California Academy of Sciences
San Francisco, California

The project involved the demolition of the old facility and construction of a new museum that virtually matched the old footprint. R&C, as geotechnical engineer of record, developed spring stiffnesses to justify eliminating tiedowns from the design and to allow the building to rock. The owner’s representative allowed the use of then preliminary findings from the NGA project to justify a reduction in the ground motion obtained using site response analysis. R&C provided geotechnical and civil engineering services.