Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life, Oshman Family JCC & Moldaw Residences

This 8.5-acre, urban campus provides an architecturally dynamic environment for both young and old and proved an intriguing structural challenge with non-traditional pathways and building shapes as well as parking below the podium.

Customized Solution

This LEED Silver Certified urban campus is designed around eight outdoor rooms, each with its own distinctive identity. Consisting of 8 concrete and 4 steel buildings, the campus allows its residents all of the benefits of city life, without the challenges of urban life for seniors. It includes the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center with gymnasium, indoor and outdoor pools, fitness center, locker rooms, a multi-purpose theatre, offices, retail spaces, food service areas, nursery school, classrooms, independent and assisted living units and a CCRC continuum care retirement community.
With large buildings above ground and parking for 650 cars below, this project was essentially a grand-scale puzzle. Structural components like columns had to be placed carefully and strategically because they came through the parking podium below, so the project team had to make sure they weren’t placing a column in the middle of a thoroughfare for the garage. This proved a particularly engaging task, as the entire campus is set on intersecting grids to create variation in the outdoor pathways and buildings.

UC Berkeley Maximino Martinez Commons

Using specially tailored analysis techniques, Forell | Elsesser kept structural costs down for this large, unusually shaped building.

Customized Solution

This 142,000 s.f. 6-story student housing complex includes residential, recreational, office, and academic program spaces. The building’s unusual floor plan was configured around existing landmark trees and has large courtyards allowing natural light and air circulation.
The building’s unusual shape provided an intriguing structural challenge, and a nonlinear building model was developed and analyzed using nonlinear dynamic response history analysis to assess the unique interaction of the shear walls and mat foundation. The model captured information that contributed to keeping structural costs on budget.

Parkview Terraces Senior Housing

With its distinctive saw-toothed exterior, this housing facility will serve low-income seniors, providing a building with energy efficiency and seismic safety in mind.

Customized Solution

Forell | Elsesser collaborated with Structus to create this 9-story, 101-unit apartment building with underground parking for 26 vehicles. The housing provides 57 studios and 44 one-bedroom apartments for low-income seniors as well as community, retail, and dining space on the ground level.
The saw-toothed exterior of the building created structural variability which required careful detailing of the post-tensioned slabs to maintain gravity and seismic stability.
Site soil improvement was required to limit seismically induced settlement and secure the mat foundation.