Evolution of High-rise Buildings in Vancouver, Canada

Perry Adebar, Ph.D., P.Eng., Prof., University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; Ronald DeVall, Ph.D., P.Eng.,
Read Jones Christoffersen, Vancouver, Canada; James Mutrie, P.Eng., Jones Kwong Kishi, North Vancouver (retired),
Contact: adebar@civil.ubc.ca
DOI: 10.2749/101686617X14676303588670

Abstract are large enough to cause signicant

damage to buildings if they occur
The potential for a large earthquake to cause signicant ground shaking has close enough to the buildings. Figure
had a dening inuence on the evolution of high-rise buildings in the City of 2 shows the earthquakes of magnitude
Vancouver. However, unlike other major cities along the seismically active 5 or greater that have occurred within
west coast of North America, structural steel systems and reinforced concrete 500 km of Vancouver in the past
moment-resisting frame systems have rarely been used. Virtually all high-rise 30 years. These earthquakes have all
buildings in Vancouver are concrete shear wall buildings. Older buildings, con- been more than 200 km away from
structed up until the mid-1980s, typically have thin (200 mm or less) lightly Vancouver and therefore have not
reinforced concrete walls distributed throughout the buildings. A number of caused signicant damage to the
factors, such as increased seismic demands and the changing requirements of buildings in Vancouver.
the Canadian building code, caused a paradigm shift in the 1980s so that today,
almost all new high-rise buildings in Vancouver have a large central core that is The largest earthquake to occur within
designed to resist all lateral loads. Typical modern high-rise cores have three 500 km of Vancouver in the past
independent cantilever walls in one direction that are coupled together in the 30 years was the magnitude 6.8 Nisqu-
transverse direction by ductile coupling beams above the door openings on ally Earthquake, which was an intra-
each story. The City of Vancouver has recently declared that the designs of plate earthquake that occurred at a
high-rise buildings must attain a new benchmark of architectural creativity. The depth of ~50 km and at a distance of
recent designs that have been proposed for the city include very irregular build- ~240 km south of Vancouver. The
ings that are much less likely to be habitable after an earthquake. earthquake was felt in Vancouver but
did not cause any damage to buildings.
Keywords: building codes; high-rise buildings; history; seismic design; shear It caused up to USD 4 billion damage
walls. in areas up to 150 km from the epicen-
tre, and injured up to 400 people. The
two largest earthquakes ever recorded
Introduction oors in multi-story residential in Canada were interplate earthquakes
buildings. that occurred about 700 km north-west
Vancouvers history of high-rise build- of Vancouver along the Queen Char-
ings began in the early 1900s, and for Today, the city of Vancouver has
lotte FaultMagnitude 8.1 in 1949 and
many decades, Vancouver had the tal- about 700 buildings that are 12 or
Magnitude 7.8 in 2012. These earth-
lest buildings in the British Empire. more stories and at least 35 m high
quakes were too far away to cause
The very early tall buildings have (see Fig. 1). Note that multiple build-
ings with the same height and con- damage to the buildings in Vancouver.
structural steel frames with masonry
inll walls that resist lateral loads. struction start date show up as one The third type of earthquake that
Vancouver experienced a boom of data point in Fig. 1. While the city could cause signicant ground shaking
high-rise construction from the mid- currently ranks 10th in the world in Vancouver is caused by the Casca-
1960s to early 1980s, and an even lar- for the number of high-rise buildings dia subduction zone, which is located
ger building boom started in the 1990s (skyscraperpage.com), it is a much west of Vancouver Island. The Juan de
and continues to this day (Fig. 1). smaller city than all the cities in the Fuca tectonic plate is sliding (subduct-
Virtually all of these buildings are of world that have more high-rise build- ing) underneath the North American
reinforced concrete. Some of the fac- ings. With a population of just over tectonic plate; but the movement is not
tors that contributed to this are the 600 000 people, Vancouver has 1.1 continuous. The two plates are cur-
abundance of experienced (mostly high-rise buildings per 1000 people, rently locked together causing stress to
non-unionized) concrete contractors while New York City, which has the build up in the Earths crust. Every
in the city; the absence of steel mills largest number of high-rise buildings 300800 years (550 years on average),
producing rolled structural sections in in the world, has about 60% as many the two plates slip and the resulting
western Canada; and the advantages high-rise buildings per capita. movements (up to 1000 km of rupture
of using thin concrete slabs rather length and up to 25 m of slip) can
than structural steel framing for the Regional Seismicity cause a subduction earthquake of mag-
nitude 9.0 to occur.1 Such an earth-
The west coast of British Columbia is
quake may cause very signicant long-
a seismically active region where
Peer-reviewed by international ex- duration ground motions lasting sev-
more than 100 earthquakes of magni-
perts and accepted for publication eral minutes in Vancouver.
by SEI Editorial Board tude 5 (on the Richter scale) or
greater have occurred in the past While no building in Vancouver has
Paper received: April 18, 2016 70 years (Natural Resources ever been damaged by an earthquake,
Paper accepted: August 8, 2016 Canada).14 Earthquakes of this size the potential for signicant ground

Structural Engineering International Nr. 1/2017 Scientic Paper 7

 60 7.0
Living Shangri-La
2001 Nisqually
50

Magnitude of earthquake
6.5
Number of stories

40 Empire Landmark hotel

6.0
30 Marine building
Sun tower
5.5
20

10 5.0
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 0 100 200 300 400 500
Year of construction Distance from Vancouver (km)

F ig . 1: High-rise buildings in Vancouver (data from F i g. 2 : Earthquakes near Vancouver in the last 30 years
Skyscraperpage.com).15 (data from Natural Resources Canada).14

movement in Vancouver due to an Vancouver Building Height (CBD), as long as the building is not
earthquake has had a very dominant Restrictions within any of the designated view cor-
inuence on the structural form of ridors. Buildings in other parts of the
While Vancouver had some of the tal-
high-rise buildings in Vancouver, and CBD are limited to 180 m. Three
lest buildings one hundred years ago,
this is the primary subject of this CBD shoulder zones are limited to
today the tallest buildings in Vancou-
paper. Figure 3 summarizes how 170 m, while a fourth CBD shoulder
ver are very low in comparison to
earthquake demands on high-rise zone is limited to 150 m. The City also
other cities. The tallest building in
buildings in Vancouver has changed permits taller buildings in two promi-
Vancouver, Living Shangri-La, is only
over the past 40 years. The design nent bridge gateways that mark the
201 m high (59 oors; Fig. 1). The
spectral acceleration values specied entry into downtown from the Bur-
reason for the low building heights is
by the National Building Code of rard and Granville Bridges.
not the signicant earthquake hazard,
Canada (NBCC)2 have been trans-
as assumed by some. The City of Van-
lated into the corresponding design
couver has restricted building heights Early Canadian Building Codes
spectral displacement values for build-
in order to protect the view of the
ings with a fundamental lateral period The Canadian building code for the
North Shore Mountains, the down-
T = 2 s (about a 20-story building) design of concrete buildings refers to
town skyline and the surrounding
and T = 4 s (about a 40-story build-
water.3 combined requirements of two sepa-
ing). As shown in Fig. 3, the earth- rate documents. The rst is the
quake demands increased signicantly Recently, the City of Vancouver has NBCC2, which is adopted by the pro-
in 1985, in 1995 for tall buildings relaxed the height restrictions in cer- vinces and large cities such as Van-
(T = 4 s), and also in 2015. Today, the tain areas of the city.3 Building couver that have a legal charter to
earthquake displacements that build- heights up to 210 m are now permit- adopt their own building code. NBCC
ings must be designed for are more ted along the three primary streets of species the general design require-
than four times what they were Georgia, Burrard and Granville ments for earthquakes, while the
in 1975. within the Central Business District design and detailing requirements for
concrete buildings are specied in
Canadian Standard CSA A23.3,4
which is referenced by NBCC.
400
Early editions of NBCC required
Spectral displacement (mm)

T = 4.0 s
buildings to be designed for a lateral
300 seismic force equal to 2 or 4% of the
building weight depending only on
the type of soil supporting the build-
200
T = 2.0 s ing. In the 1960 NBCC, the ratio of
lateral seismic force to building weight
100 was reduced with number of stories.
By 1965, the type of construction
became a factorframed buildings
0 with moment-resisting connections
1975 1985 1995 2005 2015
needed to be designed for only 60%
Year
of the seismic force that other types of
F ig . 3: Summary of how earthquake demands on high-rise buildings in Vancouver have buildings had to be designed for. In
changed over the past 40 years: spectral displacements at T = 2.0 s and T = 4.0 s. the seismically active west coast of the

8 Scientic Paper Structural Engineering International Nr. 1/2017

USA, the construction of reinforced
concrete moment-resisting frame
buildings became very popular at this
time; but the system was rarely used
in Canada. Designers opted to pro-
vide concrete shear walls to resist the
somewhat larger seismic forces (67%
larger forces in the 1965 NBCC,
reduced to 50% larger forces in the
1970 NBCC).
In 1970, NBCC introduced the
requirement that all buildings over
61 m high must have a moment-
resisting space frame (MRSF) that is
capable of resisting not less than 25%
of the seismic forces; however this
requirement could be waived if evi-
dence was provided to show that the
building without the frame could with-
stand the design earthquake with duc-
tility and energy absorptive capacity
equivalent to the building with a
frame. This requirement continues to
be prevalent in US seismic design
codes, where in the last decade,
performance-based design (non-linear
dynamic analysis) has been commonly
used to avoid having to provide
moment-resisting frames in shear wall
buildings over 76 m high.5
In 1973, design and detailing require-
ments for ductile exural walls were
introduced into CSA A23.3. The
detailing rules included: minimum
0.0025 distributed horizontal rein-
forcement and 0.0015 distributed ver-
tical reinforcement (both as a portion
of the gross concrete area); maximum
spacing of 450 mm for all distributed
reinforcement in the upper half of the
structure and 300 mm maximum spa-
cing in the lower half of the structure.
Concentrated reinforcement, tied as a
column, was required at the end of
each wall, and not more than 50% of
this reinforcement was to be spliced at
the same location. In the lower half of
the structure, where plastic hinging
was expected to occur, the spacing of
the ties was limited to 8 bar diameters
to prevent buckling of the concen-
trated vertical reinforcement. Suf-
cient vertical reinforcement had to be
provided across all horizontal con-
struction joints. It is interesting to
note that, while there have been some
renements, these requirements are
surprisingly similar to the current
design requirements, more than
40 years later.
In one of the earliest applications of
capacity design, the factored shear
force at every elevation over the
height of a ductile exural wall had to
Structural Engineering International Nr. 1/2017
be increased by the factor 1.1 w where
the overstrength ratio w was equal to
the ratio of the moment capacity of
the wall at the base divided by the fac-
tored bending moment applied at the
base of the wall. The quantity of hori-
zontal reinforcement required for
shear resistance was determined
neglecting the concrete contribution
to shear resistance Vc in the lower half
of the wall.
In 1975, ductile exural walls were
introduced as a system into NBCC,
and at the same time the requirement
that buildings over 61 m high must
have a MRSF was removed. Ductile
exural walls needed to be designed
for only 43% larger seismic forces
than ductile MRSFs regardless of the
building height. Regular exural walls
(not meeting the special requirements
for seismic design) were permitted to
be used up to any height without a
moment-resisting frame; but needed
to be designed for 185% larger seis-
mic forces than ductile MRSFs when
over 61 m high, and 85% larger forces
for heights up to 61 m.
Vancouver High-rise Buildings
Built Prior to Mid-1980s
The high-rise buildings in Vancouver
can be categorized into those built
prior to the mid-1980s and the more
modern buildings built after that era.
In order to determine the features of
typical pre-1980s high-rise buildings,
the structural drawings of about
350 buildings in Vancouver were
Fi g . 4: Typical oor plan of a Vancouver high-rise residential building constructed
before the mid-1980s with distributed individual shear walls plus staircase and elevator
core walls.
examined and a detailed inventory6
was developed. The summary below
was developed from that inventory.
About 200 of the buildings are resi-
dential buildings from the West End
residential neighbourhood near Stan-
ley Park. Sixty of the buildings are
from downtown, and 85% of these
are ofce buildings. The remaining
buildings are a mix of residential and
ofce buildings from other parts of
the city.
It was found that 97% of all buildings
had concrete shear walls as the pri-
mary seismic-force-resisting system.
Of these, 80% had distributed shear
walls, while the remaining 20% had
the shear walls concentrated in a sin-
gle core. Many buildings have some
kind of grouping of walls (small core)
around the stair and elevator shafts
that contribute to the lateral stiffness
of the building; but many of these
small cores are too slender to contrib-
ute signicantly to the lateral stiffness
of the building. Figure 4 shows an
example building.
The older buildings, i.e. pre-1960,
tend to have less wall arealess than
about 1.5% of the oor area, while
buildings built after 1960 tend to have
larger wall areas. Many of the build-
ings built from 1960 to 1980 have wall
areas equal to about 2.0% of the oor
area, while some have up to 2.5% or
even 3.5%.
The height-to-length ratios of the
shear walls (elevation aspect ratio)
vary from 2 to 20, however the
Scientic Paper 9
ratios in most walls are in the range
of 412. Most of the concrete walls
are 200 mm thick; however about
25% are only 150 mm thick. More
than half the walls have a single
layer of reinforcement, while the
remaining walls have two layers. The
wall length-to-thickness ratio (plan
aspect ratio) ranged from a very
small number up to 50; however
most walls are less than 30, and the
mean value for all the buildings is
about 15. Expected failure modes for
such thin (up to 200 mm thick) con-
crete walls include premature crush-
ing of the exural compression
zones,7 overall buckling of the walls,
and lap-splice failures in the exural
tension zones.
The axial load on the walls due to
gravity loads was estimated to vary up
to ~15% fc0 Ag ; however the mean
values of axial load on the walls is
about 5% fc0 Ag . The percentage of dis-
tributed vertical reinforcement typi-
cally varies between 0.1 and 0.4%,
with about 40% of the walls having
less than 0.2%. The percentage of
distributed horizontal reinforcement
typically varies between 0.2 and 0.3%.
The horizontal wall reinforcement
usually extends to the ends of the
wall, but is not anchored either by
hooking around a vertical bar or
extending within tied vertical rein-
forcement. Essentially none of the
walls have any tied concentrated verti-
cal (boundary zone) reinforcement.
Two types of irregularities were com-
monly observed in the shear walls.
The rst is when a wall has a large
opening so that the wall is essentially
supported on two columnsone on
each end of the wall. About 30% of
the buildings were found to have this
type of irregularity. A second com-
mon irregularity is when a shear wall
above overhangs the shear wall
below, sometimes referred to as a
ag wall. The wall below is sub-
jected to signicantly larger vertical
strain and simultaneously increased
horizontal tension strain due to the
overhang above.8
One characteristic that distinguishes
older buildings from newer buildings
is that the older buildings do not have
any transverse shear reinforcement in
the at-plate slabs around the gravity-
load columns in order to prevent
punching shear failures of the slabs
due to the concentrated deformation
of the slabs from the lateral
10 Scientic Paper
displacement of the gravity-load 10% of the plan dimension of the
frame. Many of the older buildings building in the direction of the com-
also do not have the designated integ- puted eccentricity. During this same
rity steel (special bottom reinforce- period of time, the analysis tools
ment in the slab that goes through the available to the designers in Vancou-
columns) to prevent complete collapse ver also changedthree-dimensional
of at-plate slabs due to pull-out of linear response spectrum analysis
the top reinforcement in the slabs.6 became readily available. Thus,
designers were able to include the
torsional mode of vibration into the
Factors Inuencing High-rise building analysis. The increased acci-
Buildings after the 1980s dental torsion and the ability to visu-
alize the torsional modes of the
Many factors inuence the architec-
building made the designers much
tural form of high-rise buildings. For
more aware of the importance of tor-
example, the arrangement of gravity-
load columns is dictated by suite lay- sional deformations of the building.
outs and the importance of not Figure 5 summarizes the force design
restricting occupant views, while at- requirements for exural walls relative
plate oor slabs are typically used to ductile MRSFs. In 1990, the relative
because of the increased speed of con- seismic design forces for regular ex-
struction from simplied formwork. ural walls (without any special require-
During the 1980s a number of factors ments for seismic design) increased
caused a paradigm shift in the typical very dramatically. When the height of
form of high-rise concrete buildings in the building was more than 60 m, reg-
Vancouver. The 1984 edition of CSA ular exural walls had to be designed
A23.3 presented signicant new for a 300% increase in force (four
requirements for the ductility of ex- times the force) of ductile MRSF,
ural walls. These requirements made while when the building was less than
it difcult for ductile exural walls to 60 m high, the walls had to be design-
have a rectangular cross-section. The ed for 167% higher seismic forces than
ductility requirements are discussed
ductile MRSF. At the same time, the
further in Section Ductility of Flexural ductile exural walls of any height
Walls.
were reduced to only 14% larger than
A second signicant change was the ductile MRSF. This strongly encour-
increased seismic demands in the aged the use of ductile exural walls in
1985 edition of NBCC. As shown in Vancouver. In 1990, a new category of
Fig. 3, earthquake spectral displace- special wallswith nominal
ment demands for all types of build- ductilitywas introduced. This had
ings went up by a factor of 2.5 in only a few seismic design require-
1985. In addition, the design eccen- ments, and had to be designed for
tricity for the minimum torsional 100% higher seismic force than ductile
moments in the horizontal plane of MRSF when the building was less than
the building was increased. The acci- 60 m high (200% increase when the
dental torsion increased from 5 to building was more than 60 m high).
350
No longer
Percent increase in seismic design forces
H > 60 m permitted
300
H 30 m
250
H > 60 m
200
H 60 m
H 60 m
150
Regular (conventional) wall
100
Moderately (nominally)
Ductile wall
50
Ductile wall
0
1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015
Year
F i g. 5 : Increase in factored seismic design forces (elastic base shear reduced by force-
reduction factors) for concrete exural walls relative to ductile moment-resisting space
frames for buildings with different heights (H)
Structural Engineering International Nr. 1/2017
In 1995, ductile coupled walls, with
ductile coupling beams interconnect-
ing two or more wall piers, were
introduced as a new system in
NBCC, although the detailing rules
for coupled walls had existed in CSA
A23.3 since 1984. Ductile coupled
walls were designed for the same seis-
mic force levels as ductile MRSFs. In
2005, new height limits were intro-
duced into the Canadian building
code that continues to this day. Duc-
tile exural walls have no height limit;
but moderately ductile walls (previ-
ously called nominally ductile) are
limited to 60 m in Vancouver and
conventional (regular) exural walls
are limited to 30 m in Vancouver. In
addition, all systems must be designed
for a minimum seismic force level cal-
culated using a fundamental lateral
period of the building equal to 2.0 s,
which is approximately the fundamen-
tal period for a 60 m tall building.
That is, all buildings taller than ~60 m
must be designed for about the same
seismic forceas a ratio of building
weightas for a 60 m tall building.
All of these changes strongly encour-
aged the use of ductile walls arranged
in a central core, which became the
prevalent seismic-force-resisting sys-
tem in high-rise buildings in Vancou-
ver after the 1980s. Typical modern
Vancouver core wall systems are dis-
cussed in Section Modern Vancouver
High-rise Corewall Buildings.
Ductility of Flexural Walls
The ductility requirements for exural
walls ensure that the walls will have
adequate exural displacement capac-
ity, which is one of the most important
requirements for the seismic design of
high-rise shear wall buildings. When
the maximum compression strain
demand in a wall is expected to
exceed the compression strain capac-
ity of unconned concrete, conne-
ment reinforcement must be provided
in the ends of the wall. Alternatively,
the wall geometry can be modied
(e.g. size of compression ange
increased) to reduce the required ex-
ural compression zone length given
the level of axial compression, and
hence reduce the maximum compres-
sion strain demand. Owing to the
increased costs and difculties associ-
ated with providing connement rein-
forcement in the walls, Vancouver
designers typically avoid providing
connement reinforcement in walls.
Thus, the primary function of the
Structural Engineering International Nr. 1/2017
code provisions for wall ductility is to
dene the maximum length of the
exural compression zone in concrete
walls without connement reinforce-
ment. The ties that are provided
around the concentrated reinforce-
ment at the ends of the concrete walls
in Vancouver are to prevent buckling
of the vertical reinforcement, which
requires much less ties than are
needed for connement of concrete.
The 1973 edition of CSA A23.3 was
the rst to dene special provisions for
seismic design of concrete buildings. It
required that ductile exural walls be
designed to have adequate ductility
and energy absorption capacity in
accordance with generally accepted
principles but did not give any specic
requirements. The commentary sug-
gested that ductile walls be designed
with a minimum curvature (sectional)
ductility of 3. It became known a
short time later9 that this was not an
adequate level of ductility because of
the concentration of inelastic curva-
tures in the plastic hinge region.
The 1984 edition of CSA A23.3 pre-
sented the rst comprehensive provi-
sions for the ductility of exural walls,
and these requirements were only
slightly modied in the 1994 edition.
These provisions were based on the
recommendation9 that the plastic
hinge length for a slender wall is
about equal to the wall length. More
recently it has become common prac-
tice to use a plastic hinge length equal
to 50% of the wall length.
The cornerstone of the 1984/1994 duc-
tility provisions is that an accurate
estimate of yield curvature can easily
be made from the yield strain of the
reinforcement and the assumption of
small compression strains in concrete.
The curvature demand on concrete
walls was estimated as the yield curva-
ture times the curvature ductility
demand, where the latter is a number
such as 10 for ductile walls. Thus, any
errors in the estimation of yield curva-
ture are increased by an order of mag-
nitude in the estimate of curvature
demand. It has subsequently become
known that the yield curvature that
should be used to estimate curvature
demand on a wall may deviate consid-
erably from the value that was used to
develop the 1984/1994 Canadian code
requirements.10
In the 2004 Canadian code provisions
for wall ductility, which are identical
to the 2014 provisions, total curvature
demand is estimated directly from
total displacement demand, and an
estimate of yield curvature is used
only to determine the small elastic
portion of total curvature capacity.
These provisions require an estimate
of the displacement demand at the top
of the wall due to the design earth-
quake. While this added complexity to
the ductility provisions, it was neces-
sary in order to ensure adequate per-
formance of all concrete walls while at
the same time not being unnecessarily
restrictive for concrete walls in build-
ings with good drift control.10
Comparing the limits from the newer
provisions with the older provisions,
ductile walls with small overstrength
are now permitted to have considera-
bly larger compression zone lengths if
the drift demand is small, and ductile
walls with signicant overstrength are
now required to have much smaller
compression zone lengths if the drift
demand is large. For moderately duc-
tile walls, the two provisions suggest a
similar inuence of wall overstrength;
however, the permitted exural com-
pression zone lengths are generally
much smaller according to the newer
provisions. Overstrength is the ratio of
the exural resistance of a wall to the
reduced bending moment demand
accounting for ductility.
The ductility requirements play a very
important role in dictating the geome-
try of the concrete walls. The evolu-
tion of the ductility requirements in
the Canadian code has had a signi-
cant impact on the form of modern
high-rise buildings in Vancouver as
discussed in the next section.
Modern Vancouver High-rise
Corewall Buildings
As a result of the issues described in
Section Factors Inuencing High-rise
Buildings after the 1980s, essentially
all high-rise buildings in Vancouver
built since the mid-1980s have a cen-
tral core that is the lateral-force-
resisting system. The core is assumed
to resist 100% of the lateral load due
to wind or earthquake. For buildings
over 30 stories, the quantity of rein-
forcement in the wall is typically dic-
tated by wind design requirements;
however the detailing of the walls is
dictated by the ductility requirements
for seismic design.
Figure 6 shows an example core from
a typical Vancouver high-rise
Scientic Paper 11

950
8600
400 350
F ig . 6: Partial oor plan showing a typical core from a modern high-rise building in
Vancouver. (Units: [mm])
building. The box-shape arrangement
of walls has a number of signicant
advantages. First, the perpendicular
walls act as compression anges that
ensure the compression strain depth is
limited to a small portion of the wall
length. This is important in order to
meet the seismic ductility require-
ments in the Canadian code described
in Section Ductility of Flexural Walls.
Second, the box arrangement of
(a)
F i g. 7: Unique design aspects of the tallest high-rise building in Vancouver: Living Shangri-La (a), three-dimensional perspectives of
core walls (b) and typical mid-level oor plan (c)
12 Scientic Paper
8100
1200
600
600
600
walls is very effective in controlling
the torsional deformations of the
building and for resisting the applied
seismic accidental torsional moment.
A typical Vancouver core (as shown
in Fig. 6) acts as three independent
cantilever walls in one direction
(bending about a horizontal axis in
Fig. 6), and acts as three (U or
inverted-U shaped) coupled walls in
the transverse direction (bending
(b) (c)
Structural Engineering International Nr. 1/2017
about a vertical axis in Fig. 6) to resist
lateral loads due to wind or earth-
quake. The three (U or inverted-U
shaped) walls are connected together
by diagonally reinforced coupling
beams4 above the 950 mm wide door
openings into the stairwell and the
1200 mm wide openings into the ele-
vator lobby area. With typical clear
story heights of 2.6 m, 0.2 m thick
slabs, and 2.12.2 m high door open-
ings, the coupling beams are typically
600700 mm deep. In a typical Van-
couver core of a 30-story building,
about 85% of the overturning
moment applied in the coupled-wall
direction is resisted by the axial forces
in the two outside wallscompression
in one wall and tension (uplift) in the
opposite wall.
The wall system is designed so that
the coupling beams above the wall
openings will yield prior to the verti-
cal reinforcement at the base of the
wall yielding due to the uplift forces
from the coupling beams. That is, the
design uplift forces in the wall piers
are increased to account for over-
strength of the coupling beams. In
order to maximize the axial compres-
sion applied to the walls from dead
load of the structure, the gravity-load
columns are usually positioned as far
as possible away from the core. The
typical oor slabs in residential build-
ings are 190 mm reinforced concrete
at plate slabs that span up to 6.6 m
from the core to the columns. In ofce
buildings, prestressed concrete (post-
tensioned) oor slabs may be used in
order to increase the span of the slabs
between the core and the perimeter
columns.
Figure 7 presents some design infor-
mation from Living Shangri-La, 1128
West Georgia Street, which is cur-
rently the tallest building in Vancou-
ver at 201 m high. The rst 15 oors
of the mixed-use building are a hotel,
while condominium apartment units
occupy the remaining oors. The
building has an unusual triangular
oor plan in part because the building
is located at the edge of a City of
Vancouver view cone (see
Section Vancouver Building Height
Restrictions). Normally the core walls
in a building are prismatic over the
full building height (wall thicknesses
may reduce in taller buildings). In the
case of Shangri-La, the core geometry
changes dramatically at two elevations
where a bank of elevators stop. In the
lower portion of the building, the core
consists of three rectangular boxes,
while at the top level, the core con-
sists of a single approximately square
box similar to the typical core shown
in Fig. 6. Figure 7c shows the arrange-
ment of core walls near mid-height
where the building has two sets of ele-
vator banks with three elevators each.
The core walls are up to 1524 mm
thick at the base of the building.
There were a number of unique struc-
tural design aspects of the building.
One example is the design of the cou-
pling beams at the two elevations
where the core transitions, i.e. the last
coupling beams at the top of the cut-
off portion of the core. The disconti-
nuity of the core walls causes a large
concentration of demands in these
coupling beams. Another challenge
was the unusual arrangement of
gravity-load columns. Because of the
unique geometry of the building, a
number of columns were located close
to the core (see Fig. 7). Also, the
inuence of differential creep shorten-
ing of the more heavily loaded col-
umns and the core walls was
investigated to ensure the oor slabs
would not become too far out of level.
Finally, a large number of the gravity-
load columns had to be transferred
near grade level using 3.6 m deep
transfer girders that were supported
at one end by the core walls. Because
of concerns that the very stiff transfer
girders would act as unintentional
outriggers (when the core bends
Structural Engineering International Nr. 1/2017
laterally) and would overload the
gravity-load columns supporting the
other end of the transfer girders, the
3.6 m deep transfer girders were cast
monolithic with the core walls over
only the lower 0.9 m of depth. A gap
was left over the remaining 2.5 m
height of the transfer girders. That is,
the transfer girders were designed
with a pin support to the core walls.
Recent Canadian Building
Code Changes
As shown in Fig. 3, the seismic
demands on tall buildings have
increased signicantly in 2015. This is
mostly because the subduction earth-
quake actions are combined probabil-
istically with the two other types of
earthquakes that may generate
ground motions in Vancouver.1 In
addition, a number of other signicant
building code changes have occurred
that will inuence the future design of
high-rise buildings in Vancouver.
Gravity-Load Frames
Perhaps the largest change for the
2015 Canadian building code is the
increased requirements for the design
of structural members not considered
part of the seismic-force-resisting sys-
tem (SFRS). One of the most com-
mon causes of building collapse
during an earthquake is failure of
members in the gravity-load resisting
frame, e.g. failure of the gravity-load
resisting columns. The intent of the
new requirements, summarized in
Ref. [11], is to ensure an adequate
level of strength and/or ductility for
all structural members subjected to
seismically induced deformations. An
interstorey drift envelope is dened
for shear wall buildings as a function
of the global drift demand determined
at the top of the gravity-load frame
from an analysis that includes the
effect of torsion. The variation of
interstorey drift over the upper stories
was developed from the results of
numerous non-linear dynamic ana-
lyses of shear wall buildings. The pre-
scribed envelope also accounts for the
non-linear shear deformation in the
plastic hinge region of shear walls as
was observed in experiments. This
non-linear shear deformation, which
currently is not accounted for in state-
of-the-art non-linear analysis of shear
walls, greatly increases the interstorey
drift demands on the gravity-load
resisting columns over the plastic
hinge region of the shear walls.
The seismic design requirements for
gravity-load resisting columns and
bearing walls depend on the inelastic
exural deformation demands on the
member. When seismic demands on
gravity-load frames are determined
using a linear model of the gravity-
load frame, the requirements are
determined from how much the
induced bending moment exceeds
the factored bending resistance of the
member. The limit ranges from 5.0
times the factored bending moment
resistance for columns from special
moment-resisting frames to 0.5 times
the factored resistance for thin walls
with a single layer of reinforcement.
The detailing requirements for
gravity-load resisting beams are also
based on how much the calculated
bending moment exceeds the factored
bending resistance. Factored resis-
tances are used as a simple way to
compensate for uncertainty in dis-
placement demands. New axial load
restrictions have been placed on col-
umns and bearing walls with a mini-
mum dimension <300 mm to account
for the fact that these thin members
can suddenly lose all vertical load car-
rying capacity.7
Foundations
Another major change is the
requirement to consider how the
movement of all unrestrained foun-
dations will inuence the SFRS and
the gravity-load frame. A simplied
procedure that ignores foundation
movement can be used for founda-
tions that are restrained against
rotation. Foundations are either
capacity protected (CP) by having
an overturning capacity larger than
the SFRS or are not capacity pro-
tected (NCP). A simple non-linear
static procedure is provided for esti-
mating the rotation of CP founda-
tions from the initial shear modulus
of soil and the uniform bearing
stress required to resist the applied
loads.12 The results from non-linear
response history analysis were used
to develop a simple upper-bound
estimate of the increased drifts due
to NCP foundations. A new require-
ment is that the factored overturning
capacity of NCP foundations must
not be less than 75% of the nominal
overturning capacity of the SFRS.13
This is expected to inuence the
design of future high-rise building
foundations.
Scientic Paper 13
Future Challenges
The City of Vancouver has recently
declared that all Higher Buildings
must establish a signicant and recog-
nizable new benchmark for architec-
tural creativity and excellence, while
making a signicant contribution to the
beauty and visual power of the citys
skyline. The City also requires: leader-
ship in sustainable design, reduced
energy consumption, carbon neutrality,
community benets, public amenities
and minimum adverse shadowing and
view impacts on the public realm.3
The seismic resilience of buildings has
not been identied as an explicit
requirement by the City because of a
mistaken belief that the Canadian
building code ensures that buildings will
perform adequately during an earth-
quake. Like most building codes, the
current Canadian building code speci-
es life-safety performance require-
ments for design-level ground shaking
(2% probability of exceedance in
50 years). If design-level ground shak-
ing occurs, the occupants of a building
that meets the minimum requirements
of the building code should be able to
safely exit the building; but not neces-
sarily ever be able to re-enter the build-
ing. As a large proportion of high-rise
buildings in Vancouver are residential
buildings, a design-level earthquake
could result in many people being dis-
placed from their homes.
The building code does not provide
any requirements, or even any guid-
ance on how, to design a building so
that it is more likely to be useable after
an earthquake. Whether or not a build-
ing will be useable after an earthquake
will depend on factors such as the soil
conditions beneath the building and
the architecture of the building. Recent
designs that have been motivated by
the Citys mandate for a new bench-
mark of architectural creativity are
resulting in buildings that are more
likely to be damaged, and therefore
more likely to be unusable, after an
earthquake because of the irregularity
of the structural systems that results
from the architectural creativity.
Conclusions
While the City of Vancouver has not
yet experienced a damaging
14 Scientic Paper
earthquake, the threat of a large
earthquake has had a dening inu-
ence on the evolution of high-rise
buildings in the city. Today, seismolo-
gists predict1 an earthquake as large
as magnitude 9.0 could occur within
about 100 km of Vancouver (only
three earthquakes larger than 9.0
have ever been recorded in the
world). In the 1960s, MRSFs were the
preferred structural system for build-
ings in earthquake-prone areas of
North America such as California.
Canadian building codes were suf-
ciently different that shear walls were
used almost exclusively in Vancouver.
Until about the mid-1980s, these
buildings usually had thin shear walls
(150 or 200 mm thick) distributed
throughout the buildings and perhaps
one or more small cores. Owing to the
signicant axial compression applied
to the walls by gravity loads, the shear
walls typically needed very little verti-
cal reinforcement to resist the over-
turning moment due to lateral loads.
It is now known that such thin lightly
reinforced concrete walls can be brit-
tle, particularly when there is a dis-
continuity in the geometry of the
walls.
A number of factors in the 1980s
together caused a paradigm shift in the
design of high-rise buildings in Vancou-
ver. The seismic demands on all build-
ings increased, while at the same time,
the relative demands on non-ductile
shear walls increased signicantly
more. There was also an increase in the
level of accidental torsion that buildings
had to resist. At the same time, three-
dimensional structural analysis pro-
grams became readily available so that
designers became fully aware of the
torsional movements of the buildings.
Finally, new ductility requirements
required that shear walls were able to
resist the applied axial compressions
over a very short length of the walls.
As a result of all these factors, large
central core-wall systems became the
prevalent SFRS in high-rise buildings
in Vancouver and this continues to this
day. The system has recently become
popular in California as well.
References
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