1600 Smith Street
Garage and Tunnel System
Houston, TX
Architect
Morris & Aubry Architects
Area
400,000 sq.ft.
Cost
$16 Million
The 1600 Smith Street Garage is one of the largest garages in the U.S. and uses a structural system of cast-in-place mild steel reinforced concrete haunched girders and sloping pan-joist floors which also serve as ramps. The garage contains spaces for 2,800 cars on twelve floors. It is designed to be architecturally and structurally compatible with the adjacent Cullen Center. The building is designed as a series of parallel, multi-story, haunched girder frames with an interactive eccentric shear wall. The considerable resulting torsional stresses were accommodated in the frames themselves. The foundations were complicated by proximity to the completed tower and connection to an underground pedestrian tunnel.