NYA Projects

The sky is the limit for structural concepts and ingenuity.

The collaborative process at Nabih Youssef Associates Structural Engineers is highly valued because it fosters innovation through complex ideas and dialogues.

UCSF NEW HOSPITAL AT PARNASSUS HEIGHTS

The NHPH project consists of a new tower with 15 above-ground stories, one full B1 level basement level, and one partial B2 level basement level. The tower is located on a highly constrained site bounded by Parnassus Avenue to the north, Medical Center Way to the east, a loading dock access road to the south, and existing Moffit and Long hospitals to the West. Additionally, a large network of cantilevers expands the perimeter of the building beyond the perimeter columns. These constraints have produced a structure with unique and impressive geometry. The new tower is adjacent to, but seismically independent from, the existing Moffit and Long hospitals. Flexible connections allow connectivity between the new and existing buildings. The Lateral Force Resisting system of the tower will consist of a Special Steel Moment Resisting Frame using SidePlate? connections supplemented with fluid viscous dampers. The moment frames and dampers are distributed throughout the plan based on architectural constraints and programming limitations. Nonlinear modeling of the fluid viscous dampers and PBSD is used to validate the structural system, demonstrating the demanding performance needed for a California Hospital.

LA Live

The 55-story Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Residences and JW Marriott Hotel at LA Live stands alone as a profound success of performance-based structural design. The hotel tower takes full advantage of a leading edge structural steel lateral force resisting system, comprised of un-stiffened thin steel plate shear walls (SPSW). It is the first high-rise to use this technology in California. The hotel tower also consists of steel moment frames, Buckling Restrained Braces (BRB), mid-height outriggers and cap trusses. The hotel has won many awards, including the coveted AISC Presidents Award in April of 2010.The hotel serves as the focal point for the 5.6 million sf mixed use development area of LA Live which covers more than six city blocks.The tower’s unique shape reflects the need to accommodate the high-end suites and residences at the top, which needed to be up to 12 feet deeper than the standard guest rooms below. To create this profile, curved steel columns were placed near the top of the tower to support the main structure and the glass curtain wall. “The result is striking and harmonious, creating an elegant form.”

USC Village

NYA provided structural design services for this new 1.25 Million square foot, residential-retail center on a 15 acre site north of the USC Campus. The project features five separate 5-story mixed-use housing and retail buildings, along with a central plant facility. This expansion provides living space for approximately 2,700 USC undergraduate and graduate students.

Los Angeles City Hall

Challenges: Los Angeles City Hall, being culturally and historically significant, as well as an essential government facility, required restoration and strengthening to remain functional after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake . Project requirements also called for the protection of the building's exterior fa?ade and historic interior fabric, which were frequently damaged during regional earthquakes over the past 70 years. A key challenge was assuring that the Los Angeles City Hall's seismic resistance level was never reduced or compromised by the use of interim bracing during construction.?

Solution: In collaboration with AC Martin Partners' architects and engineers, NYA designed a hybrid system, combining seismic isolation bearings, shear walls and viscous dampers at the top of the structure and the plane of isolation at the base. This system provides a level of life safety and damage control that exceeds the level provided by conventional strengthening schemes. The base isolation system consists of 416 high damping rubber bearings, 90 flat sliding bearings and 52 viscous dampers installed between the basement and foundation levels of the building. Los Angeles City Hall is the tallest building ever to be base-isolated.

Christ Cathedral

NYA is providing structural engineering services for the renovation of the Christ Cathedral, previously known as the Crystal Cathedral. The interior space of the cathedral is being remodeled to accommodate the Roman Catholic Liturgy. This entails features such as a large Baldachin, for which NYA designed the support system

Broad Museum

NYA is the Structural Engineer of Record for this new museum designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Gensler in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum and parking garage is a 6-story, 110’ tall structure occupying a city block at Grand Ave. & 2nd St. and enclosing about 250,000 SF. Typical floors are two-way concrete slabs spanning to concrete columns sitting on a mix of spread footings and belled caissons. The lateral system is special reinforced concrete shear walls with long perimeter walls on the North & South sides of the building and short buttressing walls in the opposite direction.

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a nationally recognized historic landmark stadium facility and has held two Olympic Games.?NYA provided structural engineering services for the renovation and seismic upgrade of the entire Coliseum structure, added an 8-story steel-framed press box and suite tower (approx. 500,000 sf), ancillary buildings, and lowered the field to extend seating. Historic preservation of the exterior fa?ade was a requirement of the strengthening and addition work.

The most important visual and architectural element, the Peristyle, was strengthened with a creative center-cored method from the roof down into the large existing concrete piers without impacting its original aesthetic or programmed spaces. Seismic strengthening work was done during the off-season on a fast-track schedule in spite of a general lack of existing structural building documentation. The press and suite tower addition was partially constructed during the football season with incremental construction stages studied to maintain continuous seismic safety for the occupied stadium.

Westfield Century City

NYA provided structural engineering services for the renovation and expansion of the Westfield shopping center in Century City. Originally designed in the 1960’s, this renovation included strengthening of the existing garage to accommodate the addition of 300,000 sf of new retail space, a new cinema/retail building, and an elevated pedestrian walkway. The renovation also created a new second level with an indoor-outdoor dining terrace.

Crescent Heights

NYA is providing structural engineering services for Crescent Heights Residential Mixed Use project located at the intersection of Crescent Heights and Wilshire Boulevard within the City of Los Angeles, California. The project contains a 21 story apartment consisting of 158 residential units with four levels above grade parking and two and one/half levels below grade parking with approximately 364,000 gsf plus 36,000 gsf of exterior open space. Additionally, there will be a community park approximately 50’ x 125’ in size within the development plan to include stand alone concrete wall(s) and water feature(s).

Apple Campus 2 Peer Review

NYA served as the Structural Plan Reviewer for the Apple Campus 2 – Phase 1 project and is currently serving as the Structural Engineer of Record for Apple Campus – Phase 2 buildings along Tantau Avenue. NYA is responsible for the design of a new 300,000 sf Office Building, two 225,000 sf Research & Development Buildings, a 20,000 sf Visitor’s Center and Global Flagship Store, and a 85,000 sf Multi-Media building. The Office, R&D and Multi-Media Buildings are cast-in-place concrete construction while the Visitor Center and Global Flagship Store is steel-framed, with a thin steel and carbon blade roof that cantilevers 60 feet from the interior building columns.

Construction was completed on all buildings except the Multi-Media building, which is currently under construction NYA also served as the Structural Plan Reviewer for the City of Cupertino for Phase 1 of the Apple Campus 2 project, a new 5 Million sf base-isolated office building.

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Peer Review

NYA is providing Peer Review for the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which will be located in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, CA.

The Bloc

NYA provided structural engineering services for the $160 Million renovation of 1.8 Million sf of retail, office, and hospitality space (more than 400,000 sf of retail and restaurant space, including a 3-level Macy’s). The Bloc is one of the largest mixed-use properties in the city of Los Angeles.

Additionally, NYA also provided structural services for the Metro Station Entrance Portal, which opens into the Bloc.

Fig at 7th

NYA provided structural engineering services for the $40 Million redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles Fig at 7th shopping center. The new semi-circular development offers a combination of retail shops, 15 restaurants, and over 500 seats for indoor-outdoor dining.

3033 Wilshire

The project consists of one 18-story mixed-use Type I residential and retail building to include 190 units and 5,540 sf of retail on the ground level with four levels of above-grade parking situated in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. NYA is providing full structural engineering services for this 375,000 gsf property.

LA Metro Division 13 Bus Maintenance Facility

The new Division 13 Bus Maintenance and Operations facility in downtown Los Angeles is composed of five separate buildings: Administration Operations building, Parking Garage/Maintenance building, Central Cash Counting Facility, Public Fueling, and Chassis Wash. The facility is designed to accommodate a fleet of 200 CNG buses, and house parking for 382 vehicles.

Metro Expo Maintenance Facility

The Metro Expo Maintenance facility in Santa Monica is composed of multiple buildings and is over 60,000sq ft. It houses administration offices, maintenance and service space as well as yard tracks, signals and communication. The facility serves as the central maintenance, repair, and administrative center for the Metro Expo Rail line.

The Main building utilizes an expressed two-story braced frame as the main lateral force resisting system and a series of maintenance access catwalks and pits to be able to service all parts of the train. Several trolley cranes run the length of the facility to easily transport the rail car from one part of the facility to another. Ancillary separate buildings facilitate chasis wash and cab wash activities as well as a central signal house.

Westfield San Francisco Emporium

The Westfield San Francisco Centre is a $460 million, 1.5 million sf mega structure, spanning 2 city blocks in downtown San Francisco. The project involved the redevelopment of the Emporium building, originally constructed in the late 1800’s. The development includes a new retail center and three new office floors.

The project included a number of interesting challenges requiring creative structural solutions, such as the lifting of a historic dome 60 ft and the incorporation of the historic dome and fa?ade in the final design, long-span pedestrian bridges, retrofit of the existing center with fluid viscous dampers, expansive, disparate floor openings at every level.

?The second phase of the project involved the seismic retrofit of the neighboring existing San Francisco Center (Nordstrom Building) using 108 fluid viscous dampers.

Our Savior Church and Caruso Catholic Center

NYA provided structural engineering services for the new 20,000 square foot Our Savior Church and USC Caruso Catholic Center, completed in 2013. The center was designed by Perkowitz and Ruth Architects (Architect of Record) and Elkus Manfredi Architects (Design Architect) and replaces the existing Catholic Center and Parish, which serves the entire USC Community.

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The church building consists of load-bearing CMU shearwalls around the perimeter of the structure and at the tower. The roof framing consists of four exposed wood trusses spanning across the congregation area and utilizies glulam beams, steel tension rods, clevis/turnbuckle connections and custom steel assemblies at all connection points.

Mission Bay Block N1 – The Beacon

Mission Bay Block N-1, “The Beacon”, is located at 250/260 King Street in San Francisco, California, one block from AT&T stadium. The Beacon apartment residences consist of 832,000 sf buildings that include 218,000 sf of retail, 20,000 sf of office space, and 409,000 sf /4-level parking garage.

. This mixed-use reinforced concrete project consists of West & East Building complexes, bisected by a pedestrian plaza. The two sides are roughly symmetrical and each consists of four buildings 7, 8, 9 & 16 stories in height above the street. The project has 595 apartment units, including affordable units, 950+ covered parking spaces, office space, a grocery store, and 27 retail stores in 1.3 million square feet. This project had a $170 million construction budget.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

Goal: An artistic/architectural space with exposed walls providing strength, stiffness and a longevity of over 500 years. With the use of advanced analysis/ design methods, material sciences, and technology, NYA developed creative solution methodologies to transform these performance goals into quantifiable engineering parameters.

Creativity:?Although the building is essentially two stories and 150 feet tall, it has multiple roof diaphragm levels and shapes. The architectural features of the design (exposed concrete, tall slender walls, and an abundance of glass) placed exceptional demands on the structural design and construction. Response modification using differential isolation, global finite element models, and nonlinear time history analyses was performed to study the global response to these challenges. For the concrete walls, (BIAX), moment curvature analysis was performed to assess cracking at displacement points, and several different stress-strain models for concrete tension behavior were created.

El Monte Bus Transit Facility

The project is a Bus Transit Center Facility designed for Los Angeles County Metro. It includes a lower level and upper level bus terminal, offices/retail buildings, and a light framed canopy, and serves local and long-distance buses.

The bus terminal has a footprint of approximately 160,000 square feet and is constructed of long span precast concrete beam/column system and a post-tensioned concrete deck. The offices are constructed of a steel frame system.

Los Angeles Stadium Peer Review

NYA is providing Peer Review for the new Los Angeles Stadium in Inglewood, CA. The stadium will serve as the home to the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers.

Cal Poly SLO - Poly Canyon Village

Poly Canyon Village is made up of nine 4-5 story Type V residential apartment buildings, approximately 992,000 sf total. They were designed using load-bearing light gauge steel framing, and the lateral systems of the buildings were designed using light gauge Sureboard shear walls.

Specific buildings were designed using reinforced concrete slabs, walls, and columns at the podium level. The complex includes 618 furnished apartment units, surrounding a central plaza with food and retail stores. The complex also includes a conference room, seminar room, recreation center with a swimming pool, study rooms, full kitchens, laundry units, and two parking structures.

This project has achieved a LEED Gold rating, by utilizing structural materials which contained 65% recycled material and?were locally manufactured.

The Design-Build delivery model of this project, with its accelerated design and construction schedule, required close collaboration between all members of the team, including the architect, contractor, engineer, and framing sub-contractor.

Getty Villa

The Getty Villa project involved a transformation in excess of $150 million to convert the existing site into a new center for the study of classical antiquities, archeology, and comparative ancient cultures. One of the goals of the new construction was to create outdoor plazas and indoor spaces resulting from an excavation of the existing museum, revealing layers of earth, or strata that formed the basis of design. The aesthetic desire was to create concrete walls and floors that mirrored the revealed strata

NYA also provided seismic strengthening of the existing museum and added more natural light to the interior. Sizeable relics were added along the walls, and on the floor to preserve exterior detail work, as well as artwork. Major pieces were base isolated.

Skirball Cultural Center

NYA provided structural engineering & design services for the expansion of the Skirball Cultural Center. The museum was designed as a dam to restrain possible mud slides. The amphitheater, at the foot of the hill, leads to the meditation pavilion on top of the hill and was designed as an earth buttress to counteract unstable areas of the hill.

The main entrance, Murphy Foyer, is surrounded by glass walls and overlooks the picturesque arroyo. NYA also performed structural engineering service for 'Noah's Ark,’ a special exhibit for children.

ELAC Performing Arts Complex

NYA provided Structural Engineering Services to LACCD for the new East Los Angeles College Performing and Fine Arts Complex. The project was a Design Bid Build, consisting of three buildings and covering 160,000 sf. Some of the unique features of the complex are the two-story theatre space and the complex sloping roof geometry.

The use of materials such as a cool roof, recycled steel, rebar, recycled insulation, louvers, and fly ash concrete reflected the LACCD's commitment to sustainability, as did the recycling of 80% of demolition and construction debris. Project collaboration was an important aspect of this project – there was extensive coordination between the architect and engineering team to achieve the desired look for the curtain wall and roof layouts.

UCSF Helen Diller Cancer Research Center

NYA provided structural engineering services for the new six-story 162,000 sf. reinforced concrete, cancer research laboratory located at the Mission Bay campus of UCSF. The building is comprised of laboratories and associated support space, administration space, MEP housing, conference facilities, loading docks, and vivarium facilities in the basement.

?The building was designed for enhanced vibration performance to mitigate the effects of an adjacent light rail line.? The seismic resisting system, consisting of ductile reinforced concrete shear walls, was optimized through the use of nonlinear analysis procedures.

LAUSD South Region Elementary School # 2

NYA provided structural engineering for LAUSD South Region’s, bright and colorful Elementary School #2. The school’s main building sits back off the street with “urban walls” lining the streets which provide both safety for students and create shielded environments for indoor and outdoor teaching environments.

The school houses approximately 1,050 students in 42 classrooms. It contains a library, multi-purpose rooms, food service area and lunch shelter, administrative offices, playfields and underground parking. The project consists of a three-story classroom building and a one-story multi-purpose building over a one-level subterranean parking garage with a total area of approximately 113,000 square feet.?

The classroom and multi-purpose buildings are constructed of steel framing with Special Concentric Braced Frames.? The parking structure roof is of two-way concrete slab construction supported by concrete interior columns and perimeter masonry basement walls.? Foundations consist of concrete spread footings.

Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills

NYA provided structural engineering services for the The Waldorf Astoria--a 12 story high rise luxury hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. It has 170 luxury rooms, including 42 suites, that offer amazing views of the city from expansive balconies. The roof top includes an elegant bar, VIP cabanas, and pool. The third floor contains celebrity villa suites with luxurious outdoor gardens. The tower utilizes post-tensioned slabs and a reinforced concrete shear wall lateral system.

USC Wallis Annenberg Hall

NYA provided structural design services for USC’s Wallis Annenberg Hall. The 88,000-sf, red brick Collegiate Gothic building is a five-level steel and concrete structure located in the heart of the USC campus. The technologically advanced digital media tower and newsroom located in the atrium of the building showcases student programming, social media, and live broadcast news.

Annenberg Hall was conceived as a state-of-the-art facility with the flexibility to accommodate future innovations in communication technologies, while its traditional facade blends with the existing structures on the USC campus. The design fosters connectivity and creativity, and the four-story atrium provides spaces for conversation and collaboration.

Tribune Tower

NYA is providing structural engineering consulting services for Tribune Media Company for the future development of a high-rise building above the Second & Broadway MTA Entrance Structure that is part of the Regional Connector project in downtown Los Angeles. NYA is working with MTA to develop structural loading allowances that are incorporated into MTA’s structural design for the Entrance Structure as a provision for critical gravity and seismic loads imposed by the future overbuild tower. The architectural concept anticipates a cascading tower from up to 10 to 30 stories in height with unique architectural expressions that is situated both over and beyond the footprint of the underground MTA development. This project makes provisions to integrate the future performance-based design of this high-rise tower with the MTA Regional Connector Station.