Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, the Academy Museum is located next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus in the landmarked Wilshire May Company building, the Museum will curate and present the work of Oscar winners, nominees, and the legions of global artists who make movies. The Museum will provide interactive, immersive, and engaging exhibitions that will highlight movie making, its history and the future of arts and sciences of film.

Shannon & Wilson’s services included geotechnical engineering for the Environmental Impact Study for geologic and soil discipline, preliminary and final geotechnical design, pile load testing, and construction observation of the new foundations and temporary shoring. In addition, we provided site-specific seismic study services for retrofit of the historic May Company building and new base-isolation foundation system for the Sphere annex.

We prepared the foundation design which includes the La Brea tar pits and provided engineering services for monitoring and evaluation of static compression load testing for a 24-inch-diameter, 200-ton augercast pile, and static tension load testing for 12-inch-diamater, 135-ton micropiles.  The augercast piles will support the new structural elements of the museum, specifically a spherical-shaped theater.  The micropiles will be used to seismically retrofit the historic May Company building.