Professional Documents
Culture Documents
E N G I N E E R I N G
High-Rise Towers
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Long-Span Structures
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Seismic Systems
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Unique Projects
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Innovation, creativity, and design excellence are principle aspirations for our structural
engineering practice. We believe that the best engineering solutions result from a close
collaboration with our clients and our multi-disciplinary approach to design. We believe
that a refined science of structural engineering leads to the most efficient solutions,
resulting in least materials, and least cost. Our designs are sensitive to architectural goals
that result in distinctive and timeless structures, while consistently incorporating sustainable
design principles. We believe in constant renewal of our profession and our firm through
intellectual challenges, searching for new ideas with each project ideas that may
influence structures yet to be conceived.
High-Rise Towers
The Jinling Tower structural system evolved to meet the requirements of programming that included office, apartment, and hotel
uses, as well as tall-building design. Beginning with ( left-to-right ),
a dense tubular frame and culminating in a diagonal mesh-tube
frame that allowed larger skin openings for increased exterior
views while creating an optimally efficient structure.
Sears Tower
Chicago, Illinois
1973
This towers 110-stories
are a result of a symbiotic
architectural-structural
integration that successfully
implements a bundled-tube
structural system. With its
gross area of 4.4 million sf
(409,000 sm) it accommodates an average daily
population of 16,500.
Vila Olimpica
Barcelona, Spain
1992
Exposed steel 45-story
mixed-use structure
consisting of a hotel,
apartment residences,
retail center, and office
facilities; located on the
Mediterranean coast.
Fundamental principles of structural engineering are used as the basis of our tall building
designs. These fundamentals are refined with the use of advanced analytical techniques
and actual performance data obtained from constructed buildings. We continuously search
for new system solutions that increase performance, while considering specific site
conditions. We carefully study the behavior of these structures in the wind environment
to optimize the shape, orientation, and structural properties considering energy principles.
We embrace sustainable design concepts using advanced computer optimization programs
to minimize structural materials and integrate the structure with the architectural and
mechanical systems. Our goal is to develop solutions that are readily constructible
and cost-effective.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center, Phase 1
New York, New York
2006
Comprised of R&D labs,
offices, and educational
facilities. Unique features
include the 23 stories that
cantilever over the existing
building and the multi-level
excavation basement that
reaches 80 ft (24.4 m)
below grade.
Jinling Tower
Nanjing, China
2007
Eighty stories of diagonalmesh structural frames
that naturally express
the changing program of
office, serviced apartments,
and hotel while achieving
unprecedented structural
efficiency.
Infinity Tower
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
2010
Each floor level of the
towers 73 stories will step
by one degree and be
anchored to an inner
cylindrical concrete core
spine. This high-strength,
reinforced-concrete
structure will be entirely
cast-in-place.
Long-Span Structures
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Atlantico Pavilion
Worlds Fair Expo 98
Lisbon, Portugal
1998
Inspired by the sailing ships of
Portugals golden age, the Pavilions
interior is defined by the glu-laminated
timber structural trusses that span
up to 380 ft ( 116 m), making them
among the longest in the world.
We have found a great deal of flexibility in materials and systems that are appropriate for
structures requiring large spaces absent of vertical support. These systems use lightweight
structural materials with geometries refined to accommodate spans and, in some cases,
incorporate initial pre-stressing to alter initial conditions with an anticipation of future loads.
Special considerations are required for construction including sequences, temporary
stress states, and final long-term conditions.
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Since its opening in 1966, the SOM design for the Oakland-Alameda
County Coliseum and Arena has and continues to be recognized as
a significant architectural and engineering achievement. Its architectural
beauty lies in its clarity of structure that enables it to resist high
seismic loads, while providing large column-free spaces.
Seismic Systems
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AboveNet
San Francisco, California
2001
This facility houses approximately
250,000 sf ( 23,000 sm) of computer
co-location space. This four-story
reinforced-concrete warehouse
constructed in 1940, required the
building to be lifted and the
installation of friction-pendulum
base isolators to meet essential
facility seismic requirements.
SOM-designed San Francisco St. Regis Hotel and Residences ( facing page)
was completed in 2005. The structural system of this 42-story tower consists of
a central reinforced-concrete mega-shear wall core combined with a perimeter
ductile-reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame. It is the tallest concrete
structure on the West Coast and in a Seismic Zone 4 area.
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Unique Projects
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Our developments within the last several years have further enabled complex structures
to be designed and built efficiently. These projects incorporate difficult geometries
and require engineering that integrates sophisticated analytical models. Many of these
models are developed directly from initial study models created in the design studio.
Building Information Modeling techniques allow the fabrication and site construction of
structural members to occur based on digitized model origins, many of which incorporate
repetitive systematically constructed components. Large displacement geometric
Raspberry Island
Schubert Club Band Shell
St. Paul, Minnesota
2002
This glass-covered, anticlastic, latticegrid shell was realized through a collaboration with artist Jamie Carpenter.
Utilizing a unique system of offset
pipes and single-rod diagonals, makes
it both stronger and more economical
than a traditional welded-steel grid.
General Motors
Entrance Pavilion
Detroit, Michigan
2005
A glass clad cable-net Entrance
Pavilion was engineered to identify
the primary tenant and mark the
major public entrance to the office
component of the Renaissance
Center Development.
Al-Rajhi Bank
Headquarters
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
2009
The tower is conceived as four piers
shielding an uninterrupted, columnfree central office space. The monolithic concrete piers achieve a unique
monumentality, and respond to the
harsh desert climate by creating
an internalized oasis.
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Roden Crater
Flagstaff, Arizona
2006
American artist James Turrell envisioned the transformation
of a natural cinder volcano crater into a large-scale artwork
that relates to the universe of the surrounding sky, land,
and culture through the medium of light. SOM engineered
the creation of a series of interconnected tunnels that lead
to view chambers of the crater. Invisible from above ground,
this project will both modify and preserve the volcanos
natural form and showcase the drama of light, landscape,
and celestial events.
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Charnley House
Chicago, Illinois
1988
Built in 1891 and generally
acknowledged to be an early work
of Frank Lloyd Wright, this National
Historic Landmark was adapted for
the use of the SOM Foundation.
Extensive engineering was required
to restore the structure to its
original condition and to outfit it
for todays use.
Palace Hotel
San Francisco, California
1991
This 1909 structure underwent a full
architectural historic restoration and
facility renovation with structural
seismic upgrade. SOMs engineers
were responsible for the seismic
evaluation, base-isolation feasibility
study, testing program, seismic
strengthening analysis and design,
and architectural renovation.
Williams Building
San Francisco, California
2005
This historic building was part of
the development that included the
St. Regis Tower and Museum of the
African Diaspora. The retrofit consisted
of installing a skin of shotcrete on
the masonry walls, installing a new
mat foundation, and tying aligning
floor diaphragms to that of the new
floors of the tower for primary
lateral support.
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Broadgate
London, England
1990
Broadgate, a 14-phase air-rights
development, involved creating a
new ground plane of streetscapes,
bridges, plazas, and buildings
throughout the district. SOM was
involved in master planning,
infrastructure, engineering, interior
design, and architectural design.
Millennium Park
Chicago, Illinois
2004
The Millennium Park Master Plan
completes Daniel Burnhams vision
of Grant Park and provides a range of
activities, vistas, and environments.
Incorporating performance facilities for
Chicago music and dance, the park is
built over existing and expanded rail
lines, bus lanes, and a two-level parking garage, making it a fully functional
multi-modal transit center.
Treasure Island
San Francisco, California
2005 ongoing
Master plan and preliminary building
concepts to transform a 400-acre
( 1.6 million sm) man-made island
that was originally developed for the
1939 Golden Gate Exposition. The new
plan creates four discrete neighborhoods each with commercial, retail,
and residential components, which
are linked together by generous open
spaces and diverse transit options.
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Beijing Finance Street consists of the following parcels: two 24-story office towers; four 18-story office
towers; a 16-story office tower; a 18-story hotel; two 14-story residential buildings; a 14-story office tower;
five 6-story residential buildings; a 4-story theater; a 4-story trading hall; a 4-story conference center;
and a 4-story retail center. In addition to the basement areas under the superstructure footprints,
the entire site is excavated to provide underground parking on four basement levels.
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Stockley Park
Uxbridge, England
1990
Situated near Heathrow Airport,
this former landfill of 343 acres
( 1.4 million sm) has been converted
to an office park and recreational area.
The SOM project consists of three
office buildings on an uneven triangular site, bordered by a raised highway
to the east and a canal to the south.
Jianianhua Center
Chongqing, China
2005
This 14-story office and
7-story retail complex was
designed with conventional
reinforced concrete framing.
The retail portion has a
facade comprised of a rotating triad sign segmented
into 148 panels to create
an ever changing graphic
encased behind glass.
University of California
San Francisco
2006
Campus housing of 431
units in four buildings
ranging from 7-15 stories.
Conventional reinforced
concrete is typically used
with post-tensioned concrete
slabs and cast-in-place
superstructure and
foundations.
201 Bishopsgate/Broadgate
London, England
2008
These towers are the latest
phase of unbuilt components
for this multi-phase development. Massing responds to
site constraints and contextual relationshipsmuch of
the construction spans the
British Rail tracks going into
Liverpool Street Station.
NATO
Brussels, Belgium
2012
This headquarters to
accommodate the 26
member countries of the
North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, consists of
2.6 million sf ( 242,000 sm)
of offices, conferencing
and recreational facilities.
Our goal is to provide services that result in the highest quality of design for our clients
with an approach to engineering that embraces creativity and innovation. We aspire to
lead projects successfully through construction, developing and expanding on our original
concepts through working drawings and construction phase services. We perform
international work in conformance with locally defined standards and create bilingual
documentation of our designs. We value the close collaboration with other design disciplines
and embrace the design challenges throughout the process, many of which result in
directions that are refined into future work, and many with the same clients.
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