MCI Worldcom

Oakland, California

Often retrofit schemes are believed to be very expensive due to removal of finishes, large shearwalls or multiple braced frames. Paradigm incorporates technologies that can actually reduce the removal of finishes — saving our clients construction dollars while enhancing the building to exceed current Life Safety requirements.

For this project our client needed to add the equivalent of two floors into an 18-story existing building which possessed poor torsional resistance. Additionally, an interstitial space was added between the second and third floors to support electrical conduits and ups systems.

The tenant and building owner elected to explore ways to mitigate building damage resulting from a local seismic event for both improved performance of the overall building and improved performance of the floors possessing the switch equipment.

Paradigm introduced the concept of passive energy dissipation to mitigate torsional and horizontal irregularities in the building, reduce building displacement and therefore reduce demands on the upper floors. This solution offered the building owner a retrofit scheme, which had minimal structural impacts on the upper floors, no impact on the foundation and allowed the building to meet the performance objectives desired by the client. $13M construction cost.

Mci_3 Mci_2