AESS Parking Garage

Towering eight stories high with an orange, red and white façade covered with surfboard style decorative fixtures attached to exposed hot-dip galvanized steel framing, the new parking garage in Santa Monicas Promenade shopping district is truly breathtaking. The entire sub-structure of the building was built using large, lightweight offset galvanized tube steel frames which had to comply with the Architectural Exposed Structural Steels (AESS) rigid guidelines. The design team planned to use galvanized steel from the start not only due to reasonable initial costs but also because the parking facility is only a stone throws distance from the ocean and needed hot-dip galvanizings extreme coating durability and advanced corrosion performance properties to withstand the daily assault of corrosive sea air.

The design team planned to use galvanized steel from the start not only due to reasonable initial costs but also because the parking facility is only a stone throws distance from the ocean...

The architect and steel fabricator visited the galvanizer prior to fabrication to gain a more thorough understanding and overall appreciation of the hot-dip galvanizing process. The galvanizer required additional turnaround time to work the tube steel structures through the kettle due to the offset, over-sized product configuration where every fabricated structure required unique progress dip handling. Finally, the galvanizer was required to take additional clean up measures on the galvanized steel structures before delivering them to the job-site where they would be subject to a final inspection.

The City of Santa Monica and the hot-dip galvanizing industry have a long and illustrious relationship and the majority of new construction in the city specifies our unique and economical form of corrosion protection. Hot-dip galvanizing not only provides positive life-cycle costs for their valuable infrastructure investments but offers unprecedented sustainability with a clean, pleasing aesthetic presentation.

Details

Year Galvanized

2014

Award Class

Newly Complete

Award Sectors

Artistic

Building & Architecture

Transportation

Environment

Temperate Marine

Location

Santa Monica, CA United States

Reasons for Galvanizing

Aesthetics, Coating Durability, Corrosion Performance, Initial Cost, Life-Cycle Cost, Prior HDG Experience, Quality of HDG, Sustainability, Turnaround Time