Resnick Agricultural Innovation Center at the University of California, Davis

Overview 

The new Agricultural Innovation Center at UC Davis aims to have a substantial impact on the future of food production. The 32,000-square-foot building’s classrooms, research spaces and labs will be a hub for developing new technologies to make the agriculture industry more efficient and resilient. 

We provided structural engineering and sustainability consulting to the project’s design-build team led by the Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign and Hensel Phelps Construction Company. The teamwork, creativity and collaborative pursuit of efficient solutions that went into the Resnick Center’s design will be mirrored by its occupants as they work to transform the agricultural industry and expand access to nutritious food. 

Highlights 

• We developed a hybrid structural system that employs mass timber for the portion of the building that houses the public spaces, including lounges and a large seminar room, while using steel to support the laboratories and for the building’s lateral system – a critical feature in California’s high-seismic zone.
• The building’s geometry also posed design challenges: Some connections featured a column joining with three beams coming in at irregular angles – all of which needed to look seamless. We worked carefully in 3D with Mercer Timber Products, collaborating on analysis and design to ensure these connections would conform to their CNC fabrication requirements and work well in the field.
• We also performed energy modeling for the project, which is pursuing LEED Platinum certification. Our sustainability consulting team collaborated closely with the design team to identify optimizations to the HVAC system – among them, a heat-recovery chiller – and to the building envelope to help achieve the project’s lofty goals. The highly efficient, all-electric building will operate at 38% energy savings.