Academy Square
Los Angeles, California

Academy Square begins with a 150,000+ square-foot footprint (the size of an entire city block) and comprises over one million square-feet of total area. The project includes four mixed use spaces along with a nineteen-story residential tower which all sit over a three-story underground concrete podium structure. The mixed-use spaces, Buildings A through D, include two multistory office buildings, a two-story office/retail space, and a single-story retail space.

Buildings A and B consist of six and five stories, respectively, of concrete floor slabs spanning between concrete columns. While the gravity system utilizes concrete columns, the lateral-force is resisted by concrete shear walls. Building C is a two-story steel framed structure with special steel moment-resisting frames. Single-story Building D features masonry shear walls as the lateral-force-resisting-system and steel framing at the roof.

The residential tower is a 19-story reinforced concrete structure with post-tensioned two-way flat plate concrete slabs that span between reinforced concrete columns deriving support from the mat foundation below the tower that varies in thickness up to seven feet. Also featured in the residential tower are special reinforced concrete shear walls as the lateral-force-resisting-system.

This large-scale mixed-use project required a significant amount of coordination between all disciplines involved coupled with an aggressive schedule.

The skills and craftsmanship of Southwest Steel are showcased throughout this project.