Calaveras County Superior Courthouse

San Andreas, CA

Incorporating an underground tunnel into the extreme grade changes and rocky underlayment of the Sierra Nevada foothills is no easy task — luckily, it's exactly the sort of challenge our engineers love to solve.

This new superior courthouse features four courtrooms, a full-height atrium with expansive skylight, monumental exposed stair, and underground tunnel for transferring inmates to and from the nearby jail. To fulfill the architect's vision for this building, which included a striking 32-ft cantilevered roof overhang, the team designed this building using the thinnest profile possible. The seismic force-resisting system consists of structural steel special moment-resisting frames for the above-grade portion of the building. To limit the number of structural frames and impact to the space, two-way "cruciform" moment-frame columns were provided in several locations.

There was a substantial amount of rock encountered during excavation for the tunnel and basement. Although challenging, the architect notes the project was “one of only two recent courthouses completed in California that had no contractor callbacks to the jobsite, no change orders, and no items to fix or repair.”