Exploring the Innovative Stairs at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

As the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures nears completion, join Andy Rastetter for a tour of the innovative stairs designed to move in the event of an earthquake.

https://www.youtu.be/mXnWIQCG7gk

According to associate structural engineer, Andy Rastetter, “The design of the hinges was inspired by the universal joints for example in the drive train of a car. There is no known example of another building that has columns with hinges in them. Intuitively it doesn’t make sense. You think of a column as a rigid object, and as soon as you put a hinge in it that could make the column fall over. In this case it was born out of necessity. We had to invent solutions that had never been tried before that are completely unique to this project. This is one of those solutions.”

Find out more about our work on the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures project page.