April 28, 2016

Cast-in-place structures: High-rise

Photo courtesy of WACA

Premiere on Pine was built with high-strength concrete, allowing its columns to be smaller.

Premiere on Pine

Location: Seattle

Premiere on Pine recently joined Seattle’s skyline as one of the tallest residential towers in the city. The 42-story, 490,000-square-foot structure has 386 apartments, a rooftop lounge with an outdoor terrace, a restaurant, and five levels of parking above grade and five more below.

Premiere on Pine’s slender curtainwall facade is decorated with burnt orange vertical metal panels and two massive LED backlit glass art walls.

Construction started in August 2012 and finished in early 2015.

A small site and floor plan posed significant design and construction challenges. The team responded with an efficient system that maximized floor space on a small site.

Premiere on Pine’s structure consists of cast-in-place concrete with post-tensioned floor slabs and a shear wall core for seismic and wind resistance. The gravity system utilizes long-span, 7.5-inch-thick post-tensioned flat plate slabs with 12-foot perimeter cantilevers at two sides of the building, which resulted in fewer columns, optimized slab bending moments, and reduced floor-to-floor height with thinner slabs.

Post-tensioned 7.5-inch-thick flat plate slabs were used at all levels, including the subterranean parking levels, which created flexible interior space with open layouts. At subterranean levels, shotcrete perimeter basement walls followed construction of the slabs. This allowed slab shortening to occur prior to shotcrete wall construction.

Premiere on Pine is the first building in the Northwest to have a specified concrete strength of 15,000 pounds per square inch in its columns, reflective of steady advances in concrete materials technology. The effective use of ultra-high-strength concrete and rebar resulted in smaller structural elements than would have otherwise been required, which increased the building’s net rentable square footage.

Other Stories:

• GRAND AWARD
  Cast-in-place structures
  Special applications: Technical merit
  
• Concrete paving
  
• Pervious concrete
  
• Artistic and decorative concrete
  
• Architectural concrete
  
• Residential decorative concrete
  
• Public works: Transportation
  
• Public works: Infrastructure
  
• Public works: Bridges
  
• Tilt-up structures
  
• Sustainable merit