The footbridges and rain garden along the undulating wood rain screen at the new Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., are more than lovely landscaping.
Since Los Angeles joined San Francisco Bay Area cities last October in tightening seismic standards for non-ductile concrete buildings and multi-family, wood-frame structures with parking underneath (ENR 11/9/15 p. 16),
seismic retrofit work in those cities has been booming.
Code Requirements for Assessment, Repair and Rehabilitation of Existing Concrete Structures addresses spot fixes that might be needed after a structure has been in service.
The only true transparency related to the trio of steel-framed spheres—the centerpiece of Amazon’s 3.3-million-sq-ft headquarters in seismic Seattle—are the glass panes that enclose the faceted, terrarium-like structures.
Two recently updated ASTM International standards for seismic risk assessment of buildings, intended to increase the quality of SRA reports, could also cause an uptick in inspection costs.
One of Europe’s notable museums of art and design this month started detailing structural engineering, focusing on the work of Anglo-Danish Ove Arup, whose firm he founded in 1946.