717 Battery - Musto Plaza

San Francisco, CA

717 Battery involves the full seismic retrofit of an existing three story, 58,000sf historic unreinforced masonry building. Future phases of the project will also involve lowering the existing basement to create functional space, construction of a new open air plaza with basement in a currently underutilized area adjacent to the existing building, and construction of a fourth floor penthouse.

Holmes Culley used a Performance Based Engineering (PBE) approach involving the assembly of a three-dimensional finite element computer model of the building, developed based on the original drawings and extensive material testing of the existing masonry. The model was used to simulate the building’s response to a suite of ground acceleration records from real earthquakes.  The model allowed retrofit concepts to be rapidly input, tested and evaluated.

By using PBE and collaborating with the design team to understand the client’s expectations, Holmes Culley was able to deliver a seismic strengthening system that was sensitive to the building’s historic fabric by allowing much of the interior brick surface to remain exposed, while providing seismic performance in a large earthquake that will be comparable, if not better than a traditional, prescriptive code-based design.

Architect: FME Architecture + Design
Contractor: BCCI
Construction Value: $35M
Photographer: Bernard Andre

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