Saiful Bouquet is the structural engineer for the Huntington Memorial Research Institute (HRMI) located in Pasadena, California. The project consists of a 3-story laboratory building of approximately 40,000 gross square feet and includes a combination of high-end research laboratories, support spaces and offices. Working closely with the design team, Saiful Bouquet developed several schemes utilizing both concrete and structural steel framing systems for the proposed Type I structure. Saiful Bouquet also provided a comprehensive analysis of advantages and disadvantages of each of the preliminary schemes.
A concrete scheme consisting of flat slab construction was finally selected as the most appropriate system based on holistic considerations. Lateral resistance is provided by concrete shear walls located strategically around stairwell and restrooms in one direction and concrete moment frame in the other direction.
The lab space of the building was designed to meet the very stringent vibration criterion, which consisted of limiting the structural slab vibration to foot-falls to less than 1000 to 2,000 micro-inch-per-second.
