Evo Philly at Cira Centre South

Highlights

• The team considered several structural schemes and ultimately settled on a solution that was low-cost and would serve the architectural needs of the street-level amenity spaces, including 35-foot ceiling heights.
• The team designed steel “delta frames” encased in concrete to carry the building loads to massive, reinforced-concrete columns proportioned as “crash walls” between the tracks.
• Slender building columns, with ratios of up to 36 and a minimum thickness of 14 inches, were required to fit into demising walls between units.
• The width of these narrow columns varied from 36 to 44 in order to achieve the necessary arial capacity and to improve the building’s lateral stiffness under wind loads.
• By specifying precast filigree slabs, the engineers reduced the cost of labor on site and increased the pace of construction, enabling the contractor to achieve a three-day cycle for concrete floor construction.