Andy Rastetter is an associate on Buro Happold’s California Structures team, bringing ten years of experience in the fields of architecture and structural engineering. Throughout his career, Andy has played a key role in delivering a wide range of projects, spanning from single-family residential structures to large-scale cultural and institutional buildings and urban-scale redevelopment. His dual educational background in engineering and architecture has cultivated a unique expertise in integrated structural design. Andy is dedicated to developing structures that not only provide support but also enhance the overall architectural vision. He firmly believes in the importance of collaboration and integration in the design process, and he finds fulfillment in working closely with architects to turn their visions into reality, even achieving the seemingly impossible. In his free time, Andy extends his passion for the field by teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves as a continuing lecturer in the Department of Architecture.
Opened in September of 2021, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures provides a state-of-the-art home for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The adaptive re-use project transforms the historic May Company Building (renamed Saban Building), a 1939 Art Deco department store, into more than 50,000-sf of galleries and archives, and introduces a soaring spherical addition housing the 1000-seat David Geffen Theater and a dramatic roof terrace set beneath a glass dome. This presentation will describe the challenges associated with the adaptive reuse of an historic structure and the significant challenges in connecting it to the base-isolated spherical theatre addition. The speaker will describe the use of advanced technologies and an integrated design approach for this complex project as well as unprecedented structural solutions that provided flexible connections in two very different buildings.