West Berkeley Medical Office Building

Laboratory and medical office structures are typically steel-framed and often use steel braced frames for seismic lateral resistance. For this project, steel braced frames were deemed impractical: at the ground floor, the brace locations would impact parking and drive aisles, while at the upper levels, the skewed and twisting floor plan did not allow for the brace frames to stack vertically. A concrete structure with concrete shear walls was also considered but ruled out due to the shear wall’s impact on the ground floor parking and the lack of flexibility for future tenant revisions. As an additional complexity, there was no specific tenant on board during the project’s design phase. Thus, the building was designed on specification for future medical office or light laboratory use. Designing a future medical office building is challenging because these buildings have heavy mechanical and equipment demands that frequently add significant loading to the structural framing, not to mention tenant-specific MEP systems and floor plate requirements.

The L-shaped 66,000-square-foot structure embraces the challenging small infill site with an integrated design that allows for open floor plates and a stunning architectural design. The design team determined that the structure would be steel-framed and use the ConXtech moment connections for the lateral system, integrating with the unique architecture, tuck-under parking, and allowing for flexibility with future tenant needs. The property was sold to Kaiser Permanente after the design was fully permitted, putting the design flexibility of the steel-framed structure to the test. Fortunately, the design team found that with careful planning and by leveraging past experiences, the primary structure was designed to accommodate much of the new tenant’s needs without significant structural revisions.