Structural Redesign of the House of Sweden
Open Access
- Author:
- McKitish, Kimberlee
- Area of Honors:
- Architectural Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Architectural Engineering
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. Andres Lepage, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Andres Lepage, Thesis Supervisor
Ali M Memari, Thesis Honors Advisor
Chinemelu Jidenka Anumba, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- structural engineering
steel design - Abstract:
- The House of Sweden houses the secondary embassy for Sweden. It is a signature building with distinctive architecture, cladding, and lighting located in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The focus of this report was the north building, a seven story building with a post-tensioned flat slab concrete moment frame with a below-grade parking level. The primary goal of this report is to design a steel structural solution for the building while decreasing the cost and schedule and taking into account the height restriction along the Potomac River as well as the distinctive architecture of this signature building. Through research and preliminary designs, it was decided that castellated beams would minimize the floor depth to keep an acceptable floor-to-ceiling height for this building. Also, four different structural combinations were considered. Light-weight concrete was compared to normal weight concrete and moment frames were compared to braced frames. After evaluation, it was decided that the normal weight concrete braced frames would be an acceptable solution for this building. A breadth study was conducted into the feasibility of moving the mechanical equipment to the parking level to free up the penthouse space for apartments and to look at the feasibility of the redesigns on the cost and schedule of the project. It was determined that these redesigns were feasible, would not impact the schedule in too negative a way, and would save the owner approximately 11% of the original budget.