The Monterey Conference Center: Creatively Taking on the Future

摘要

The Monterey Conference Center in the historic city of Monterey, California was built for the community in 1977 and is in the process of being upgraded through renovation and reconfiguration to more flexibly serve current needs while accommodating code developments and other modernization needs. The renovations have included major changes to the existing structure—particularly the steel superstructure—interior finishes, and spaces, making it possible to host a greater variety of events simultaneously and separately by enhancing the approach to access, partitioning and exiting the building. Significant portions of the existing superstructure are being replaced to make this possible, allowing, in the process, the opportunity to enhance the building's aesthetic. Renovating the conference center posed many challenges, not least being the repurposing of post-tensioned slabs and long span girders designed by the famous engineering firm T.Y. Lin International to accommodate loads from the reconfigured superstructure. Retrofit has included the use of external post-tensioning solutions and composite fiber wrap. Creating large new openings in existing post tensioned concrete slabs involved de-tensioning and re-tensioning of post tensioning strands. The paper will describe the approach to the retrofit of the Monterey Conference Center to accommodate the renovations and reconfiguration given the constraints of the existing structure and layouts.