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An Oregon State University marine research facility under construction in Newport is engineered to be resilient in the face of the worst conditions nature has to offer.

The three-story Marine Studies Building at the Hatfield Marine Science Center was designed to stand up to a magnitude 9.0 subduction zone earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which could bring waves up to 31 feet in height.

鈥淎s far as resiliency goes, there hasn’t been a building built like this on the west coast,鈥� said Dave Raleigh, OSU‘s project construction manager.

The university is also hoping the unique facility will be draw hundreds more full-time students to its growing campus on the Oregon coast.

Andersen Construction is the general contractor on the $61.7 million project, which was designed by Yost Grube Hall Architecture. KPFF Consulting Engineers is performing structural engineering work.

The facility consists of a pair of steel-framed buildings linked with a seismic joint. The taller of the two buildings will serve as a tsunami evacuation site and will be accessed via a reinforced concrete ramp. 聽It will be one of just two vertical evacuation facilities in the Pacific Northwest, and will have capacity for 900 people.

Combined, the two three-story buildings will have some 72,000 square feet of floor area split into academic and research wings, along with a two-story community space with an auditorium and laboratories.

鈥淏ecause it’s built to codes that are not yet in place, it’s extremely robust,鈥� said Andersen Construction Superintendent Mark Reusser, referring to proposed Universal Building Code additions governing tsunami and earthquake resilience.

The key to withstanding a magnitude 9 quake, KPFF Principal Josh Richards said last year, comes from honeycomb-style, deep-soil foundation columns reaching over 100 feet below the sandy surface soils. The overlapping grid-like foundation is mutually supportive when experiencing lateral stress, such as that caused by an earthquake or tsunami.

In addition, deep soil mixing, which has been used in Japan since the 1950s and in California since the ’70s, uses cement-like materials to fill or blend with native soil. This increases soil strength and compressibility 鈥� as well as earthquake survivability.

鈥淲e’re not really trying to demonstrate anything,鈥� said Raleigh. 鈥淲e’re just trying to make the building safe for the community user. We’re taking a lot of things into consideration; what’s going to cause a tsunami is a huge earthquake, so that’s really what this is based on, that 2,500 year event.鈥�

Crews began work on the project in March 2018, and since then structural steel work has been completed and steel decking has been placed on the second and third floors in preparation for slab-on-deck concrete pours. Last week saw the first pour of the slab-on-deck concrete roof, a process that should be completed on the second and third floors by mid-April. The final slab-on-grade pour by should be completed by the end of next month.

鈥淲e’re pouring from the roof down and then pouring the slab-on-grade afterward,鈥� Reusser said. 鈥淢ainly that’s to protect against the weather here and the polished concrete floors, so that the polished slab-on-grade concrete floors would not get trashed by the heavy construction work of installing the structural steel.鈥�

Substantial completion of the project is expected by March 2020, with OSU staff moving into the new facility that spring in preparation for the start of classes that summer.