St. Louis-based Hastings & Chivetta Architects, Inc., has renovated the existing 1996 Olympic swimming and diving venue at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, turning it into a student recreation center and creating a 175-foot continuous floor span, the longest ever known. The design transformed the former single-purpose facility into a venue usable for many of the university’s recreational activities.

Hastings & Chivetta’s creative design solution entailed construction of an interstitial floor above the pool complex. This floor spans 175 feet across the pool tank and spectator seating. To reduce vibration from the recreational court space above, the architect installed a post-tension column, beam, and floor-slab system. New columns now stand outside of the existing building on the north and throughout the existing structure on the south side, where spectator seating is located. The architects share credit for this extraordinary structural system with Continental Concrete Structures, Atlanta; ABS Consulting, St. Louis; and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Professor Thomas Murray, who assisted with analysis of vibration anticipated from activity in the gym. The resulting framing system forms the longest continuous post-tension system—with some 60 miles of cable—in the country.

In 1996, when Georgia Tech was chosen to house a 15,000-seat swimming and diving venue for the Summer Olympics, a freestanding, outdoor shelter was attached to the school’s existing, obsolete recreation center. “The Olympic facility was built solely for this event and was not suitable for indoor natatorium use at the university,” explains Steve DeHekker, project manager for Hastings & Chivetta. “The extreme vertical height of the venue was necessary to accommodate the 15,000 spectator seats, 13,000 of which were temporary.”
To make matters more complicated, the existing solar-paneled roof—part of a 25-year research project being conducted by Georgia Tech, Georgia Power, and the U.S. Department of Energy—had to remain intact.

Hastings & Chivetta’s design incorporates an intermediate floor at the fourth level over the pool to accommodate approximately 60,000 square feet of gymnasium and multipurpose space. Phase I of the $40 million project involves the enclosure of the Olympic pool and the addition of new gymnasium space on the intermediate floor. The second phase, scheduled for completion in September 2004, includes demolition of the original facility and construction of a new entry, fitness center, racquetball courts, climbing wall, leisure pool, offices, locker rooms, and 500-car, three-level parking deck.

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