The new Malloy Pavilion at the University of San Francisco is a state-of-the-art, NCAA practice gymnasium that “floats” over a below-grade concrete parking garage built in 1965. It provides basketball courts, volleyball courts, and office space for the men’s and women’s teams.
Tucked between the nine-story Hayes-Healy Residence Hall and War Memorial Gym, Malloy Pavilion was uniquely designed to avoid triggering upgrades to the existing parking garage below, which would have made the project infeasible due to cost and down-time for installation. To ensure that the parking garage was not affected by a new building above, only one steel frame and one standalone steel column penetrate through the garage’s three levels below. Penetrations in the existing parking garage floors were enlarged to provide adequate clear distance to allow for seismic movement of the new structure above.
The new Pavilion extends beyond the footprint of the existing parking garage below, allowing robust perimeter steel frames to occur outside the garage structure. Locating the majority of the bracing outside of the parking structure also softened the building massing and improved the aesthetics of the campus. Minimal steel columns over micropile foundations provide vertical support, providing the appearance of a floating structure. Along the west side, the Pavilion abuts and provides passage to the existing adjacent War Memorial Gym, with a seismic gap detailed between the buildings.