PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD

CATÓLICA DEL ECUADOR

FACULTAD DE INGENIERÍA

CIVIL ENGINEERING

SUBJECT: STRUCTURAL ANALISIS 1

NAME: Kenny Pabón Cevallos

LEVEL: 6

GROUP: 2

DATE: 25/02/2020

TEMA: SPECIAL EDIFICATIONS

DAVID BROWER CENTER

The David Brower Center is a nonprofit space located in downtown Berkeley, California,
containing three floors of office space, a gallery focusing primarily on environmental and social
art, conference facilities, a 178-seat theater, and a restaurant. The 45,000 ft2 Brower Center has
received a LEED Platinum rating with a score of 55 out of 60 possible. It was named to honor
David Brower, a Berkeley native who was the first executive director of the Sierra Club and
founder of the League of Conservation Voters. The David Brower Center's mission is to "inspire
and nurture current and future generations of leaders, with the goal of making sustainable thinking
and practices mainstream."
Green from the ground up, the Brower Center is a powerful model of sustainable, mixed use
development. Utilizing the latest in energy-saving technologies and recycled building materials,
the Center will make as light a footprint on the Earth as possible, taking into account the true life-
cycle cost of building construction, operation, and maintenance. The goal of a low energy building
was achieved through an integrated design process that combined thermal mass, shading, and
insulation into an efficient building envelope, implemented daylighting and efficient lighting
control strategies, and used a low energy HVAC system.
Some of the design features include:
 Construction using 53% recycled materials
 68 KW photovoltaic system, that doubles as sun shades, and offsets about 40% of electrical
consumption.
 90% daylighting
 Collection and reuse of rainwater
  Low energy mechanical systems using radiant heating and cooling
 High efficiency lightning with automatic controls
 Concrete with high slag content to reduce Co2 and cement content
 Vertically pos-tensioned structure to minimize earthquake damage
 Operable windows and low-pressure ventilation
The center utilizes the sun’s energy to reduce its carbon footprint through photovoltaics and
daylighting. The photovoltaic panels also act as sunshades for the fourth floor, in addition to the
solar shading devices on all the south facing windows.

Heating and Cooling

The primary method for space conditioning is a hydronic, in-slab radiant system that is located in
the exposed concrete ceiling slabs on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors. These systems are often referred
to as thermally activated building systems. The radiant system is used for both heating and cooling.
To chill the water in the radiant system, the system makes use of a cooling tower located on the
roof. Because the radiant system has a large surface area and high thermal mass, it is able to use
warmer chilled water temperatures than a typical cooling system. This makes it a good match for
non-compressor-based cooling. The cooling tower is able to chill the supply water using only the
outdoor air, without any chiller.

Daylighting
The offices in the David Brower Center have almost 100% continuous daylighting autonomy. This
metric indicates the percentage of occupied hours that can rely purely on sunlight for lighting the
space. The building achieves this continuous daylight autonomy through the use of light shelves
and glazed facades on the south and east sides of the building, in addition to a fairly narrow
building depth of 8.2 metres (27 ft). The heights of individual floors were driven by daylight
availability and programmatic requirements. The ground floor, which has reduced daylight
availability due to surrounding site obstructions, has the highest floor-to-floor height, while the
top floor, which is partially daylit from roof-level skylights, has the lowest floor-to-floor height.
Shading and Solar Panels
Lining the façade of the David Brower Center are fixed exterior aluminum louvers. These louvers
block the direct sun and minimize heat gains within the building. In addition to the exterior shading
devices, occupants can make further adjustments from within the building using manually-
operated interior roller fabric shades above each window.
On top of the David Brower Center, there is 68 kilowatts (91 hp) photovoltaic array that offsets
approximately 35 percent of the building’s electricity energy demand. The solar panels are located
on the northern and southern edges of the roof parapet, and double as an awning for the southern
façade to reduce solar heat gain. The PV array is orientation is design for maximum exposure to
daylight.
Building Structure
The Brower Center is designed to withstand seismic activity by allowing the structure to flex
without incurring serious deformation. This is done through the combination of horizontally post-
tensioned moment frames with a vertically post-tensioned core. The core comprises uniformly
arrayed columns and two centrally located, C-shaped, walls. The entire structure is supported by a
mat foundation.
All concrete used in the building structure contains slag, a byproduct of steel manufacturing. Slag
is used to substitute a portion of the Portland cement (70% in the foundations and 50% in the
superstructure). The addition of slag reduced an estimated 5000 tons of CO2 emissions from the
concrete production.
To protect the building against a highly likely major earthquake, the structure integrates a unique
combination of post-tensioned concrete walls and frames that make efficient use of construction
materials and will improve performance and limit damage. The defining feature of this system is
its unique self-centering behavior that virtually eliminates permanent post-earthquake
deformations. The hybrid system combines the elasticity of highstrength, unbonded tendons with
the energy dissipation capacity of mild steel reinforcement to control the inelastic response of the
structure. Specialized concrete mixtures, with large volumes of portland cement replaced with slag
cement, were also integrated into the design to reduce the embodied energy and carbon footprint
of the structure.
Floors consist of post-tensioned concrete flat slabs supported by uniformly arrayed columns. The
perimeter columns are architecturally exposed. The seismic force resisting system shown in Fig.
is a dual system of two centrally located, C-shaped, vertically post-tensioned core walls acting in
conjunction with transverse posttensioned moment frames at the ends of the building. The entire
structure is supported by a mat foundation. For both cost and environmental reasons, concrete was
the material of choice for the structural system.
The flexural behavior of a posttensioned structural system is ideal for this application. The mild
steel reinforcing bars yield to dissipate energy during a seismic event, while the unbonded tendons
remain elastic to provide a positive restoring force that centers the structure following the event.
The elastic restoring component is proportioned to be somewhat larger than the yielding
component, which means that slightly more than half the total resistance is derived from
posttensioning and contributes to the recentering effect.
Properly proportioned, the system provides improved ductility and is less prone to physical
damage during earthquake shaking. Moreover, the post-tensioning provides significant strength
enhancement, substantially reducing conventional reinforcement in flexural members and
resulting in more compact dimensions and improved constructibility.
References
 Bauman, Fred; Webster, Tom; Zhang, Hui; Arens, Edward(2013), Advanced Integrated
Systems Technology Development, Center for the Built Environment, University of
California, Berkeley
 Cranz, Galen; Lindsay, Georgia; Morhayim, Lusi; Lin, Annie (2013), Communicating
Sustainability: A Postoccupancy Evaluation of the David Brower Center, Environment and
Behavior
 Gonchar, Joann. "David Brower Center". GreenSource. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
 Lovett, Mark (2012-06-08). "David Brower Center – LEED Platinum-Certified". Global
Patriot. Archived from the original on 2015-09-19. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
 Stevenson, Mark; Panian, Leo (2009), Sustainability through Strength, Concrete
International
 Zelenay, Krystyna; Perepelitza, Mark; Lehrer, David (2011), High-Performance Facades:
Design Strategies and Applications in North America and Northern Europe, Center for the
Built Environment, University of California, Berkeley