An old building, without a single drawing and cracked by decades of torsion, is today one of the most iconic in its area.
The Rubí Building, located on the corner of Calle Illampu and Santa Cruz, in La Paz, is made up of 3 blocks of 11 levels totaling 13,500 m² built. Its new owner wanted to give it an ambitious use: retail units, a hotel and an events center, significant loads for an old structure in poor condition.
At the time of the inspection the building had no structural drawings, nor any of any other kind, so we carried out a complete geometric survey of the structure. Significant cracks were found, along with several structural elements drilled through by the previous owner. The diagnosis also revealed suboptimal behavior under horizontal loads: the centers of mass and stiffness were highly eccentric, and the torsion the building underwent over the years left cracks and fissures in the structure.
We implemented multiple reinforcements: the jacketing of numerous columns, the construction of new shear walls, the reinforcement of the beam-column joints and the construction of new beams, among others, all designed to support the change of use and its new loads.
The result: with its new architecture and façade (which were not our work), the building became one of the most iconic in the area. The photos show how its appearance changed completely; it is our repairs that make that change of use possible.
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