2 Drydock Avenue

Overview

Situated in Boston's Eastern Seaport, Two Drydock is a 14 story, 225,000-square-foot mixed use building providing an experience-based workplace in a neighborhood rapidly attracting innovative companies. The building features 9,500-square-feet of ground floor retail space, a 12,000-square-foot public plaza and a roof terrace offering panoramic views of Boston's skyline.

We provided structural design services to SGA for the complex, which opened in 2020.

Highlights

• The building framing is steel with composite-concrete floors. The lateral system comprises braced frames, and the foundation is a structural slab on pile caps over precast concrete piles.
• We worked closely with the design team in the initial stages to provide value management services. By recommending a steel braced-frame configuration over the initial scheme of a concrete core, we saved more than $1 million in foundation costs.
• The main structural design goal was to accommodate an open office plan within a tight floor-to-floor spacing. The main office floors are supported on steel composite joists, which allow for easier placement of ductwork and plumbing.
• The garage and roof levels are supported on steel wide-flange joists. The design team relied on constant communication to provide a series of beam penetrations in the garage and roof floors. This allowed for an increase to the maximum ceiling height directly below the steel beams.
• Since the building is situated next to a rail line, we also provided vibration prediction and mitigation solutions for rail-induced vibration concerns within the building. It also involved the prediction of footfall-induced vibrations within the office floors to ensure a comfortable environment.