Saiful Bouquet was the structural engineer for the Blu (8601 Wilshire Boulevard) in Beverly Hills. The tower was originally built in the 1960’s as an 11-story steel frame office building. The project involved seismically strengthening and renovating the tower in order to convert it into a luxury, high-rise residential building.
SB worked closely with the architect to perform a complete replacement of the building façade. The upgrade also consisted of a seismic strengthening program which referenced the City of Los Angeles’ Adaptive Reuse Program, with the permission of the Beverly Hills Building Department.
The primary objectives of the strengthening program were to roughly triple the structure’s seismic capacity and eliminate concerns related to excess drift, torsion and pounding while incorporating an upscale atmosphere and creating unobstructed views. The project overcame many detailing and construction challenges associated with the installation of new strengthening elements within the tightly constrained existing construction, including the installation of micropiles in the basement’s 8′ headroom.