Parc at Buckhead
Atlanta, Georgia
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Concrete Provides Luxury Residence in Atlanta
 Completed
in the fall of 2007, the Parc at Buckhead offers apartments for
lease in a high rise independent living community for 55 and older
active seniors. The 296,000 SF concrete frame tower topping out
at 224 ft above street level, is located in the heart of the Buckhead
district, an upscale Atlanta community. The building has 193 apartments
including landscaped gardens and the amenities and services of a
five star hotel.
This 20 story tower, transfers out over two stories of underground
parking using 15 post tensioned transfer beams which are between
3 and 6-1/2 ft deep.
 Typical
tower floors are 8” post tensioned flat plate supported on
24”x30” columns. Lateral system consists of 14”
concrete shear walls which reduce to 12” at the upper lobby
and surround the elevators and stairs at the core of the building.
Due to a mix of rock and soil on site the tower structure is supported
on deep piles and shallow foundations.
There is also an elevated lap pool, sunroom, and terrace next to
the tower that provides a stunning view of Buckhead for the residences,
utilizing similar concrete frame design to the tower.
To aid the construction schedule, a 5000psi high early concrete
mix was used for the tower slabs to allow for stressing after 24
hours. In place IntelliRock concrete maturity testing was used to
avoid the requirement of an on site testing facility. This allowed
tower construction to move skyward at 1 floor, almost 15,000square
feet plus vertical structure, every 7 days.
The concrete supplier worked constantly updated their mixes to
work through a transition from winter to summer and also to allow
the mix to be continuously pumped up the tower over 200ft.
 Concrete
framing allowed the structure to have superior acoustic performance
to steel framing, and also provided built in fireproofing. The thin
floor plate design, only possible with concrete, allowed for an
increase in tower floors and rentable residences without adding
to the overall height and cladding cost of the tower.
The flexibility of concrete construction, as apposed to the requirements
of pre-ordering fabricated steel, also allowed the design team to
make last second additions and revisions to the tower to maintain
the expectations of the developer and vision of the architect for
this all inclusive luxurious community.
Due to the efforts of the design team and use of an efficient concrete
frame the project has stayed on schedule and within budget.
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