Fast Horse Office Expansion is a creative solution to a project with difficult physical and monetary limitations. Located on a small footprint with tight site constraints, two steel-framed stories and a rooftop patio were added to an existing two-story, concrete-framed building to create a new office building for the fast-growing marketing agency. Each of its four floors offers 2,000 square feet of open, collaborative working space.
Doubling the height of the original building, the addition and renovation added an interior stair, two steel stair towers, and an elevator outside of the existing building footprint over which the new steel roof extends. Floors are cast-in-place lightweight concrete slab over metal deck supported by new structural steel frame. New exterior walls are light gauge steel stud bearing walls with diagonal bracing. To limit bearing pressures on the existing foundations, MBJ reduced the loads at the perimeter of the bearing walls by adding new interior columns and using lightweight materials, such as wall studs and lightweight concrete slab on metal deck. Doubling the building’s height increased lateral loads, which were resisted by the elevator shaft and diagonal strap bracing on light gauge walls lashed to the existing concrete foundation walls.
Minneapolis, MN
2016
$2,500,000
Fast Horse Marketing Agency
Salmela Architect
Salmela Architect
