Seismic Futures: Expanding the Retrofit

Abstract

Advances in structural engineering and updates to building codes have rendered older buildings in seismic regions obsolete. Evans Hall, a hub for the economics, mathematics, and statistics departments at UC Berkeley, faces demolition due to its poor seismic rating. The future of buildings like Evans Hall is guided by financial and engineering constraints, often leading to demolition or a strict seismic retrofit. The traditional seismic retrofit, largely ignored in the discipline of architecture, relies on structural engineering principles through mathematical analysis. How can architecture expand the spatial possibilities of the retrofit? This thesis challenges and expands on structural engineering techniques for seismic retrofits through architectural interventions such as spatial methods of twinning, overscaling, replacing, and subtracting structural and nonstructural elements. The dual use of structure restabilizes Evans Hall while also generating adaptability by introducing new public space, access to light, and flexible space for existing and new program.