The Key at 12th is an 18-story office development in the heart of the central business district of Oakland, California. In an area where construction is booming and old buildings are being demolished all over the city to make way for modern facilities, Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA) was intrigued by the idea of designing a tower that repurposed a building rather than leveling it. …
The condition of the building certainly did not match its high-profile location. For years, the existing 12-story building at 168 N. Michigan sat vacant on one of Chicago’s busiest thoroughfares. With an address on Michigan Avenue near the northwest corner of Millennium Park, countless residents and tourists would pass by each day. …
Hale Centre Theatre in Sandy, Utah, is a world-class theater experience that is truly one of a kind. It features a centrally located round stage with seating radiating concentrically outward, each row increasing in diameter. When patrons experience a show at Hale Centre Theatre’s center stage, the viewing angle is 360-degrees. …
Picture yourself standing at the base of a 515-foot-tall high-rise tower looking up to the sky with the side of the building being only as wide as you are tall. Looking up, you see the tower gradually grow out to one side above you, consecutively with each floor, seemingly without any columns supporting the tower as the floor plate expands in width by 16 times and doubles in area. …
On August 24, 2014, the South Napa Earthquake left the Napa County Historic Courthouse heavily damaged with partially collapsed walls, ceilings, and extensive wall cracking (Figure 1). The City of Napa red-tagged the courthouse as un-occupiable, which began the extensive damage documentation effort outlined in the December 2019 edition of STRUCTURE. After documenting and assessing damage, the design team refocused efforts towards a solution to repair and preserve as much of the historic building as practical while providing improved detailing. …
The National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA) is pleased to publish the winners of the 2019 Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards. The awards were announced on the evening of November 14 at NCSEA’s 27th annual Structural Engineering Summit in Anaheim, California. Given annually since 1998, each year the entries highlight work from the best and brightest in our profession. …
The twentieth century saw great monuments to structural engineering erected across the United States, from the Empire State Building to the Golden Gate Bridge and from the Hoover Dam to the Sears Tower. These skyscraping and massive steel-and-concrete structures each challenged preconceived notions of what was possible and left a legacy of engineering and architectural excellence. …
At 3:20 AM, August 24, 2014, the Napa County Historic Courthouse was severely damaged in the magnitude 6.0 South Napa Earthquake, which induced nearby ground motion readings indicating spectral accelerations ranging from 0.4g to 1.7g for low period structures. Most obviously, the top of the south east corner at the front of the building (east face), along with its attached dental cornice, collapsed outward to the sidewalk below (Figure 1). …
International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) defines WELL as “Buildings and Communities that help people thrive.” Where LEED focuses on the performance of a building, WELL focuses on the performance of the occupants. WELL Building Certification was developed through a medically proven research matrix that focuses on the health and wellness of building occupants. WELLv1 is based on seven concepts (Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Fitness, Comfort, and Mind) with over 100 features (www.wellcertified.com). …
To Rebuild or Reposition? That is the fundamental question every developer must address when acquiring a site with existing conditions. In New York City, a place known for its ephemeral urban fabric and innovative high-rise buildings, large developments often lean towards a tabula rasa (clean slate) for ease of construction and maximum flexibility. Cove Property Group, however, had other plans when they acquired a drab eight-story commercial building on 34th St and 9th Ave in Manhattan. The existing 1960s-era cast-in-place concrete building would receive seventeen additional floors, encompassing 300,000 square feet, in the form of a sleek steel office tower. When its transformation is complete, Hudson Commons will be a 26-floor, LEED Platinum Class A property accommodating 700,000 square feet of rentable office space (Figure 1). …