This building at UC Berkeley wears its earthquake prevention on the outside

For a building sitting just a quarter-mile from one of the most active faults in the seismically treacherous San Francisco Bay Area, the UC Berkeley Grimes Engineering Center is unambiguously confident. Designed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the building has been outfitted with a new seismic-responsive structural system that’s capable of withstanding major earthquakes. The architects put the system on full display.

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The system consists of steel tension rods strung diagonally around the perimeter of the building, which is the architectural design winner of the 2026 Innovation by Design Awards. It was completed in April 2025 at a cost of $110 million. Near the top of each rod is a 4-foot section spliced with a cluster of cables made from a highly flexible compound called a shape-memory alloy. Commonly used in NASA spacecraft, the material can bend during extreme stress, like during an earthquake, and then snap back into a straight position.

David Shook, a senior associate principal at SOM who helped develop the shape-memory alloy system, equates it to a rubber band, stretching and changing shape and then reverting to its original form. Should an earthquake hit, Shook says, “the building’s going to come back to plumb.”

SOM developed this system alongside researchers at UC Berkeley’s engineering school, a preeminent center for seismic studies. They decided to leave the tension rods exposed partly as a design move and partly as a teaching tool. “This is a place where they test, understand, and deploy new technologies in seismic zones year after year after year,” says Mark Sarkisian, a structural engineer and partner at SOM. “It’s fun to be able to work with them to bring this forward in a visual way.”

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