By Grace Melcher
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Frequently in the construction industry, speed, affordability, and scalability come at the cost of beauty and functionality. In March 2023, construction technology company ICON partnered with the Long Center for the Performing Arts, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and Liz Lambert to construct the Cosmic Pavilion in Austin, Texas, the first ever 3D-printed performance stage.
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By Jeff Brink and Michael Bauer
Three blocks from the construction site, the DCI Engineers’ Project Manager for the 1510 Webster Street development heard an airhorn blow from his home. The sound indicated that another mass timber panel was about to fly on his Oakland, California, residential project. It was the sound of progress because, by the time the PM walked to the site 15 minutes later, there was already a few thousand square feet of Mass Plywood Panel (MPP) deck in place.
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By Robert K. Dowell, Gulen Ozkula, Jui-Liang Lin, Tunc Deniz Uludag, and Ayse Hortacsu
A team of structural engineers investigated the aftermath of the Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.5 Türkiye (Turkey) earthquakes of February 6, 2023.
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By Eytan Solomon P. E., LEED AP, and Richard Lo P. E.
Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn, New York is a $180 million adaptive reuse project that included extensive renovation and new construction—culminating in 170,000 square feet for fabrication shops, educational facilities, community programs, and multi-functional event space. The project entailed repairing the 55,000 square-foot original steel-and-masonry Turbine Hall, adding a new 3-story, 40,000 square-foot infill structure of cast-in-place concrete within the Turbine Hall volume, and adding a new 6-story 75,000 square-foot Boiler House structure of cast-in-place concrete; all three structures are seismically connected. This article focuses on the history and process of justifying reuse of existing foundations at the site, which was critical to the project.
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By Zack Kardon P.E. and Viral Vithalani, AIA
After more than three decades of disuse, the Tapscott Building, one of the oldest edifices in the northern part of Downtown Oakland, California, known as Uptown, has a new lease on life. The steel and concrete structure built by local developer Ernest N. Tapscott opened in 1922 and featured four stories plus a basement that housed offices, shops, and a theater. Located at the corner of 19th Street and the city’s bustling Broadway corridor, the brick-clad Beaux-Arts building attracted tenants like Standard Oil Company and a public market. Over the years, tenants ranged from Kaiser Permanente to a morgue. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck and severely damaged the Tapscott. Demolition of the rear part of the compromised theater left a seismically unsafe L-shaped building with an irregular and highly torsional structure. The Tapscott Building sat red-tagged and lifeless for 30 years.
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By John McDonald, S.E., Stefanie Chamorro, P.E., and Geoff Bomba, S.E.
Driven by the importance of the Oregon State Capitol and disproportionate seismic damage from the 1993 Scotts Mills seismic event, the Oregon Legislature moved forward with measures to protect and preserve the historic building. The project includes a seismically base-isolated retrofit of the 1938 Capitol building, which is a non-ductile brick infilled concrete frame structure with marble cladding. The Capitol is flanked by a pair of five-story 1977 reinforced concrete buildings retrofitted using a fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) strengthening system, which remain fixed base structures. The seismic isolation system of the Capitol utilizes a triple friction pendulum system tuned to reduce the acceleration of the building during a Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) seismic event. Once complete, a new occupied level will be constructed below the existing building footprint to increase program space and meet the changing needs of the Oregon State Capitol.
…By Monica Schultes, PE
The Steel District office development in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is the first to demonstrate the structural use of ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) in a commercial construction application in North America. Gage Brothers was instrumental in converting the design of a nine-story mixed-use building to a total–precast concrete structure. By using 69-foot-long UHPC beams, interior columns were eliminated, allowing open sightlines, more rentable space, and the ability for adaptive reuse in the future.
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Insights into elevating weld designs to achieve successful hollow structural section connections.
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Unique steel moment frame building seismic retrofit benefits from full-scale testing and nonlinear analysis.
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Storey Park, located in the heart of the NoMA (North of Massachusetts Ave) neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C., was previously the site of an old Greyhound bus depot lot. Situated near the Metro entrance and adjacent to Union Station, this unique city block of land was ready for redevelopment. With such a large block in a prime location, the development team quickly realized this building would embody the true spirit of mixed-use development (Figure 1).
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