Designed to Inspire

In early April, Michael Duncan and Mark Sarkisian of the architectural and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) toured the nearly completed Grimes Engineering Center, taking in the transformation happening around them. 

As they strode across the speckled concrete floor, unfinished rooms teemed with workers toting brooms and Styrofoam inserts. The air vibrated from the roar of fans and floor scrubbers. The exposed struts and columns that held up the lofty expanse blazed under a long streak of sunlight that filtered in through clerestory windows high above. The building seemed almost alive — something that had sprouted from the bones of a fallen progenitor, reaching skyward and out toward Memorial Glade.

The new engineering center — named for Michael (B.S.’87 EECS) and Janelle Grimes (B.A.’86 PoliSci) — will welcome the first class of Berkeley Engineering students this fall. Rising three floors and encompassing 83,460 gross square feet, the center is built on top of the existing foundation and partially embedded structure of the former Bechtel Engineering Center, reducing costs and carbon emissions. For future engineers at UC Berkeley, this adaptive reuse of the old building, as well as the exposed structural system, will serve as an inspirational hub for collaboration and innovation.

“It’s going to change the culture of the college,” said Duncan, design partner at SOM. “There’s nothing else like this on campus.”

Reimagining a brutalist-style archetype

The Stephen D. Bechtel Engineering Center, built in 1980, was designed by San Francisco-based structural engineer Ephraim Gordon Hirsch (B.S.’53, M.S.’55). Wedged unobtrusively between Davis Hall and Evans Hall, the low, Brutalist-style structure was easy to overlook, but it hid some impressive engineering.

According to Sarkisian, structural and seismic engineering partner at SOM, Hirsch must have anticipated the future of engineering. Though the Bechtel Center was designed in the late 1970s, SOM’s analysis of the structure found that much of Hirsch’s reinforced concrete detailing would probably still pass muster by today’s seismic standards. Sarkisian and Peter Lee, senior SOM structural engineer, met with Hirsch as SOM was preparing their proposed design for the new engineering center.

“He really cared about the original design. He said, ‘be respectful of this building,’ and that’s what we set out to do,” said Sarkisian.

They started with practicalities. They had a mandate from the university to build upon the existing structure and preserve the Kresge Engineering Library and the former Sibley Auditorium, since renamed the Eugene Jarvis Auditorium. As the site is only some 1,300 feet from the Hayward Fault, seismic considerations were top of mind. To reduce seismic mass, they designed an ultra-lightweight structure braced with V-shaped tensile members around the perimeter — Duncan likens it to the stays on a sailboat that hold the mast upright. A portion of the upper floors are hung from this superstructure rather than being supported by columns below — another material-reducing strategy that decreased seismic mass.

Innovative approach to seismic dampening

As part of their site tour, Duncan and Sarkisian visited a third-floor conference room and pointed out one of the engineering features that makes the project so unique. Just outside the window was a “seismic fuse” — a structural element specifically designed to deform during an earthquake and dissipate seismic energy. SOM invented a completely new type of seismic fuse for the Grimes Engineering Center. Duncan and Sarkisian recalled how they — along with the SOM design team — came upon the idea for their novel fuse.

The seismic fuses needed to be attached in series with tensile members to protect them during lateral building movement in the event of an earthquake. The fuse they envisioned would be made up of wires wrapped into cables composed of so-called shape memory alloy — a blend of nickel and titanium that can be stretched and distorted while maintaining constant load resistance. The shape memory alloy bracing system can distort and then return to its at-rest position after displacements caused by an earthquake.

Though shape memory alloy has been around for decades, it has mostly been used in medicine and dentistry. The design team at SOM found a few examples of shape memory alloy used in civil engineering, but none in the tension bracing configuration used for the project. Since the seismic fuse concept would truly be a first-of-its-kind use of the material, the team approached Berkeley Capital Strategies, which directed them to Khalid M. Mosalam, Taisei Professor of Civil Engineering and the director of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center. The SOM design team met with Mosalam to discuss their idea. 

“We presented this [research], and we waited with bated breath — what’s his response going to be?” said Rupa Garai, principal at SOM, in a presentation at PEER. “[A]nd he was like, ‘this is exactly what I’ve been working on. I have a paper on it.’”

Mosalam had explored the idea of using shape memory alloy as a seismic damper in a paper published in 2020. He invited members of the SOM team to participate in the 50th anniversary program for UC Berkeley’s Shaking Table (now PEER’s Earthquake Simulator Laboratory) located at the Richmond Field Station. Garai and Duncan presented SOM’s proposed design for the new Grimes Engineering Center and then tested an SOM-designed three-story test frame that included scaled-down seismic fuses on the earthquake simulator. The structure performed well, proving that the concept was sound.

Inherent benefits in adaptive reuse

Building on the foundation of the old Bechtel Center lowered material and labor costs for the project, which in turn reduced its carbon footprint. In their design, SOM calculated the structural embodied carbon, a measure of the carbon footprint of the entire lifespan of materials, from sourcing to manufacturing to disposal. The total embodied carbon of a new addition atop the original structure would be 790 tons. That’s less than half the amount they calculated for a project requiring a new foundation, which came in at 1,753 tons. They also calculated the likely embodied carbon emissions from the construction process and found that the adaptive reuse of the original structure resulted in a 42% reduction in carbon emissions. The building has already been awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, which rates buildings on their environmentally responsible construction practices, and is on track to achieve LEED Platinum certification. 

The new building was also designed to incorporate passive energy efficiencies. An awning that extends out from the top of the building on all sides has louvers angled to limit the amount of sunlight that passes through and control solar heat gain in the warmer months. Vertical skylights allow light into the atrium without significantly increasing the temperature. The HVAC, electrical wiring and plumbing were also updated with more efficient, modern systems.

According to Duncan, the need to use lighter materials informed the aesthetics of the project as well. The idea of a lightweight structure inspired a desire for a bright communal space. The addition’s walls would be mostly glass on all sides. People might walk out of Doe Library in the evening and see a warm, light-filled space where students were studying, working or just lounging. It would be a transparent and inclusive environment at the center of campus.

The new engineering center couldn’t just be a glass box, though. The site is right at the center of many so-called Classical Core buildings — Beaux-Arts and neo-classical buildings constructed in the early 1900s, such as the Hearst Memorial Mining Building and McLaughlin Hall. Much of the look of SOM’s design was inspired by classical elements from these buildings: their prominent bases, columns and cornices, for example. Duncan and Sarkisian hope that this blend of transparency, community and aesthetics will inspire the next generation of engineers.

“I studied in places that were less than inspirational,” said Sarkisian. “The excitement for me is in building a place where engineers can come together, collaborate and share ideas. I hope new inventions will come of it.”

A building for future engineers

Christian Lander graduated from Berkeley with a B.S. in civil engineering in May of 2023. After taking his mom on a brief vacation in Hawaii, he went straight back to the university to begin work as a project engineer for XL Construction — the general contracting firm that built the Grimes Engineering Center.

Construction on the new center began in April 2023, and the project was still in the demolition phase when Lander joined that June. Lander coordinated with subcontractors, documented issues that arose and prepared project updates for SOM and the university. He stayed on the project almost to its completion, and he said that Berkeley Engineering thoroughly prepared him for that work. Participating in the transformation of a building where he earned his degree fills him with pride.

“It’s like the original building has taken on a new life,” said Lander. “We’re paving the way for future engineers, allowing for more growth and more learning.” 

Many of those future engineers, along with hundreds of others, jostled for space in front of the Grimes Engineering Center for the official opening celebration on April 21. Spectators cheered and held their cellphones in the air to get shots of VIPs and the University of California Marching Band as it played “Fight for California” from the second-floor terrace. It was a quintessentially Cal event. In few places besides Berkeley is a new engineering building greeted with the same level of excitement as a pop music concert. Hundreds of attendees filed through the doors after the ribbon-cutting led by Chancellor Rich Lyon, Dean Tsu-Jae King Liu, Michael and Janelle Grimes, and Eugene Jarvis.

The enthusiastic crowd filled the floors and staircases. They milled single file through hallways past a courtyard retained from the old Bechtel Center, its gnarled Japanese maple tree carefully preserved. Among them was a group of five engineering students, chatting giddily about their new home.

“This used to be one of my favorite places to study on campus, and when it closed, I was really sad,” said Jessica Fan. “I’m really excited that it’s open again and has more floors and features.”

Ronit Nagarapu added that the building reminded him of something from Minecraft — undoubtedly high praise from a Gen Z engineer. The students admitted that they hadn’t heard too much about the adaptive reuse of the old foundation before Dean Liu’s speech that afternoon, but they liked the concept.

Jonathan Wang summed it up: “In the engineering mindset, constraints tend to lead to greater innovation.”