Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Studio Architects provides thoughtful designs over a large swath of the construction industry with projects in education, hospitality, sporting venues, and, where our paths intersect, residential. Our collaborations on multi-family residential buildings include several in New York’s Hudson River Valley and in various locations across the southeast. The latter of these regions is home to our largest project together to date, along with builder/developer Southeastern.
Soundwater Apartments offers luxury rental units with all manner of modern amenities in the Metro Center district of Nashville, TN, right on the Cumberland River. In addition to eight independent apartment buildings ranging from two to five stories, the complex also includes a dog park, two pools, and a three-story clubhouse with a fully stocked community room, fitness center, and rooftop lounge. Reaching the five-story limit of wood-framed construction with three of these buildings balances grandeur and material cost, but requires intimate knowledge of the additional structural requirements to keep the construction safe and buildable at these heights, particularly in a region with high seismic loads. These high lateral loads also provided design challenges at the steel-framed clubhouse, which ultimately required the hefty connections and careful detailing that come with Intermediate Moment Frames.
Designing the structure for custom shore houses is often challenging. Cost-effective wood framing alone will sometimes not cut it when trying to resist high wind forces while leaving room for the ocean view. However, of the variety of wall and floor framing systems used to achieve these designs in the northeast region, reinforced concrete is rarely one of them.
Water’s Edge is a three-story custom single-family home on the beachfront in Long Beach Township, New Jersey. To ensure this shore home would be as robust as possible, the owners chose to build it almost entirely out of reinforced concrete. Both the walls and floors were framed with an Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) system, which uses proprietary wall blocks and light gage floor joists to speed up the concrete installation and skip the insulation step afterward. To maximize visibility, concrete was subbed-out for more slender steel columns in a few key areas, namely the two-story bright-red steel x-brace supporting both levels of outdoor deck in the center of the main elevation.
The architectural design was provided by The OMNIA Group Architects, a full-service architectural firm performing single-family, multi-family, and commercial work in the Philadelphia region, among others. While we have collaborated on some production style homes, the majority of our work together includes the more unique and challenging custom projects that Water’s Edge exemplifies.
As one of our oldest collaborators (20+ years), we’ve had no shortage of successful projects alongside Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners. Though we have designed many multifamily and mixed-use buildings together in northern New Jersey and the surrounding region, the series of expansive urban redevelopment projects in Harrison, New Jersey with Ironstate Properties stands out as one of our first and longest running multifamily partnerships. Since 2006, we’ve designed a total of 12 mid-rise buildings and various auxiliary structures – most of which occupy a full city block.
Section 4 of Harrison Urby, the latest and largest of these projects, is no exception. With five mid-rise residential buildings (ranging from five to seven stories) and a single-story café, there was a wide variety of structural systems required to ensure an efficient use of materials. While the taller buildings are exclusively light gage metal stud bearing wall systems, the five story structures are predominantly wood framed with a single story of light gage at the first floor. The two-story basketball court built inside one of the residential buildings created an interesting challenge, requiring a steel frame to support the three levels of units above and fit between the units on either side. The café structure rounds out another varied project with its glued laminated timber framing supporting a cross-laminated timber roof deck.
Bucks County-based Ralph C. Fey Architects has been bringing their thoughtful architectural vision to projects across the Delaware Valley for more than 25 years, with a focus on balancing the artistic heritage of the region with more modern themes.
This high-end custom in Washington, NJ (aptly named “Familial Traditions”) finished construction in 2022 by builder C. Raymond Davis & Sons and features a generations-old tree around which the house was designed. Along with the usual challenges of creating and supporting open spaces with heavy/sensitive finishes, both the architecture and structure had to take special care in the design of the foundations and upper-level decks to not risk interfering with the tree or its root system. This unique design choice, along with the great lengths taken to blend the historic aspects of the preserved farm with its contemporary elements, were central to the project receiving the 2022 Excellence in Design Award by the Bucks County chapter of the American Institute of Architects. While we are always proud of a job well done, we’re particularly honored to contribute to award-winning projects.
From hurricanes, nor-easters and intense inland winter storms, to thousands of miles of coastline buffeted by relentless ocean winds – building in New England can be a challenge. Whether we’re designing production homes, high-end custom homes, or multi-family buildings, our wide range of residential structural engineering experience transcends the environmental demands inherent to the region.
We’re known for our dedication to fast turn-around times, personal & responsive service, and a flexible, creative, engaged approach that yields innovative and practical solutions to complex problems. These qualities are valued by our great customers based in every region across the country, and we’re sure the folks in New England will love working with us too!
Our team is looking forward to building new relationships and bringing the unique M+K brand of structural engineering to the architects, builders, and developers in Boston and the entire New England Region.
Since the day we opened our doors, we’ve been committed to building a company that fosters professional and personal growth, promotes the importance of volunteering and giving back, and embraces the value of having fun. We felt then, as we do now, that pursuing these goals were very important to the well-being and productivity of our employees and, by extension, our firm.
When it comes to workplace excellence awards in the Structural Engineering community, we’ve consistently ranked in the top 5 ‘Best Firms to Work For’ nationally. While winning awards in recognition of our culture isn’t new, we’re excited to add some new hardware to our shelf…PSMJ’s 2022 A/E/C Employer of Choice Award! Even better, this was our first year participating in their national competition that determines the best of the best. Only the top 10 firms in the entire AE industry are honored with this incredibly exclusive and hard to achieve award – and we couldn’t be more proud of the recognition.
“Building an Award-Winning Culture” is literally part of our Mission Statement, and we’re blessed to have such awesome employees who consistently contribute to this effort. Thanks to our whole team for their hard work, and thank you to PSMJ Resources, Inc. for this recognition!
In the world of high-end custom homes, T.S. Adams Studio has been a well-respected source of distinctive architectural design for over 20 years. While a majority of their work is done in the southeast where their offices are located, you can find their designs in custom homes up and down the east coast and in regions of the mid-west. Their commitment to delivering a high standard of quality and detail requires an equally high level of structural design to achieve their ambitious vision. Our expertise in wood framing and creative approach to problem solving is the main reason they have chosen to partner with us on a number of unique projects.
This two-story custom on the northern end of Atlanta is a perfect example of our successful collaboration. Areas of heavy slate roof and stone tile floor finish required careful consideration of layout and structural design to meet the stringent deflection criteria required by the high-performance standards in this type of construction. The site itself presented challenges with the extreme grading conditions, which ultimately required sub-level retaining walls with counterforts and deadman walls to create the entirely level first floor layout with its sprawling terrace.
We’re proud and grateful to work with the team at T.S. Adams Studio and look forward to future collaborations.
The neighborhood of The Nations on Nashville’s west side is home to the newly constructed The Union Apartments. As a self-proclaimed home for modern innovators, The Union embraces its place in the revitalized industrial region of the city, offering a variety of living space options over its 250+ apartment units to those new to the neighborhood. Working for the first time with Brock Hudgins Architects and multi-family developer Wood Partners, both based in Atlanta, we’ve since been proud to watch our partnership grow over three multi-family projects across Nashville in recent years.
The Union has a total of four wood-framed four-story apartment buildings settled around common outdoor spaces and a community pool. The front entrance serves as the main focal point of the project, where an unclad two-story steel frame skeleton protrudes out of the residential building to form a drive-under with an industrial feel. Not simply for show, the steel also extends over the full width of the front portion of the residential building, providing support for the upper levels of wood-framed units over the two-story clubhouse space below. The end result is a structure whose aesthetic reflects the nature of its setting, with its polished contemporary façade anchored by its industrial past.
Meritage Homes is a national production homebuilder whose myriad projects from California to Florida consistently lands them in the top 10 of the Builder 100 list. Though only a few years old, our relationship with Meritage Homes’ Southeast Region functioned as a strong partnership from the start.
The genesis of our relationship came in 2018 as they began a multi-year value engineering initiative to holistically review and redesign their Southeast region’s multiple product lines to improve the architectural floor plans, elevations, and structural engineering. Value engineering comes standard with our services, so our team was excited to work with Meritage to simplify their structural designs, reduce material costs, and improving standardization. Historically, our designs reduce framing hard costs over $2000. A few simple calculations later, the Meritage team quickly realized that the savings from this initiative would make a huge impact on their bottom line.
Starting fresh, we were able to organize our design standards and typical detailing around their construction preferences – which is the foundation for creating standardized designs across multiple product lines and multiple divisions. This makes the entire library of homes easier to build, with less opportunities for field errors. After laying the groundwork of a solid relationship for years to come, we’re proud to currently provide structural designs for the single-family homes in Nashville, Atlanta, Greenville, Raleigh, and Myrtle Beach for Meritage Home’s Southeast Division.
We’re very excited to have had the following article published in the November issue of Structure magazine. It goes without saying that we’re super proud of the M+K staff members who co-authored this piece: Bert Coelho, P.E. [Principal + Dir. Business Development], Kevin Quan, P.E. [Sr. Project Engineer], and Micah Milner, P.E. [Project Engineer].
Steel Stud Bearing Walls
An Alternative to Traditional Podium Levels
Developers are always looking for new and innovative ways to make buildings more profitable and financially efficient. Traditionally, a multi-story bearing wall building over one to two levels of steel or concrete, also known as a podium structure, has filled this need by offering high-density residential units at the upper levels and parking or retail spaces at the lowest floors. For multi-story residential buildings, wood construction is generally considered the most cost-efficient form of construction, followed by cold-formed steel (CFS) bearing walls and then heavy steel or concrete framing. Because of this, developers have sought to maximize the number of wood-framed floors over the podium level before switching to more costly materials.
Wood bearing wall systems are limited to either 4-stories using Type V-A construction or 5-stories using Type III-A construction. Both types of construction can be supported on grade or a podium structure. Podium structures have been covered extensively in previous articles by STRUCTURE magazine. They are proven methods of meeting not only financial requirements but zoning and regulatory obligations as well. This article focuses on an alternate hybrid system that maximizes the number of stacking levels of residential units by introducing multiple levels of CFS bearing walls to support the wood-framed levels before transitioning to the transfer level or foundation.
The Challenge
Recently, some developers have opted to add additional residential units below the Type V-A and III-A constructed units. This means the stacking residential units from above are carried down below the podium level by minimizing or removing the retail and parking areas altogether. This change increases unit density, thus maximizing more profitable areas by limiting the less profitable retail and parking areas.
The challenge with incorporating stacking units from above with a typical steel or concrete podium superstructure is the interference of regularly spaced columns with residential unit layouts. While the podium column scheme lends itself well to open spaces required for retail and parking, the standard grid pattern presents architectural challenges at residential levels in accommodating columns within the unit layouts. Additionally, non-stacking loads from the residential bearing wall system above inevitably require deep steel or concrete beams or heavily reinforced concrete slabs and may even require drop panels. The ideal column grid may also disrupt stacked window layouts along the exterior of the building below the podium level.
Architecture is not the only discipline to face challenges with this system. Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC systems are typically accommodated by having stacking mechanical penetrations for the full height of the building. In a wood-framed building, these are commonly located within the wall stud cavity. Therefore, stacked penetrations running down through the steel or concrete podium structure invariably conflict with beam and column locations that directly support the walls above.
To resolve these issues, architects frequently need to create new unit types and floor layouts to work around the traditional podium structural elements. Unfortunately, the new layouts can create spaces that may be inefficient or undesirable to developers or prospective tenants. Continue reading “M+K Article Published in Structure Magazine”
