THE CONCRETE APPROACH
TO SELECTING THE IDEAL STRUCTURAL SYSTEM
COST
With today's increasingly competitive
budgets, selecting an economical structural system can be imperative to achieving design
goals while staying within the client's budget. Weighing the impact of these key factors
can enable you and your client to progress confidently through the life of a project
without having to compromise on desired goals.
DESIGN FLEXIBILITY
Reinforced concrete's design flexibility is
virtually unlimited, giving architects tremendous opportunities to use this fluid material
to design distinctive structures.
BAY SIZE
Today's high-strength mix designs
and advance reinforcing technologies allow longer spans and smaller columns. Reinforced
concrete gives you more marketable space than ever before, With greater flexibility in
support placement, allowing you to design spaces "tailor made" to the needs of
the owner or tenants.
SHORTER FLOOR-TO-FLOOR HEIGHTS
With reinforced concrete, you can design a building with shorter floor-to-floor heights -
up to two feet shorter than projects built with structural steel. The result is
significant cost savings for exterior cladding, and for mechanical, electrical, and
plumbing systems.
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Concrete's large thermal mass helps
maintain a steady, comfortable temperature inside the building with smaller heating,
ventilation and air-conditioning systems. That means smaller energy bills.
FIRE RESISTANCE
Concrete's inherent fire
resistance frequently generates additional cost savings, since generally, little or no
fire proofing is required. And this could result in lower insurance costs as well.
PERMANENT AND DURABLE
All across the country,
cast-in-place reinforced concrete has earned a well-deserved reputation as the design and
construction technique that creates buildings that retain their integrity and appearance
indefinitely .. with minimal upkeep.
SEISMIC RESISTANCE
Conventionally reinforced
concrete also has a solid reputation for tremendous structural integrity. Take the Burbank
Tower, Burbank, CA. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, an inspection by the structural
engineer revealed absolutely no damage. In the same area, owners of structural steel
buildings have been uncovering cracks and fractured welds in their structural systems.
