Project Showcase

Granite Mountain Reserve — Earthquake and Thermal Reports
This report is on four structures that were erected in the Mojave Desert of South Eastern California in January 1992. These unique structures were designed to house a stand-alone research facility for the University of California. The Mojave Desert has a climate as extreme as any in the world. Freezing temperatures and winter snows, and summer temperatures as high as 115 Degree Fahrenheit, recorded wind speeds as high as 128 M.P.H., flash floods and numerous record settings earthquakes.

Richard Schoen, F.A.I.A. Principal, RSA Architects Inc., of Canoga Park California accepted the design challenge; Dr. Philippe Cohen resident director acted as general contractor and also involved was associate Cindy Stead. Dr. Douglas Balcomb, and Dr. Robert Jones whom were responsible for monitoring and testing the amount of heat transfer through the Tridipanel wall system of which the structures were built. The University of California, The National Science Foundation, and The Southern California Edison Company funded the project jointly.

A Tight budget demanded the selection of a building system amenable to inexperienced volunteer construction labor. The projects location was so remote that the nearest source of conventional electricity, building materials, and skilled labor were at least 80 miles distant. All those apparent "constraints" actually provided challenging design and construction material use opportunities. Richard Schoen's use of similar much less sophisticated building systems for high mass passive solar construction in hot arid regions of the world led to the selection of The Insteel Tridipanels for the wall construction.

The structure was built under the direction of Dr. Cohen with the combined efforts of professionals, students, volunteers, manufactures, craft-people, and different institutions all working together. The finished panels were wired together and shotcreted with 1 ½ inches of cement on each side to make the panels into a monolithic wall and produced a finish as straight and true as any formed concrete, but without the labor cost and use of wood forms typical of poured-concrete for projects of this scale. Coincidentally, the fully shotcreted walls were somewhat horizontally stabilized by the wood roof structures, but no diagonal steel tie seismic restraints were yet installed when the 6.9 and 6.5 Landers earthquakes hit the desert on June 28, 1992.

The second quake was the worst recorded in fifty years according to Dr. Philippe Cohen who was residing at the site, the area at one point was subjected to a continuous shaking lasting over a full minute, creating rock slides in the area, but incredibly these four buildings, some with tridipanel walls of over twenty four feet high containing many large windows and openings showed no signs of damage what so ever. A full structural analysis was ordered by a certified engineering firm A & B Engineers (Quote from Report) "there was no sign of any cracking or damage of any kind to superstructures and foundations." I would like to mention that in the past eight years there have been many more earthquakes all with the same results.

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