San Rafael High School’s new CHPS Designed™ STEAM building has added several more spaces to the campus, including seven classrooms, a ceramics studio, a two-story fabrication lab for the school’s Academy of Engineering, and an outdoor learning area.
The 17,860-square-foot, two-story building is framed with structural steel and uses special concentric braced frames as the lateral force-resisting system. Special attention was given to coordinating the layout and configuration of the exposed steel framing in the fabrication lab space, including a multi-tiered brace frame, which is meant to showcase the structural components of the building.
Due to poor underlying soils, a deep foundation system was required, consisting of concrete grade beams and drilled cast-in-place concrete piers. The piers were designed for significant down drag forces from the underlying Bay Mud soils and required coordination with existing deep foundations that were present from a previous structure.
Photo Credit: Photograph/s by John Sutton Photography