Construction of the Tallest Building in LA | FD Engineering

[Music] n n [Music] high-rise buildings depend on the collaboration of thousands of professionals they often cost billions of dollars and can take 5 to 20 years to build from planning to completion it begins with a developer and an idea take the Empire State Building it was conceived as the tallest building of its Day by John Jacob rasop an executive with dupons and General Motors the Wilshire Grand Center was also envisioned by a businessman chairman Cho of Korean Airlines who was introduced to Christopher Martin since its foundation in 1906 AC Martin has designed much of the LA Downtown Skyline the trust and friendship the two chairman had developed through previous projects were the backbone for their collaboration on a much more complex Enterprise the organization AC Martin Partners is a 110 yearold company that found its roots in architecture and engineering with uh my grandfather Albert C Martin senr who was both a structural engineer and an architect started this company in 1906 went on to the second generation of his two sons Al Martin architect Jay Edward Martin my father a structural engineer in the third generation David Martin my cousin was the designer and I am the architect and CEO business type I think you know that I am from a family of Architects I am the third generation architect grandfather and my father were Architects and uh so I in a way I was born into the profession but also uh it was something I really enjoyed from a very young age the project is very personal and it's a wonderful personal commitment to Chairman Cho and his family who are absolutely incredible people chairman Cho grew up in warart torn Korea he loved America and here he is leading one of the great companies in South Korea our chman has a long Rel relationship with Los Angeles you know he went to USC before and all that my initial start on the Wilshire Grand with chairman show was a simple question he said what do I do with this old hotel on the corner of Wilshire and Figaroa the building is quite old the actual opening was in 1952 and there are a lot of things within the building going wrong we said you could just demo the whole thing and then re entitle it for its highest and best use and that would probably be several million square fet and it would be a very modern hotel and a modern office building and he responded to that immediately and he said that's what I want to do during its 60 years here at Figaroa and Wilshire the 16-story hotel played host of FK John Paul II and President Eisenhower and Kennedy now it's coming down it'll be replaced by a 70 story hotel and office complex it's estimated this project will create 11,000 jobs chairman Cho is making an investment in Los Angeles and he is personally involved in every single decision [Music] [Music] it was in 1950 when the Soviet Union and China supported communist North Korea to take control of the Korean Peninsula the Korean War started with the invasion of South Korea to stop communism the United States backed South Korea President Truman while leaving open the door for Korean peace talks warns against long range Soviet aims and calls for vigilance as the price of Peace our constant aim in Korea has been peace under the principles of the United Nations now at last the Communist leaders have offered to confer about an Armistice this evil propaganda attack we cannot overcome with military weapons the only weapons against such enemies are truth and fair dealing [Music] [Music] because the two countries never made peace this unsettling National divide has prompted thousands of Koreans to leave and start a new life in the United [Music] States this is going to be the first major building that any Korean company is building and La is the second largest Korean Community outside of Korea the wi Grand Center is the symbol of Korea chairman wanted to have this building nothing short than fantastic [Music] high-rise buildings stand at the intersection of Art and Science but unlike works of art they are also made to be functional and rely equally on the creativity of Architects and the mathematical minds of Engineers the Wilshire Grand initiated a high-rise design concept unlike any in downtown Los Angeles an 1100t glass-clad Tower topped with a three-story hotel and a roof shaped like a sail we wanted to build a building that stood out in a world of global buildings when we realized how tall it would be and that we had the opportunity to create a Skyline we had inspiration pictures pinned up all over the studio they were airplane Wings they were half doome we all have been whites Cho Chris myself we've all been traveling to yite together and see those mountains I think that's a kind of a mechanical and yet natural [Music] inspiration this is a a very crude diagram of this represents a mountain kind of the tower the river is of this idea of the architecture flowing and then the rock the implication would be that this may be made out of H Glass or something reflective this River would be this undulating form and The Rock would be the base of the building maybe that's made out of stone and and granite this is to the West I was always imagining Sunset and the tower kind of um melding into the sky you can see that in a number of these studies so this is this is one of the kind of a crazy drawing Sunset Skyline and and uh starting to look at the flow of the of the form of the base the tower uh the Spire is always in it and then here's here's one of my favorites this was July 2012 and that really by that time we had the fundamental kind of concept of what the what the building was going to be all of the buildings that totally surround that building are made out of granite and they're really representative of a period of time in Los Angeles and we thought not just to be different but to give a Vitality to the city and the skyline all glass building would be very appropriate designers want their buildings to connect to their environment the glass exterior of the Wilshire Grand invites natural light into the tower and reflects its presence across the city skyline the Wilshire Grand was designed for Southern California's ideal climate the translucent Tower and Podium function as indoor outdoor spaces and contribute to the Revival of downtown LA the idea of connecting this building to downtown Los Angeles was very important to us a lot of buildings you just build out to the sidewalk and they could be very nice but they don't make a contribution the city of Los Angeles wants to encourage high density in and around Transit stations and in and around the urban center so corner of Wilshire and figuroa is literally on top of the 7th Street Metro Station this building has a number of ways to connect to the community the most important way is the I'll call it a Piaza but the plaza for public life it should be very compelling when you got out of the subway as an attractive place where you would want to [Music] go making the of reality is where structural engineers get involved the architect's designs progress toward brandow and Johnston's desks the engineers of record there Gerard neas and his team started the difficult task of turning Creative Concepts into constructible systems a second structural engineer Len Joseph of thorn thetti joined forces with brandow and Johnson to address the complex seismic engineering of the Wilshire Grand as a kid I enjoyed building things I got into using a lot of scrap cardboard and Scotch tape we never had Scotch tape left in the house it was always running out uh Staples things like that to just to make to make things to uh uh support my model trains to develop uh jumps for my model toy cars things like that so I enjoyed very much the physical world so our work basically was heavy duty UPF front figuring out the right concept the overall member sizes the overall building behavor Behavior confirming the building behaves well and at that point it was basically handed over to Rando and Johnson who would ask good questions of us make sure they were comfortable with our approach from the time I was a little kid I always loved to to know how things worked and why things worked and I just love being an engineer I like solving problems and more difficult the problems are the more I [Music] like we did not make it simple for the structure Engineers by any means um the overall form of the Tower or the overall project is parametric in nature doubly curved and I have a sneaking suspicion that Structural Engineers like everything square and that's not exactly what we handed to brand down Johnson and thoron Thomas C if Engineers could determine what buildings would look like they would all be boxes with no windows Architects are on the Other Extreme you know they're always pushing the envelope they want to get as much as they can for the budget that they have this building is a 10 it's by far the most complicated building I've ever done the geometry was just [Music] awful a foundation is a critical element to any building it's supports the structure and transfers the loads to the soil below Christ the Redeemer sits on a deep pile Foundation system 2300 ft above sea level the Deep piles anchor into the Bedrock and prevent the statue from overturning resisting all of the wind hurricane forces and earthquake [Music] loads it's all about the view but how do you get there to create iconic monuments Engineers must conquer wind water treacherous terrain and landslides with zero tolerance for mistakes like chisto high-rise buildings are traditionally constructed on deep piles but the Wilshire Grand sits on an 18 ft matte slab that supports an 1100t Tower proportionally this was a challenging Choice which at First Sight defies Common Sense the archit had to stack 2 million square ft or 46 Acres of commercial space on a 1 acre postage stand the very first thing that David and I and our engineering team struggled with was the slenderness of a hotel tower that was also going to be 1,000 ft tall so seismically active area like Southern California with a foundation that's going to be about 100 ft below grade we needed a very large mat Foundation some trees have a very deep Tap Root and that's how they stay standing and other trees have a very wide net of shallower roots in our case we're more like that wide root system we go up 73 stories we go down about eight stories and then spread our load widely reaching out Beyond the Edge of the building it's the size of a football field it's about 270 ft long 140 ft wide 18 F feet deep a Matt Foundation is a big block of concrete reinforced with steel concrete needs to be poured continuously to avoid cold joints that lead to cracking and disable the foundation in the 1930s the Hoover Dam utilized 3 million cubic yards of concrete poured continuously over 3 years the Wilshire gr created a foundation in just 17 hours that supports a 300 million PB structure we had to make 2,150 concrete truck deliveries so we booked every concrete truck we could find we were going to have to shut down all the streets in a two block area around downtown LA in keeping with that we had a party we got the mayor and elected officials with the owner chairman Cho and we came down the street leading a parade with the USC Trojan marching [Music] band 21,000 200 cubic yards which is a new Guinness World Records title congratulations yes today right here that record was broken complete with recognition by Guinness 18 1/2 hours of uninterrupted concrete this is LA's version of the concrete truck ballet and it's the tallest building west of the Mississippi it means people are betting big on Los Angeles that was probably one of the most exciting times it was just incredible in the whole Community embraced it it was like watching a rock [Music] [Music] concert Murphy's Law is not not just a saying it's a fact the 1906 San Francisco earthquake set off fires that burned across the city for weeks San Francisco the scene of one of the worst disasters in the history of the country a shambles of collapsed and blackened buildings it's amazing to visit the city with the highest real estate prices in North America which sits directly on the San Andreas Fault waiting for the next [Music] earthquake the 1964 great 9.2 Alaska earthquake Remains the largest earthquake recorded in North America and the second largest earthquake ever [Music] recorded it produced a tsunami from the 4.5 minute event soon after the inevitable tidal wave came roolling in with a force of a dozen hurricane that nearly wiped out the city of Anchorage entire streets collapsed and buildings toppled like Dominoes on January 17th 1995 Kobe Japan was hit with a magnitude 6.7 earthquake [Music] large high-rise buildings fractured and became inoperable Kobe taught Structural Engineers that even a highly industrialized country with the latest earthquake design methods is at risk mistakes happen Engineers have to learn from the past even today the $600 million Millennium Tower in San Francisco is currently sinking due to soil settlement because the pile Foundation did not reach Bedrock Murphy's Law or mistakes police in Miami say that at least six people are dead after that pedestrian bridge collaps at Florida International University now the cruel irony here is that this bridge was built it was designed for the safety of FIU students the 950 ton Bridge was designed to give students a safe way to cross a busy highway below after the death of a student last year the structure was just installed last Saturday engineering is a trial and error process the Wilshire Grand team is the accumulated knowledge of centuries of previous experience to prevent these mistakes from being repeated [Music] we pulled a foundation only permit so we didn't have the superstructure designed and we started building the building it wasn't until later that we found out that the seismicity at this site is probably about 25 to 35% worse than any other site in Downtown LA there's a vault directly below the building about 1,000 ft Los Angeles is a land of the infamous San Andreas Vault it stands at the crossroads of two tectonic plates the Pacific Plate moving North and the North American Plate moving south at this epicenter is a city of 10 million people everyone in La lives within 5 miles of an earthquake Falls people ask where is the biggest demand in earthquake where is the worst load everyone thinks the Hollywood picture of an earthquake failure is the building topples over that's usually not what is a problem in a real big earthquake uh because at the same time that the building does do the swaying like this it also has higher modes where things are wiggling along the way and my fingers don't have that many joints but these kinds of higher modes also interact and can create large shears which is like the force this way at any floor up and down the building we were fighting two things we were trying to get a building that was stiff enough for wind design and a building that was strong enough for seismic so by making the building too heavy it makes it better for wind but it makes it worse for seismic a key part of Designing a tall building like the Wilshire Grand is what's called performance Performance Based design so that means taking a computer model of your building and running it through a series of simulated earthquakes when the ground shakes all different vibrations travel up and down the building and you'll be able to see all these behaviors in the model analysis the speed is about one sixth of real time but you can see now the waves kind of traveling up the building uh it's not a big old lateral one-way sway uh you can see the top of the tower the sail kind of jiggling a little bit it's seeing more acceleration than at the bottom of the building we've exaggerated or Amplified the movements by a factor of 50 if we did it to accurate scale it would look like nothing was happening at all the real building will not move like this designning for an earthquake is part engineering and part roulette Structural Engineers don't know when the next earthquake will hit what its magnitude will be how long it will last or where it will hit they do know that it will happen they can only make assumptions based on previous earthquakes the engineers of the Wilshire Grant spent many sleepless nights devising a structural system that could withstand the strongest earthquake and the highest wind load the decision was made based upon a lot of very good thought that it was a concrete core with a steel frame the advantage is that the concrete core would slow the the sway of the building down in an earthquake in order to make the building stiffer we had to put put Outrigger columns on the outside edges of the building and attach those columns with braces to the core wall so that we take the overturning out out in the edges of the building instead of just under the footprint of the core wall the perimeter steel is steel columns filled with concrete and then supporting or rather balancing the core against the perimeter frame are brbs buckling restraint braces so this allows the building which is very slender in in one direction to be able to take the wind loading and the seismic loading on a daily [Music] basis high-rise buildings are all conr or all steel concrete is fire resistant and can last hundreds of years in 1889 French engineer Gustaf Eiffel designed and built as all steel Tower launching the world into the Iron Age where steel would become king it only took 2 years 2 months and 5 days to build the Eiffel Tower steel has the advantage of speed multiple floors are constructed simultaneously take a world tour and you will see that most most all buildings are made of steel the Wilshire Grand is one of the few highrises in the world to integrate concrete and steel most buildings that have concrete cores they don't attach bracing from the core to the steel structure when you integrate these two types of systems you have this very complex assembly knowing that the concrete o shrink as a just a normal natural process so over the next hundred years you know that building at the core is going to be about 8 inches shorter so we had to deal with all the the forces that would be induced on the building from the bracing being attached to that core wall as it shrank that was the number one challenge in building tall and how we addressed it was probably one of the most successful challenges on this job over the course of a year just you know worked out a solution for that and it uh was a combination of things it was the buckling restrain braces it was putting in shrinkage reducing ad mixtures in the concrete it was timing the way we attached the braces to the building during the construction of the project and it was also doing something that's never been done before on a building and that's pre-pressing the braces in the top of the building we compressed them about 3/4 of an inch and then we install them into the building and then they let the Jacks go and then it lifted up the floors from 70 all the way down to about 55 and and at the top of the building the floors came up about a half of an inch and so the outside perimeter columns are currently intention yeah all the outside building columns are they're intention they're hanging from the top of the building right now that was a real very difficult and very ingenious process human psychology has an innate need to display success power and [Music] Prestige and this psychology carries over into the structures we [Music] create 5,000 years ago the Egyptians started the race to the top when they built the Pyramids of Giza these were the high-rise buildings of their time little did they know Halfway Around the World other cultures were also satisfying this basic human need to build since then many kingdoms countries governments and impassioned individuals have tried to outbuild outperform and outdo each other but there was a limit to how high they could go for 4,900 years most construction centered on using bricks from mud and stone masonry then in the 1800s the Industrial Age introduced iron and our skylines changed forever [Music] the time had come to break new [Music] ground America entered the race to the top in the 1930s with the Chrysler Building [Music] [Applause] this Crown lasted less than 12 months when the Empire State Building eclipsed [Applause] [Music] it the amazing Empire State Building tallest of New York structures and the tallest in the world it rears its 103 story head 1,250 ft over the sidewalks below America continued to build higher and higher into the [Music] 1970s at 1,383 FT the World Trade Center held the title in 1973 for only a few months until Chicago completed the Sears [Applause] tower now known as the Willis Tower this held the title from 73 to 98 that was the year the Malaysian government and built the petronis towers standing at 1,483 [Music] FT this structure remained the tallest for 6 years until the Willis Tower took the title back by adding two large in tennis buers that increase the height to 1,729 Ft then the Burge Khalifa and Dubai surpassed them all at a whopping 2,700 22 ft over 1/2 mile into the [Music] sky this race is ongoing Saudi Arabia is next in line while they finish construction on the Jetta Tower expecting to top out at 3,281 FT unfortunately on September 11th 2001 the World Trade Center fell [Music] 15 years later it was reinvented and rebuilt to become the fourth tallest building in the world the One World Trade Center America's statement to the world that we stand United for freedom and liberty [Music] every country aspires to the sky Engineers are designing new technologies to satisfy the appetites of creative Architects and developers that want their buildings to surpass the current limits reaching Heights Beyond 2500 ft is Complicated by weight height to width ratio and overall cost these Soaring Heights will continue to grow as new material develops in the 1960s the a AOS space industry developed a new material that was high strength and low weight composits composits have been used in military aircraft and recently in the Boeing 777 to make the planes lighter and stronger high-rise buildings will be utilizing such Technologies in the future structures that will reach one mile high and possibly new civilizations and buildings located on different planets the race never ends although the Wilshire Grand is small by comparison the fact that this incredibly slender Tower sits above existing active earthquake vaults deserves a place in the high-rise jewels of the world it's not just a building it's a sum total of many dreams [Music] certain iconic buildings carve their place in history through Unique Designs and Innovative approaches the Lotus Temple in New Deli features a domed space of crisscrossing ribs with no columns the structure is a lotus flower with 27 marble petals that does not contain a single straight line an amazing feat for its engineers [Music] in the 1960s Architects and Engineers started experimenting with integrating structure into design Chicago's Hancock Tower was built with a tapered design that exposed wind engineered diagonal braces for the first time in the spirit of Creative Evolution the Wilshire Grand fully Embraces this concept Bel trusses and buckling restrain braces that hold up and balance the massive structure in an earth Quake blend with lyrical Design Elements we wanted to pull that glass skin back and really show the muscles of the building you know Michelangelo and the cinee chapel they have all these men and women they're draped in these clothes and then every once in M Michelangelo will pull the skin back and you see this big muscle we pulled the skin back and you see the big diagonal bracing you come out of the 70th floor elevator into the hotel and you come through a forest of diagonal braces you know almost like the gothic kind of an [Music] experience Tammy became the most trusted member of our team it took about two meetings and then any correspondence anything they really wanted to know they'd all go to Tammy [Music] when I go to certain meetings uh with people who don't know me necessarily they'll never guess on the Project Director of the Wilshire Grand project at AC Martin until I open my mouth and you hear me like given directions when our design team designed that Skylight in 2012 it was designed as a very light form um and very lyrical form and and the reality is that it's a light form in the middle of two very solid massive objects you know there's the Tower and the podium and the Skylight uh starts out in a valley shape and then the valley shape kind of comes down to the plaza and then it flips up it is not only curving in two directions but it's curving in a very Dynamic way we took a look at the structure and like how can we get this done and maintain this design and maintain the whole concept the vision the solution to that was was interesting I worked with John McDonald from ktina Engineers he's really a specialist in these very inventive forms and he took a look at it and on day one I told him John we don't want to cut that Skylight into three pieces what can you do for this he basically said we're going to do drift joints so you're not going to see it but it'll be integral into the trust structures you think of glasses being very rigid in that Skylight we've actually cold bent some of the glass so some of the sheets of glass have actually been pulled down half inch 3/4 of an inch to form into that the curval linear shape kind of an amazing amazing feed maybe somebody's done something kind of like that before I not in that shape not in that form the tower reached 934 ft on March 8th 2016 to commemorate what had once seemed like an unreachable Target developers designers engineers and construction workers signed their names on the last steel beam it was approximately 4 years from the first truckload of concrete and a collaboration that involved over 10,000 people 24 hours a day 7 days a week [Music] New York invented the modern-day Skyline the Chrysler Building started this trend in 1930 with its unique art deco style Chicago extended the tradition with creative concrete and steel designs Dubai has taken the lead in inventive high-rise design every high-rise here tries to outdo its neighbor but Los Angeles has been a city of flat roofs the Wilshire Grand is the first building on the LA Skyline to break with this trend downtown Los Angeles has a lot of flat topped skyscrapers and it's because they have a lot of pilip heads on the roofs the Wilshire Grand Design Team chose to explore the options that were possible with modern fire protection technology and discussed this with the city the building department and the fire department and in the end we have a greatly reduced PIR is called a tactical approach we worked very hard to work with fire department to look for alternatives to the Flatt top hpad so we did it and then the next generation of high-rise they're going to have the freedom I feel good about starting that Trend originally there was a Spire but it wasn't meant to go over the you know the height of the next building uh to make it tallest building west of Chicago or Mississippi that wasn't the original idea during the course of this project we we joked about having the Spire with a hydraulic system so that when the next building goes over our height then we jack it up any buildings throughout history there's always some sense of verticality that connects man to the the heavens and the inspiration above every movement needs to add up to being a beautiful expression of of verticality if this building was going to reach for the sky and be important in that way one of the things you would think about is that the building would taper towards the sky like a pyramid the top of the Spire is 1100 ft above mean street level and that Spire extends above the top of the sail the crown Sail on the building about 185 ft who knew we needed a corrosion expert a fracture mechanics expert a wind analysis three times and two Structural Engineers to make that thing happen and we redesigned it about 12 times [Music] and this whole thing came together as as a uh a real collaboration young and old experience and less so quite a phenomenal piece of engineering and [Music] architecture this is frankly the the Star Team I've never seen a team quite like this you know I can show my kids a building that I did and they say you know my dad did that building [Music] reminds me of something my father said he said David uh this is a tough profession it's really stressful and so on but every once in a while you look back and you just say it's all worth [Music] it I am proud very very proud it's pretty cool to have something else you know that's completely different down here especially from an architect's perspective because we work in an Architecture Firm it's cool to see something that's not just you know standard box we want them with pride to say we're angelinos I want to go to the top of that I'm going to use it I'm going to have dinner there they can say honey let's go downtown in the Wilshire Grand we'll go to the top take our friends and have a glass of wine from watercolor sketches to complex structural models the Wilshire Grand Center made the impossible possible it launches a new era for developers designers and Engineers to reinvent the Los Angeles Skyline [Music] this dream did come true [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] n [Applause] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] a [Music] a [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] for

Channel: Free Documentary - Engineering

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Id: GBsUKsnm4Lw

Length: 46min 38sec (2798 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024