A Seismic Question for Architects and Engineers

[jar546]

When tasked with seismic retrofitting of an older building in a dense urban area, what are your key considerations to ensure compliance with seismic codes without excessively disrupting the building's function or surrounding structures?

 

[mark handler]

Residential or commercial?
you will need to "disrupt" the function if interior, or sometimes the surrounding structures if exterior.....

 

[jar546]

Residential or commercial?
you will need to "disrupt" the function if interior, or sometimes the surrounding structures if exterior.....

I am going to go with commercial in this case.

 

[mark handler]

Interior, you need access to the walls, roof/attic and sometimes the footings...
Exterior, you may or may not have any exterior access....

 

[Yikes]

I am currently working on a seismic retrofit of a cast-in-place concrete building, originally constructed as a warehouse, now used as an office building.
In general, we try to perform most work on the exterior face of the walls to minimize disruption to the interior. However, this is not always possible on a zero-lot-line condition.
On our particular project, the biggest issue was that when the warehouse was converted to open office, all the expensive infrastructure was placed against the inside face of the exterior walls: switchgear, phone/data, bathrooms, stairwells, etc. Putting additional shear walls (shotcrete) on these exterior walls would be structurally most efficient, however it will be far more disruptive and expensive than inboarding them to the nearest corridor wall, about 15' away.