St. Mary Magdalen School

Swenson Say Fagét completed this seismic renovation of a 2-building school. The 34,000 square foot, 1960’s era building is primarily a wood framed structure with extensive use of glue laminated beams. The existing lateral system consisted of reinforced masonry transverse walls and a cantilevered column-unreinforced masonry system in the opposite direction. The existing walls were found to have very little seismic capacity and new reinforced concrete shear walls were incorporated. Roof strengthening and ties were also provided to meet their enhanced Life-Safety seismic objective. The 1982 addition is a conventionally framed building with a wood shear wall lateral system. The addition only required an enhancement of connections between the walls and roof.