PAE Living Building

The PAE Living Building is a 5-story, 58,700sf mixed use project designed to last 500+ years. The building is not only designed to the essential facility seismic criteria but is also designed to receive full seven-petal Living Building Challenge certification from the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). KPFF provided the structural engineering design for the building and also civil engineering for the site design. The mass timber utilized on the building will be Douglas fir, this includes the gravity frame, glulam beams, columns and Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) floor framing. CLT-5 spans over the top of the glulam beams and there is a 3.5” concrete toppings slab which acts as the floor diaphragm and also contains radiant heat. Gaps between CLT panels serve as raceways for conduit and sprinkler lines.
The seismic force resisting system utilizes concrete shear walls and is designed as a risk category IV structure (similar to hospitals) to provide a higher level of seismic resiliency. By designing the building as a risk category IV structure, the building seismic drift was required to be reduced to 1% of the story height. Since the building will be drifting less it is able to move closer to the property line against neighboring buildings. This resulted in a gain of leasable space, which offsets the added material cost needed to resist the higher seismic demands.