Six local structural engineering firms have received awards from the Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC) for their unique approaches to complex engineering problems on a variety of projects including design of a new state-of-the-art performing arts center, preservation of a campus building headed for demolition, and research testing performed on steel buildings subject to blast explosions from terrorist attacks.
John A. Martin & Associates
Structural engineers at the Los Angeles firm of John A. Martin & Associates received a Merit Award from SEAOC for their work on the Orange County Performing Arts Center Concert Hall that was expanded with the addition of the 260,000-square-foot Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The Segerstrom Center includes a 2,000-seat concert hall, a 500-seat multi-use theater and an education center. According to the owner, the Concert Hall is, “one of the largest and most versatile complexes in the nation dedicated to the arts.”
John A. Martin & Associates also won a Merit Award for the newly constructed USC Galen Center and Athletic Pavilion. Opened in October 2006, the Galen Center is the new home to USC’s Trojans featuring a state-of-the-art facility for basketball, volleyball, and cultural events. The main Galen arena has two seating levels for 10,255 people and one tier of luxury suites. The grand main concourse is infused with light from the three-story tall window wall boasting amazing views of downtown Los Angeles.
Saiful/Bouquet Structural Engineers
Saiful/Bouquet Structural Engineers won a Merit Award for their design of the origami architecture of Santa Monica City College Theater Arts Building, a work of art itself with a dramatic folded roof structure of concrete and steel. Engineers worked closely with California’s Department of the State Architect, the reviewing agency, to evaluate the structural design and detailing aspects of this extremely complex structure. The Santa Monica City College Theater Building is a sculptural campus masterpiece that will be the heart of the campus arts for decades to come.
Saiful/Bouquet structural engineers also received an Excellence Award for their design of Beverly Connection Tunnel, which provides access to an existing parking structure at a crowded retail development. Extreme measures were taken to install the tunnel and lower the elevation of existing foundations supporting four floors of a parking garage that remained in use throughout construction. The completed project yielded a safe entrance for the retail center that separated vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
Arup Engineers
Arup Engineers won an Excellence Award for the new 146,000 square-foot Frederic C. Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum, a dramatic, angular, jagged form inspired by the Rocky Mountain peaks and clad in titanium panels reminiscent of the Colorado sunshine. Their structural design was further challenged and complicated by inclined walls and large cantilevers. The Hamilton Building is a prominent and daring icon that serves as a world-class destination for Denver.
Arup Engineers also received a Merit Award for the Portland Aerial Tramway. The imagination and creativity of structural engineers at Arup is evident in the Portland Aerial Tramway, which transports up to 79 passengers between the Patient Care Facility of Oregon Health and Science University Hospital (OSHU) and the Lower Station at North Macadam on the Willamette riverbank south of downtown Portland. The central tower is a steel structure with a striking sculptural geometric form that follows the physics of forces generated from its own weight. The lower station, an open network of exposed steel frame construction and expanded aluminum cladding, serves as the public center of this newly developing urban neighborhood.
Roessler Design Group and Weidlinger Associates
The collaborating firms of Roessler Design Group and Weidlinger Associates received an Excellence Award for their retrofit design of the Orange Coast College’s Watson Hall. This 1960’s four-story reinforced concrete building had been abandoned for several years prior to this renovation. As with most concrete buildings of its era, the structure did not meet California’s modern day earthquake requirement. The structural engineers incorporated steel braced frames to enhance the seismic performance of this signature campus building.
Myers, Houghton & Partners
Structural engineers Myers, Houghton & Partners won a Merit Award prize for their research testing conventional welded steel frame buildings subject to terrorist air blast attack and subsequent progressive collapse. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Office of the Chief Architect (OCA), Washington, D.C., elected in 2004 to fund a first-ever, steel frame bomb blast and progressive collapse test program. Myers, Houghton & Partners was the Test Program Manager and Principal Researcher and testing was conducted by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
Recipients were presented with their awards at the recent Annual Convention and Exhibit of the Structural Engineers Association of California. Winners were selected by a team of structural engineer judges as being projects demonstrating exceptional innovation and creativity in finding economic solutions to complex engineering problems.