Alcoa Administration Building in San Francisco
The building's external columns have a centre-to-centre spacing of approximately 15.40 m in both directions. With its 22 storeys, the building offers a total of approximately 37,160 m² of column-free office space. Due to building regulations and the presence of tensile loads and stress reversals caused by seismic forces, steel was chosen for the load-bearing structure. All structural members were kept as slender as possible for architectural reasons, while still meeting structural requirements. All elements of the load-bearing structure are box-shaped and constructed from steel plates of varying thicknesses. Welded connections were the logical and most economical method of joining.
