Dive Brief:

• Engineering firm Tipping Mar designed a 232-foot-tall, 8 million-pound concrete core that sits on a 3.5-foot bearing and is the earthquake protection scheme for 680 Folsom St. in San Francisco.
• The friction-pendulum bearing uses a principle exploited for pagodas in Japan about 1,500 years ago.
• The new design came during a recession-induced hiatus in the rehabilitation project and cut $ million from the total cost when work resumed.

Dive Insight:

The building, built in 1962, was getting a total makeover, permitted by the city in 2008, when financials turned against it. A value engineering effort in 2010 came up with the 30-foot-square core that, like a pagoda's central shinbasira, distributes seismic energy throughout the structure and lets the floors shift  to dissipate it.