The Hearst Greek Theatre is one of John Galen Howard’s most iconic buildings on the UC Berkeley campus, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a California Historic Landmark.
Tipping Mar needed to satisfy UC Berkeley Capital Projects' construction budget, the Seismic Review Committee’s performance requirements, and a construction schedule built around the seasonal needs of CalPerformances as well as the University’s commencement ceremonies.
The seismic retrofit design was a scheme completely hidden within the voids of the colonnade structure, in keeping with the requirements to protect the historic fabric. In order to minimize constructability risks, Tipping Mar—working with Capital Project’s construction manager and the project architect—conducted an extensive investigation of the existing structure. This included prototype coring of one of the columns within the colonnade. Further, we worked with Vila Construction to document the process and speed of coring to ensure that the proposed design was suitable and reasonable on the basis of constructability risk, and developed a design approach covering seismic building improvements and upgrades to the existing life-safety, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and exit/access systems.
Tipping Mar had developed an array of seismic retrofit concepts for the theater, which is rated “very poor” in the University’s SAFER rating system. Using online design collaboration tools, we refined retrofit concepts with real-time input from University personnel and historic preservation specialists, and selected two concepts for further study. Creation of three-dimensional models in Google SketchUp helped assess the visual impact of an exposed retrofit and helped identify constructability challenges for a completely concealed retrofit. Our work also included a review of historic documents from University archives, structural observation on site, nonlinear response analysis, production of an illustrated report targeted toward University decision-makers, and support of construction cost estimation.