The awardees of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE) 2013 Top Ten Green Projects were announced today. They include two Tipping Mar projects: the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Headquarters at 525 Golden Gate Avenue, and Corte Madera's Marin Country Day School Learning Resource Center and Step 2.

The SFPUC Headquarters represents the depth and breadth to which structural engineering might contribute to ambitious sustainable goals: not only did Tipping Mar rescue the stalled project by designing a cost-efficient, high-performance structure, but we also intitiated a series of design charrettes with the team to develop several green-concrete specs that saved the project 7.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

Three other Tipping Mar projects, the Omega Center for Sustainable Living (2010), the Michael J. Homer Science and Student Life Center (2010) and the Chartwell School (2009), were previously named to the AIA COTE Top Ten.

In this Webinar on April 3, David Mar will introduce the FEMA P-807 report, Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Multi-Unit Wood-Frame Buildings With Weak First Stories, developed by ATC for FEMA in 2011, and on which David served as project technical director.

The report presents guidelines for cost-effective retrofit procedures for a vulnerable class of buildings with a history of poor performance in earthquakes. These buildings have weak ground stories with few walls, required to accommodate parking or commercial uses. The upper structure, with numerous walls, tends to be strong, but brittle. This relative weakness concentrates damage and deformations in the ground story. These structures are prevalent in the seismically active regions of the Pacific Northwest and California. The guidelines have been developed to be easy to use while providing a practicable and cost-effective means to reduce damage and the risk of collapse. While sophisticated and extensive nonlinear response history analyses form the technical basis of the guidelines, the procedure itself is straightforward and prescriptive.

Associate Mike Korolyk, in addition to co-developing the method discussed, created the Weak-Story Tool software that enables any engineer to subject any weak-story, wood-framed building to sophisticated analysis, the results of which prescribe the appropriate retrofit solution.

For the second time in seven years, Tipping Mar founder Steve Tipping has been named to Engineering News Record's list of Top 25 Newsmakers. The newsmakers have been chosen yearly since 1964 by ENR's editors for their innovations and achievements, for giving back to the industry and the public, and for going beyond their day-to-day jobs. This year Steve was selected for his vertically post-tensioned lateral solution as applied to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commision headquarters. This design approach "saved the day for the stalled $145.5-million [project]" writes ENR's Nadine Post, "...and saved $5 million, improved the architecture, scored points for structural resilience, and added an extra floor." Post fully details the SFPUC project's challenges and solutions in her June 2012 article "Tensioning Eases Stress."

In 2006 Steve was first named to the Newsmakers list for devising and developing a corrugated-metal shear-wall assembly, a simple nonproprietary system using inexpensive off-the-shelf components.

At an awards ceremony today in San Francisco, five Tipping Mar projects were recognized by Engineering News Record, California Edition, as among the 40 best projects across 15 categories completed in 2012.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Headquarters in Los Altos was named the Best Green Project, while the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Headquarters received an award of merit in the same category. The Junipero Serra Arts, Science, and Aquatic Center received the Best K-12 Education award. Two other projects were award-of-merit recipients: UC Berkeley's Hearst Greek Theatre in the restoration / renovation category; and the Bridge Pavilion, as part of the Golden Gate Bridge Improvement Project, in the category of small projects of under $10 million.

Tipping Mar is honored to be recognized by our peers in the industry; such recognition affirms our continued commitment to truly innovative high-performance and sustainable seismic design.

SFGTV has just released "Smart Building: Pioneering Sustainable Design and Construction," a compelling video that narrates the full story arc of how the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission headquarters at 525 Golden Gate Avenue came into being and how it stands as one of the the smartest and most sustainable office buildings in the U.S.

The video features interviews with the major players in the project's design and construction, including San Francisco mayors Gavin Newsom and Ed Lee, Webcor's Andy Ball, DPW's Brook Mebrahtu, KMD Architect's Ryan Stevens, and Tipping Mar's own Leo Panian. 

For the 2012 San Francisco CANstruction design competition, Tipping Mar teamed with Steinberg Architects and ProjectFrog to come up with what won the Juror's Favorite Award: R2-CAN2, a replica of the very lovable R2-D2, constructed using 1,562 cans of cheesy ravioli, tuna, sardines, and corn. 

This is the second time that Tipping Mar has participated in SF CANstruction, part of a nationwide effort to harness the creativity of architectural, engineering, and construction firms in raising food and money for the hungry--in this city's case, the San Francisco Food Bank. Last year, teamed with BSA Architects, Tipping Mar won the Structural Ingenuity Award for building the Food Bank's logo.

All told, SF CANstruction 2012 donated 67,000 cans of food to the Food Bank, representing the largest single-day donation to the charity. Read more about the competition here.