehouse
- Date: 2016 - La Paz, Bolivia
Unitel Tower
This is a cable-stayed tower designed to support the transmission antennas of the Unitel television channel. The tower consists of a steel tube 120 meters high and 30 centimeters in diameter, supported by steel cables that have a marked curvature in their catenary.
We have chosen to publish this project, not because it is a large structure, but because its design, analysis and construction presented significant structural challenges.
The structural problem is that a strongly curved cable presents a highly nonlinear behavior, since when wind forces act on it, the cable changes its shape and, therefore, has a different structural performance than the one it had with the initial geometry.
This nonlinear geometric behavior implies that the governing equations of the structure change over time and must be solved by advanced iterative numerical methods.
As a reference we can indicate that, at the maximum wind speed considered, the marked arrow of the catenary of the cables is completely inverted, presenting its curvature upwards; but remarkably during all this process the tower almost does not move.
- Date: 1992 - Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Copacaba Chickens Metal Structure
It is a metal structure designed to cover the Copacabana chicken canteen with a surface area of 180 [m2]. The interesting thing about this structure is that the roof is only supported on 3 of its 4 corners, thus leaving one of its corners cantilevered.
- Date: 1999 - La Paz, Bolivia
SOBOCE Warnes
The project includes a metal roof for storing cement, consisting of 8 metal porticos with two 23-meter spans and a height of 7 meters, covering an area of 2,400 [m2].
- Date: 2019 - Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Roof “Rotativa La Razón”
It is a metal roof made up of catenary arches to cover a span of 30 meters and a maximum height of 15 meters without intermediate supports, which has lost the installation of a 12-meter-high press. The building covers an area of 2000 [m2].
- Date: 2000 - La Paz, Bolivia
Pathology and repair of structures
El Alcazar Building Repairs
- Date: 2013 - La Paz, Bolivia
Torres del Poeta
– Tower «D»: Franz Tamayo
Regarding structural behavior, it is important to understand that, in tall buildings, horizontal wind and seismic actions are the greatest stresses that the structure must resist.
The action of wind depends on the surfaces and shapes of the building, as well as its height and the urban environment where it is located. Seismic actions are more complex, since their value depends not only on the ground acceleration for a given return period, but also on the characteristics of the resistant structure, its mass, stiffness and damping, which determine the natural modes of vibration and the periods. Both loads are eminently random and, therefore, of a complex treatment in the study of structures.
Our work consisted of verifying the seismic-resistant capacity of the towers. The design we made allowed us to implement some improvements to the structure that, although inexpensive, resulted in a significant increase of this seismic-resistant capacity.
- Date: 2012 - La Paz, Bolivia
Development of Structural Programs
GALGO
GALGO (Galindo General Optimization) is a general structural optimization program that interacts with our other structural analysis programs and has different algorithms for finding the optimal solution, allowing us to offer significant savings to our clients. The program is developed in PASCAL with objects.
- Date: 1984 - Present
FEM Lab
FEM Lab (Finite Elements Method Laboratory) is our most important program initially developed at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in the PhD program of Mario Galindo Queralt and is still under permanent development to date. This program contemplates both geometric and mechanical nonlinear analysis by finite elements considering static, dynamic and thermal loads. The program allows taking into account the interaction between several solids and fluids simultaneously with parallel processing. Its development began in Fortran, but since 1992 it has been reworked in C++ and has been linked to other pre- and post-processing software.
- Dates: 1986 - Present
CID
CID (Concrete Interaction Diagram) is a program capable of dimensioning a concrete section of any shape, with asymmetric reinforcement and prestressing steel. This program was entirely developed and implemented in the Python programming language.
- Date: 2020 - Present
Design and Verification
SOBOPRET joists
SOBOPRET, a subsidiary of SOBOCE S.A., contracted us in 2022 to verify and design its prestressed joists. In this project we made the study and verification of all types of slabs, for single and double joists, with spacings of 30, 40, 50, 50, 60, 70 and 80 centimeters. The result is that, by modifying some joists, we have verified that they can be used up to a span of 9.70 meters in housing structures with the securities given in the Bolivian standards. This project was carried out using our CID program with which we have calculated the interaction diagrams of rupture, cracking, non-traction and serviceability.