Civil Engineering | n e w s

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ike many engineering firms, same time. In 2004 the firm unveiled a design
structural
Thornton Tomasetti has used building in- by the renowned architect Frank Gehry that in-
engineering
formation modeling (BIM) for many years tegrated the arena with the surrounding struc-
to improve its projects. But when it came to de-
signing the Barclays Center, in the New York City
Barclays tures (see Civil Engineering, February 2004, pag-
es 3031). But that design was later abandoned
borough of Brooklyn, the international engineer-
ing firm decided to take the technology perhaps
Center for financial reasons. Thornton Tomasetti served
as the structural engineer for Gehrys design and
further than it ever had before and use the three-
dimensional (3-D) digital model as its primary
Delivered was retained to develop a redesign that would
separate the arena from the other structures
work product. The result is a streamlined design
process, facilitating the realization of a dynamic
Using BIM within the development. AECOM, an interna-
tional architecture, engineering, and planning
basketball arena that is expected to become a popular destina- firm headquartered in Los Angeles, was hired to design the
tion in the Big Apples most populous borough. arena, and SHoP Architects, based in New York City, was
The Barclays Center is under construction on a triangular given responsibility for designing the arenas extraordinary
lot near the confluence of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. The facade and entry plaza and for working with AECOM to de-
multiuse arena will be home to the Brooklyn Nets, the Nation- sign the arenas interior spaces.
al Basketball Association franchise formerly known as the New The 675,000 sq ft Barclays Center was modeled to a cer-
Jersey Nets. The real estate developer Bruce Ratner headed a tain extent on Conseco Fieldhouse, now known as Bankers
group of private investors who purchased the basketball team Life Fieldhouse, the Indianapolis facility that is the home
in 2004 and have since worked to move the team to Brooklyn, of the National Basketball Associations Indiana Pacers.
which hasnt had a professional sports team since 1958, when AECOM designed Conseco Fieldhouse and drew on that ex-
the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. Ratners real estate devel- perience in forming an initial concept for the Barclays Center.
opment firm, Forest City Ratner Companies, is constructing We started out kind of with Conseco as the literal model in
the Barclays Center as the anchor of a $4.9-billion revitalization the initial design, but that quickly went away because the de-
project that will comprise office, residential, and business struc- sign evolved, says Steve Duethman, AIA, an AECOM prin-
tures. Bruce Ratner wanted to basically do a redevelopment cipal. Barclays will have an arched roof and a seating bowl
of this entire region between Atlantic and Flatbush avenues in similar to Consecos, but otherwise it will be quite different.
Brooklyn, says Jeff Callow, P.E., a senior associate at Thornton Conseco is framed in concrete, while Barclays will be framed
Tomasetti. The idea is that the arena will spark in steel. The Conseco site presented few impedi-
the growth in the region that would justify build- The Barclays Centers pre- ments and restrictions, whereas Barclays will
SHoP Architects

ing the other buildings on the site. weathered steel lattice- be built over one of the largest mass transit sta-
Forest City Ratner Companies initially work facade was designed tions in Brooklyn. Conseco has a traditional field
planned to construct the arena and other build- to evoke Brooklyns history house appearance, while the Brooklyn arenas
ings that will make up the development at the as a shipbuilding center. curved geometry will be more sculptural. We

[14] C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g j u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 1 2
 felt we captured the best parts of Conseco in ar-
eas such as the seating bowl, but because of the
site constraints we encountered in Brooklyn,
[Barclays Center] was...guided differently,
Duethman says.
The arena will have approximately
18,000 seats and a level and a half of suites.
Construction began in March 2010 and com-
pletion is anticipated in time for an opening con-
cert this September by Jay-Z, a rapper and minority
owner of the Brooklyn Nets. Thornton Tomasetti The Bar-
took an unconventional approach to meet the ambi- clays Center
tious schedule, creating a BIM representation of the was designed using
Barclays Center using Tekla, a program developed building information modeling. verted to 3-D, he adds. Thornton
by Tekla Corporation, which is based in Espoo, Fin- Tomasetti developed an in-house
land. The method has accelerated the design process in that program to convert its Tekla model to a Revit model, mak-
it has enabled the firm to deliver an accurate digital model to ing it easier to coordinate its efforts with the architect.
the subcontractors in lieu of drawings created on the basis of Working in 3-D conferred several structural engineering
a model produced in Revit, a drafting program developed by advantages, especially with regard to the Barclays Centers
Autodesk, of San Rafael, California. complex steel latticework facade. SHoP Architects designed
In the past, Thornton Tomasetti has used Revit to pro- the facade using CATIA, a 3-D program developed by Das-
duce drawings because many of the architecture firms it sault Systmes, of Vlizy-Villacoublay, France. The archi-
works with use that program. If we had gone the conven- tecture firm then transferred the CATIA model to its sister
tional way and we had produced a conventional model, [the company, SHoP Construction, which used the model to pro-
subcontractors] would have had to re-create a Tekla model duce computer numerically controlled (cnc) files. In a di-
based upon our drawings, Callow says. So what weve done rect-to-fabrication approach, SHoP Construction delivered
is weve saved the time in the schedule because weve already those files to the facade fabricator, which used them to manu-
given them the full geometry in [a Tekla] model. Nearly all facture the 12,000 preweathered steel panels and the curtain
of the engineering on the project was done in true 3-D. Pret- wall enclosure that will make up the facade. Both SHoP Ar-
ty much all of our engineers on the project had a 3-D model chitects and SHoP Construction carefully based their model-
up on their screens all the time, trying to work out conflicts ing work on the main building BIM representation created
and reposition things, Callow recalls. That differs from Re- by AECOM and Thornton Tomasetti.
vit, in which everything is positioned in 2-D and then con- The preweathered steel panel facade is designed to evoke

The Barclays Center will be the

anchor of a $4.9-billion revital-
ization project that will comprise
office, residential, and business
structures between Atlantic and
Flatbush avenues in Brooklyn.
Th o r n t o n T o m as e t t i , t o p ; S H o P A r c h i t e c t s , b o t t o m

j u ly/a u g u s t 2 0 1 2 C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g [15]
Civil Engineering
news
Brooklyns history as a shipbuilding cen-
ter, says Jonathan Mallie, a principal of
SHoP Architects. Each panel will be ap-
proximately 5 ft wide and, depending on
the buildings geometry at a given point,
will range in height from 6 in. to 6 ft.
The panels will span between preweath-
ered structural C channels that are fas-
tened to a steel network and tied back to
the arenas enclosure system. The panels
and the support structure will be pre-
fabricated to form 950 larger units that
will be 10 ft wide and up to 40 ft high
to expedite installation. The panels will
form a horizontal lattice pattern around
the building. A band of glazing will vi-
sually divide the arena into two sections:
an upper portion, or halo, and a lower
band. The glazing will enable light to
reach the multilevel concourses. Our in-
terest was to break down the verticality
of the building through the introduc-
tion of two bands, Mallie explains. From
the halo and lower band, the facade will
[16] C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g j u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 1 2
extend around the arenas signature ele-
ment: a large cantilevered canopy. The
two bands culminate as they approach
the intersection of Atlantic and Flat-
bush with a canopy that cantilevers off
the building approximately eighty feet,
serving as a main feature that greets the
public upon ascent from the transit sta-
tion below the public plaza in front of the
arena, Mallie says.
The canopy will cantilever from
the last set of building columns with-
in the arenas storefront-style entry and
will feature an oculus lined with vid-
eo board. Box trusses on the north and
south sides of the canopy will extend
back through the entry and into the
arenas seating bowl. The canopys ocu-
lus will be framed by cross-trusses. Be-
cause of the length of the cantilever, we
wanted to have long enough back spans
on our canopy trusses, Callow explains.
So we ended up extending these [box
trusses] all the way through the entry
structures so that they integrated with
the bowl columns...to resist the uplift
from the canopy cantilever. As visi-
tors pass beneath the canopy, they will
be greeted by a curtain wall through
which they will have views of the score-
board before they even enter the build-
ing. The entrance sequence really will
be something spectacular, says Chris-
topher Sharples, a principal of SHoP Ar-
chitects. Coming up through the tran-
sit station and then looking out in front
to see the canopy coming out from the
building, the oculus, and then looking
through to the scoreboardwe believe
this will be an entrance like no other.
The 3-D modeling also aided in the
design of the arenas arched roof. The roof
will comprise a main pair of steel tied-
arch trusses that extend down the mid-
dle of the building, and 16 infill trusses
perpendicular to them will extend in the
northsouth direction. A tied-arch roof
typically imposes a great deal of thrust
on the structure it covers, but the arenas
steel framing will be unable to handle
those forces on its own. As a result, a ten-
sion tie will be positioned near the bot-
tom of the arches to accommodate those
forces. We were able to use that tension
tie to balance those forces and make it a
little more of a self-contained system,
Callow says. That greatly reduced the
amount of thrust forces that act on the
structure below. While the tension tie
will reduce forces on the building, it will
not be placed at the very bottom of the
arched truss, which would be the most
efficient location. Instead, the tie will be
placed higher to avoid interfering with
the sight lines at that location. While
the arena will not be substantial enough
to carry the loads without the tension
tie, an analysis revealed that its rigidity
will prohibit the tie from elongating as
much as would be necessary for it to re-
sist all of the forces. The design team ad-
dressed this issue by developing a proce-
dure that involves disconnecting the ties
during the erection and then reconnect-
ing those elements once the temporary
shoring towers for the roof are removed.
As a result, the only thrusts acting on the
building will come from snow loads, not
from the weight of the roof itself.
The arena will be founded on spread
footings with grade beams as required,
primarily at braced-frame locations. The
site will be surrounded by a basement
wall because the event level will be one
story below grade. Part of the challenge
is that underneath Flatbush Avenue are
two sets of subway tunnels [and] we had
to ensure that our structure was not im-
posing any loads on the tunnels, Cal-
low says. To achieve this, we lowered
our foundations locally so that they were
below the influence line of the subway
tunnels. We only needed to do this in
the extreme southwest corner, where the
tunnel was closest to the building.
The most significant challenge asso-
ciated with the foundation was provid-
ing delivery truck access at the south-
east corner of the site. Since the site is too
small for a traditional at-grade ramp and
loading dock, the loading dock will be at
the below-grade event level. Trucks will
access the dock via a pair of truck eleva-
tors, which will be framed by a retain-
ing wall 35 ft tall and 6 ft thick. There
is no way to brace the top of the wall, so
the wall will cantilever from a 22 ft wide
by 6 ft thick footing at the base to resist
overturning. The elevators will transport
the trucks down to the event level, where
they will then pull onto a turntable that
will align them with the loading dock.
j u ly/a u g u s t 2 0 1 2
Obviously, the challenge in having a
truck turntable is that you cant have any
columns come down in that vicinity,
Callow says. So we ended up having to
create a transfer system above the load-
ing dock so that the main bowl columns
would have to transfer out to provide a
complete clear space. He also notes that
over the turntable, were basically span-
ning ninety-five feet with plate girders
supporting multiple levels above.
From its allusions to Brooklyns in-
dustrial past to its 1-acre public plaza
and entry sequence, the arena is expect-
ed to draw people from the community
and beyond. Whether youre a Brook-
lynite or a visitor, I think [everyone is]
going to be awestruck by the facility,
not only in terms of the design but how
it relates to the fabric of the neighbor-
hood and contributes substantially to
how they will be entertained by a mul-
titude of events, Duethman says. Bar-
clays Center is truly going to be an icon
for the city of Brooklyn and will serve
as a stimulus for those areas around the
arena, in terms of redevelopment, for
years to come. Jenny Jones
C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g [17]
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