2011.02.28.

San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts …

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TALL BUILDINGS

San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts

Seismic Design’s Stature
Performance-based concrete job breaks per-floor speed record on West Coast
01/16/2008
By Nadine M. Post in San Francisco

Structural engineer Ron Klemencic

had extra reasons for gratitude during
the 2005 Thanksgiving season. After
hitting his head against the wall on
and off for more than three years, he
finally received stamps of approval for
the first two performance-based
seismic design high-rises in
earthquake prone San Francisco.
PSD can cost less, improve design
and ease construction.
Nadine M. Post / ENR
Word about the 38- and 43-story
Infinity towers came the last week of Webcor’s Plue, left, MKA’s Klemencic and Johansson,
and Bovis senior project manager Nori Mizushima
November, followed by news about (front) teamed to achieve a three-day-per-floor cycle.
the 64-story One Rincon Hill (ORH) in
early December. “I was elated both times,” says Klemencic, president of Magnusson
Klemencic Associates, Seattle. “It was two years of blood sweat and tears on [the
Infinity] before we even initiated Rincon Hill.” That review took a year, twice the norm for
San Francisco towers.

The city’s approval marked the beginning of the end of a logjam in big California cities
for performance seismic design (PSD) of buildings taller than 240 ft. “People are
going to be doing this left-handed at 100 mph in five years thanks to Ron...,” predicts
one prominent San Francisco architect who declines to be identified.

The approach is a way to meet the

intent of the code’s prescriptive
provisions by using a single framing
system instead of a costlier and
“clunkier” dual system to resist lateral
loads. But some cities are cautious in
allowing PSD because it requires
extreme engineering.

The 590-ft-tall ORH is the higher

profile of the two cutting-edge
projects, and not just because it is
taller and sits on a hill nudged up
against the Bay Bridge approach. The
nod from the city unlocked the door
not simply to PSD in California but to
the tallest “performance” skyscraper
in the U.S. ORH is also the tallest
high-rise to contain buckling-
restrained braces and the first to use
BRBs as outriggers. The slender
tower is the first residential building
Bovis Lend Lease in the U.S. to have a liquid tuned

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2011.02.28. San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts …
Hoist will remain to feed upper floors during phasedmass damper to reduce sway to
move-in starting next month. acceptable comfort levels, says the
engineer.

There’s more. PSD saved $5 per sq ft and allowed Webcor Concrete, Hayward, Calif.,
to achieve a three-day cycle—the norm is five—on typical tower floors. That’s a West
Coast speed record for high-rise concrete work.

The general contractor is especially proud that the short cycle was also achieved on
the upper system of BRBs. (The lower system met a five-day cycle, as planned.) “It’s
pretty amazing,” says Tim Dean, structural project manager in the local office of Bovis
Lend Lease Inc.

The single-frame PSD, engineered

using sophisticated computer
simulations and analysis, consists of
a ductile concrete core with the
supplemental outriggers and post-
tensioned flat slabs. It has no
spandrel beams because it has no
back-up perimeter moment frame, as
required under prescriptive code
provisions.

For the 362-unit condo’s developer,

that’s a selling point. “Being able to
remove the moment frame and use
floor-to-ceiling glass was a key issue
to differentiate the building in the
marketplace,” says Jeffrey S. Sell,
vice president of the local Project
Management Advisors Inc. PMA
represents ORH’s developer, Urban
West Associates, San Diego.

But there was a hitch. “There were

risks associated with the design
because the process had never been
approved in San Francisco,” says Webcor
Sell. Spandrel-beam-free perimeter eases flying form
construction, saves money.
Not only that, Klemencic made sure
Urban West knew all about the ongoing excruciating peer review process for the 350-ft
and 400-ft Infinity towers. Urban West “had no assurances about whether ORH project
would be delayed in the review, and if so, at what cost, says Sell.

After weighing benefits and risks, the developer decided to commit to MKA’s scheme
at a project kickoff meeting in July 2004. But it had a strategy for success. MKA knew
the structural design would get picked to pieces on all fronts during the peer review.
So it was critical to keep the structural system very simple in order to keep the
architecture simple.

Repetition and consistency ruled to

minimize reviewers’ questions. “The
design team as a whole had to get
religion about the core, not because
we couldn’t change it but because we
wanted to fight only one big battle in
the peer review process,” says
Klemencic.

That had ramifications for the

architect and its subconsultants. The
core and it contents, including Magnusson Klemencic Associates
elevators, stairs, electric rooms and
service areas, the typical floor plate and the floor-to-floor height had to be placed, sized
and frozen four months earlier than usual. Lobby design had to be locked in eight
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2011.02.28. San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts …
months early. At ORH, “the concrete shown in the architect’s plans never changed
from Aug. 15, 2004,” says Chris Pemberton, a vice president in the local office of
architect Solomon Cordwell Buenz.

The strategy worked. Peer review

went “incredibly smoothly” with
“technical issues resolved quickly to
everyone’s satisfaction,” says Ronald
O. Hamburger, senior principal in the
San Francisco office of Simpson
Gumpertz & Heger, and the chair of
the three-person panel.

Klemencic gives the Infinity some

Magnusson Klemencic Associates
credit for that. “Infinity took the lumps
in terms of technical arguments,” Klemencic says. “Rincon Hill definitely benefited
from that.”

In the end, the ORH team met its

schedule goals. Construction of
typical tower floors 8-60 started in
July 2006. The building received a
temporary certificate of occupancy for
the first 20 floors on Jan. 4. Bovis
expects a TCO for the next seven in a
couple weeks. Condo owners are
scheduled to begin a phased move-
in next month and full completion is
set for the summer. “We are happy
with the schedule,” says Peter Read,
Bovis project director.

Owners like PSDs because they cost

less. Architects like them because
they offer more design freedom.
Contractors like them because they
are easier to build. And engineers
like them because they can result in
higher-quality structures.

For example, computer earthquake

simulations revealed significant
stress demands half way up the
tower—a bowing effect rather than the Webcor
anticipated swaying. MKA added mid-
height shear and confinement rebar to give the frame additional strength and
robustness. “This shows the value of PSD,” says...

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buildings
TALL BUILDINGS

San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts

Seismic Design’s Stature
Performance-based concrete job breaks per-floor speed record on West Coast
01/16/2008
By Nadine M. Post in San Francisco

... Klemencic. “A prescriptive design would have never identified this. [PSD] allows us
to study the building with more rigor and put the strength and detailing where it does
the most good or is required.”

There were other surprises during

engineering. Results of wind tunnel
tests prompted the the addition of the
rooftop damper midway through
design. “The building is very lively,”
says Klemencic.

It sits by itself on a hill with no

shielding from wind and one face
curves. As wind whips around the
building from south to north, it creates
a cross wind effect, causing the
building to sway from east to west. Webcor
In performance core, rebar is thicker at the base,
The damper consists of four concrete where it does the most work.
tanks equipped with baffles to absorb
energy. The tanks have a total 50,000-gallon capacity. Water doubles as a supply for
firefighters. MKA expects to finish determining the best water level by May.

MKA also fine-tuned the design

based on tests of slab-to-core-wall
connections at the University of
California, Berkeley. In one
configuration, post-tensioning tendon
anchors were located one slab-depth
away from the face of the core wall.
The engineer also increased slab-
bottom reinforcing to match top
reinforcing.

Slab cracks were smaller and better

distributed and the connection
demonstrated more ductile behavior.
“This configuration demonstrated
substantially improved behavior,”
Webcor
says Klemencic. The tower uses the
improved detail.

MKA made another adjustment to the

design, this time involving congested
link beam rebar above openings in
core walls. Tests at the University of
California, Los Angeles, showed that
if required sets of diagonal bars are
placed free of direct confinement and
the overall beam section is confined

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2011.02.28. San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts …
similar to a column, the beams
perform equally as well as the more
traditional but nearly unconstructible
approach (ENR 5/21/07 p. 10). The
alternate detailing has been adopted
into the American Concrete Institute’s
model code, which is being released
this week.

Unlike the adjustments, BRBs were

part of the original concept. MKA
chose BRBs over the more typical
concrete outrigger walls because
BRBs absorb a lot of energy in a
more predictable fashion.

The tower, with a 90-ft x 110-ft

footprint and 50-ft x 33-ft core, is
slender for its height. The core’s
aspect ratio is 18:1 in the long
direction and 12:1 in the short
direction. BRBs, which consist of
steel sleeves containing steel cores
coated with a debonding agent
surrounded by concrete, reduce the
Webcor
aspect ratio to 8:1.

Outrigger locations are based on the

developer’s desired residential unit
mix, the architect’s design and
structural considerations. One
system spans from level 26-32; the
other from 51-55. Each system of 8
BRBs consists of two pairs of
outrigger diagonals that form mirror
image Ks. Each BRB diagonal, 18 to
20 ft long, spans two levels, The
capacity of each of the 16 BRBs,
design and fabricated by Star
Seismic, Park City, Utah, is 1,200
kips. At the time, that was the largest
tested BRB on the market.

Full tower height perimeter outrigger

columns, 2 x 8 ft in one direction and
7 x 6 ft in the other, are reinforced
concrete except for six stories at each
outrigger system. There, MKA
embedded a steel column that
transfers loads from BRBs into
surrounding concrete.

“In addition, the purpose of the steel Webcor

column was to aid the contractor Trussed flyers bear on columns.
installing the gigantic steel
connection plates the BRBs are attached to,” says Ola J. Johansson, MKA’s project
manager.

Plates were shop-welded to the embeds, he explains. On site, the assembly was
lifted in place inside the outrigger column. “This helped to locate the plates with...

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buildings
TALL BUILDINGS

San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts

Seismic Design’s Stature
Performance-based concrete job breaks per-floor speed record on West Coast
01/16/2008
By Nadine M. Post in San Francisco

... a high level of precision, important due the tolerance requirements of the BRBs,”
says Johansson.

At the top and bottom of each system, + click to enlarge

composite drag elements consisting
of steel-plate beams embedded in
reinforced concrete connect outrigger
columns to embedded steel in the
core.

The MKA scheme both simplified and

complicated construction. The
absence of beams and the repetition
made flying forms the choice for
typical floors. But the core, more
congested with rebar at the base,
made things tougher there. That said,
“We have nonperformance-based
designs that have worse congestion,”
says Chris Plue, a Webcor vice president.

BRBs, installed by TC Steel,

Petaluma, Calif., also had their
challenges. Erection tolerances at the
connection plates were about 1⁄16 in.
Alignment of embedded steel was
critical to ensure proper fit. That
meant careful coordination and
cooperation among all structural
trades. Continuous survey control
was performed during concrete
placement to ensure connection
plates remained true and plumb,
says Bovis.

Bovis says the key to the shorter cycle

was careful coordination of the
trades, separation of vertical and
Magnusson Klemencic Associates horizontal construction by keeping the
core three levels ahead of the deck,
and MKA’s PSD.

“MKA values their role in the speed of

construction,” says Plue.

The short cycle resulted in earlier

occupancy by two months compared
with Webcor’s usual four-day cycle for
a dual system. Webcor’s competitors
Magnusson Klemencic Associates confirm they know of no other West

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2011.02.28. San Francisco’s 590-ft Skyscraper Lifts …
Coast tall building that has gone up
this fast. But they also say ORH’s small floor plate helped.

Webcor took 10 floors to perfect the sequence. The tower’s first typical floor is level
eight. Workers hit the three-day cycle at level 18.

Double work shifts helped. So did the

1,000-sq-ft, truss-supported flying
table forms for the slabs. Each form
took only 40 minutes to set, says
Bovis. Webcor used two sets of truss-
supported flyers—eight per floor. The
flyers are hung off columns as
opposed to bearing on floors. The
system is more costly but eliminates
reshores on the floors below. That
kept them wide open for the follow-on
trades to do their work.

Bovis says a big challenge with the Magnusson Klemencic Associates

aggressive schedule was keeping Tuned Liquid-Mass Damper
information flowing, especially to the
design-build mechanical-electrical-plumbing and curtain wall systems. Coordination
of these was only a few floors ahead of the structure’s construction. “Getting
information out to all trades as soon as it was available was critical,” says Dean.

+ click to enlarge Having worked out the shorter cycle at

ORH, Webcor now is achieving it on
the taller tower of the Infinity. The
building is currently up 35 of 43
floors.

ORH’s phased occupancy, a first in

the city for such a tall residential
tower, also had to be planned from
the start of construction. Bovis figured
out a way to keep the external hoist
operating so that workers could get
materials to upper floors even with
lower floors occupied. “We are not
turning over the unit [adjacent to the
hoist] on each floor until the hoist
comes down,” says Read. “The
homeowners know what that is going
to look like.”

Condo owners also have been

forewarned that construction is set to
begin late next month on the second
tower. At 52 stories, it is not as tall as
ORH. But work will still kick up the
usual dust and make a lot of noise.

Magnusson Klemencic Associates

One Rincon Hill is first U.S. tower to have a tuned
liquid-mass damper.

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