And one remained standing - earthquake resistant design

[RicodJour]

Pretty cool idea on how to deal with all of the shear forces and shaking.

R

[richard]

cool indeed. it was probably mounted on those things like they use in SF these days. ao that when you do have a quake, all the building does is rock back and forth a little. did you note that their was music heard from the built in sound system?

[Rui Maciel]

According to the article they reduced the mass of the building by using steel slabs instead of concrete and they were able to incorporate hefty steel columns in the architecture. Maybe the article missed relevant details but that doesn't look very innovative. While the steel orthotropic slab thing tends to be too cost-prohibitive and therefore used mostly to bridges, the column thing tends to be avoided because architects shy away from big, imposing columns in their projects. Other than that, it appears to be a regular structure designed to widstand the expected seismic action.

The earthquake video is very interesting, though.

Rui Maciel

[creative1986]

Rather than point loads, ie., columns, spread it over a broad distance of smaller supports, thus lightening all of it and less apt to sway. The foundation acted like a shock absorber on the effects of the quake.