TAO Chicago | Adaptive Reuse

Formerly the Chicago Historical Society building designed in the 1890s by Henry Ives Cobb, this Chicago Landmark was adapted and renovated to house the Tao Chicago restaurant and club. This granite clad, Romanesque style building is constructed from unreinforced load bearing masonry walls. The floors are comprised of steel framing and fire proof clay tile arch floors. The building is listed on U.S. National Register of Historical Places.

RRJ was retained by the construction manager to provide construction consulting services for the adaptive reuse to accommodate the restaurant and club which involved the removal of four major interior load bearing walls. RRJ developed a shoring and demolition approach that would allow the building to be stable while the shoring, demolition and installation of new transfer  beams were being performed.

The design demolition contract drawings were limited to only plans with no existing wall elevations, so a survey of each of the interior walls was required. RRJ used a 3D laser survey  to perform the field investigation reducing the time required on site and to generate accurate wall elevations to better understand how the walls would behave when portions of the walls were removed. RRJ developed a shoring approach sequence, plans, and elevations  for  the contractor to provide a step by step documentation to plan the shoring, demolition and installation scope.

In addition, RRJ proposed multiple ways to reduce the shoring scope by infilling portions of the masonry in lieu of adding steel headers. These recommendations led to a  reduction  in the shoring scope with little interruption to the architectural program.