Stacking Innovation by the Caspian Sea

The population of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, has rapidly increased in the past decade. The resulting growth in urban activity has transformed the city into the Caspian Sea region’s hub, with new high-rise buildings and lively cultural centers creating a unique, well-balanced, and organically blended futuristic composition. The recently-topped-out 555-foot-tall Ministry of Taxation (MOT) tower has revitalized the skyline of Baku. It features five twisted stacked cubes that are independently cantilevered from a circular central core. Each cube holds five office floors and a column-free green roof terrace providing a distinct separation from the next cube above. Each floor plan is rotated 1.2 degrees with respect to the floor below, resulting in an astonishing 40 degrees twist overall from bottom to top (Figure 1). …

Light wood framed residential construction has historically performed well in seismic events. The combination of low mass, redundancy, and damping resulting from damage of finishes allow the buildings to see large inelastic deformations without collapse. In high-end residential construction, this may no longer be the norm. Clients are choosing finishes that are heavier and more brittle, such as natural stone veneers and tile floors over lightweight concrete topping. …

Not Your Typical Office Building!

Most office buildings are boring, very boring. They are typically rectangular or square in plan, standard 25-foot x 25-foot repeating bays of framing with repetitive floor-to-floor heights, and are not something engineers and architects get too excited about. The Krause Gateway Center in Des Moines, Iowa, does not challenge this notion; it redefines it, completely. The typical constructs of an office building are still present (open floor plan, large conference rooms, on-site parking) but the atypical aspects of the project separate it from the pack. …

Superior Court of California

The new San Diego Central Courthouse is a bold and iconic civic landmark that replaces the seismically vulnerable existing courthouse facility. The new Superior Court of California, San Diego Central Courthouse consolidates San Diego County’s criminal trial, family, probate, and civil courts into a 704,000-square-foot downtown facility integrated with the neighboring hall of justice and county jail facilities. The new courthouse, comprising a full city block, includes 71 courtrooms and consists of a 24-story 396-foot-tall tower and 4-story podium clad in glass and precast concrete with two below grade basement levels (Figure 1). …

Kiara is a 41-story, 435-foot-tall luxury apartment tower over a seven-level podium with six levels of below-grade parking in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, near Amazon’s global headquarters. This modern, sleek tower features over 460 residential units, 15,600 square feet of retail space, and two rooftop decks – one at the top of the podium with a freestanding outdoor pavilion and the other at Level 41 with lush landscaping and an indoor sky lounge. The project is targeting LEED Silver. Construction started in 2016 and was completed in the summer of 2018 (Figure 1). …

Situated along the historic San Francisco waterfront on San Francisco Port Authority property, a dilapidated former shipbuilding complex from the late 19^th and early 20^th century has been revitalized as part of a massive adaptive reuse project (Figure 1). The Pier 70 complex was the location of Union Iron Works, a premier West Coast shipbuilding facility through World Wars I and II until it was shuttered several decades ago. The anchor of the complex is Building 113/114, a two-block-long brick and steel building. …

Earthquake engineering professionals generally recognize that unreinforced masonry buildings of most vintages pose a significant risk of collapse in strong earthquakes. Cognizant of this, the City of San Francisco enacted an ordinance that required assessment, and either upgrade or demolition, of any such building within the jurisdiction found to be deficient regardless of its historic, cultural, or aesthetic significance. Sherith Israel was one such building. The story of how it was literally saved from the wrecking ball by diligently treating seismic safety and historic preservation objectives with equal priority, and by employing a host of new technologies in concert with traditional ones to surmount technical challenges, is described herein. …

Pushing the Envelope to Deliver the Iconic U.S. Olympic Museum in Colorado Springs

In athletics, the gold medalist is recognized as a champion among all of humankind. Legacies in construction or design are harder to quantify, but when the new United States Olympic Museum opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado, it will certainly be meaningful for design architect, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), and General Contractor/Construction Manager, GE Johnson Construction Company. …

Sand Palace of Mexico Beach

Hurricane Michael, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes to ever make landfall in the contiguous United States, made a direct hit on Mexico Beach, Florida, on October 10, 2018. The Category 4 storm strengthened unexpectedly as it raced through the Gulf of Mexico with maximum wind speeds of 155 mph. At landfall in Mexico Beach, the measured storm surge was nearly 16 feet and, if wave height is added, the height of the wall of water was over 20 feet. The storm caused 45 deaths and resulted in damage of approximately $15 billion. …

Top-Down, Post-Tensioned Concrete Solution Drives Success in Boston

The picturesque Beacon Hill conservation area in Boston is home to some of the most historic and prestigious buildings in the city. The area is characterized by narrow streets and Federal-style façades that are protected as part of Boston’s rich heritage. …