Project Description
The City of Hope pushed the building to the boundaries of the site in order to use as much of the available space on their campus as possible. The site available for the new Admin building dictated a curved shaped, which faces the rest of the campus, and it tapers down in size on the south side to fit the site. The main architectural features of the building—cast-in-place exterior stairs and a steel/aluminum mesh sunscreen—are also along this interior curve. The stairs and walkways are exposed to the exterior, therefore a portion of the stairs is a continuous constant depth façade that extends along the whole length of the building form the stairs to the floors. Furthermore, the stairs were designed to have supports that cantilevered from the main structure to minimize required columns.
Located in a high seismic area, the narrow width of the building required the cores to be offset from the center of the floors. This is a challenge for resisting the large seismic loading because it makes it eccentric. The concrete shear wall thicknesses and concrete strengths were adjusted and perfected in order to reduce the torsion of the building and meet the Building Code seismic provisions
Additionally, the geometry and angles of the steel sunshades were designed to maximize shading. Because they were attached at the top of the building, this allowed for the steel to be in tension and resulted in reduced sizes. The sunshades were designed in collaboration with the architect in order to address the loading conditions. If the sunshades were designed traditionally after the completion of the primary building, it would have changed the look and support requirement for the project. Furthermore, the connection details are exposed and visible from the walkways, so they were carefully coordinated to provide strength and meet the aesthetic requirements of the architect.
Sustainability experts worked closely with the concrete sub-contractor to develop bespoke concrete mixes in order to reduce overall carbon emissions. For the project, aggregate from British Columbia was imported and supplemental cementitious materials were used to replace a portion of the portland cement. As a result, the embodied carbon of the structure was reduced by over 2.8 million pounds of CO2e. Additionally, the project includes PV panels on the roof and has been designated LEED Gold v4.
Walter P Moore’s integrated team provided structural engineering, enclosure engineering and whole building life cycle analysis. Walter P Moore’s integrated team was able to work seamlessly together to design a successful building.