if you can ma make one accessible, make one accessible. >> so if the code says five and disabled access says you can only get in four then you file for a hardship and say i'll put four in. but in a case like this there are almost always solutions. here's an exarnl where you -- example where you only go outside. depending on your creativity, the easiest method is to claim hardship. >> i want everyone to notice that on the exact diagonal of where we were just a few minutes ago is an exit sign. that's the second exit. every one of these buildings has at least two exits. that's a requirement. i believe this building actually has three. but at a minimum, you must have two exits that are separated by half a diagonal of the building. and they'll have a sign, and that's a rated corridor, and it

goes all the way down half the plaza level all the way down to the concourse level to a corridor that goes up some stairs and puts you right on pine street. >> okay. let's look at the pipes that are hang up in the ceiling, see if we can identify what they are and what they're used for. brad, you can help me. the first thing, and we were talking about it a middle ago, are some smaller ones, like this guy over my head, fire sprinkler lines. this building and buildings of its kind are fully splirchg intg letter. >intrirchgsprinklered. >> there are two different kinds of electrical basically that we're talking about. we have the line voltage stuff, the stuff that runs equipment and lights and so on. and then we have signal stuff.

>> low voltage. >> low voltage. for example, the stuff that's serving this little light here, which is part of the alarm system has its own separate conduit. the same conduit is protected, very necessary in high rise buildings. >> if you're smart you can see the junction box painted red as well so that you can identify it. the one thing is when you're working on the inside of a space you never want to touch the life safety system wires because as soon as you touch those wires accidentally, fire department shows up. and they're not going to be happy. you get a couple, and then they start to charge you. i think they thought about it. >> after five, that's the. you've got five warnings. >> these pipes here are probably the biggest sewer drain pipes that we've ever seen.

this is draining sewer from for example -- >> it may or may not. >> you can see the branches come across and drop into the main, most likely it goes straight down. i think there may be a dual pipe system here for a reason. what we've got the other side there -- >> one may be roof water and one may be sewer water. depending on how they want to do it. >> but san francisco is unique that way too, where even though there are separate pipes right here, they go into the same sustain, eventually. >> we take our groundwater and put it into our sewer treatment system and then require us to treat the rainwater, as the sewage. so if you ever look at your water bill, it will be $25 for the water you bought, and $75 to treat that water. and the reason it is, is because you're paying to treat all the rainwater that goes into the storm system, that goes into the

sewage system. >> okay, let's see, what else do we have? >> how come the sprinkle springe turning up? >> that's the way it is now. when they put the ceiling, they may have to put another sprinkler system. if you were to put a ceiling in, you'd have to sprinkler above and below. but nobody knows the height of the ceiling. so the last thing you want to do is put a sprinkler head in pointing down which you really don't need because these heads will fully sprinkler. >> there's actually a lot of expense from taking a tenant space from one use, demoing it, and preparing it for the next time you're going to lease it out. you actually have an expense where you have to alter the

sprinklers to be able to support the way the system is now. and then when the tenant comes in you've got another tenant improvement. to have the exit signs working, during the courts of demolition they wanted to make sure that the workers could get out in an emergency. there is a whole system to making sure that you keep the life safety codes in place while you're doing the de demolition. >> even if a house is mountain, shs. >> that light will remain on 24/7 and the smoke detectors are on. >> the one thing we didn't talk about is the trench here. >> that's getting a little high-tech. >> is that getting a little high-tech? >> we can explain if you want. in certain classes of buildings, who have what i consider sophisticated owners, they have put in electrified floor and they can lift up the steel plate

here, and there is a trench here with wire trenches going out this way. and so they can come in and say, i want an electrical outlet right there where your foot is. and they can open up this plate, run a wire down a sleeve, drill a hole where you're standing, and pop utd a wire -- up a wire, and never go down to the tenant below. they're called monuments. well, here's one. here is a monument. here they are. when they're done and the tenant moves out, they fill these in. at one time, there was a power plug here. and this is where people want to have buildings with the ultimate flexibility. but there's a premium to that. >> there is, yes. >> and there's tradeoffs. you can either pay now or pay later. >> that's right. imagine drilling, going underneath a floor drilling a

hole and bringing up a pipe for every single outlet. >> and it all has to be in conduit. you've got to pop the ceiling down and run this. >> whereas a beautiful space,. >> hard wood ceilings. >> how about the electronics, wiring? >> electronic and low voltage wiring and all the other. >> all the wiring is in the core. we're not going to be loued to go in there -- allowed to go in there. the amount of power that comes into the building is mind-boggling. generally in the core and then taps off. >> when you say electronics you mean for the tenants themselves, all their telephone lines and computer lines. that's becoming a really big problem not just high rise but all buildings. it's a huge amount of wiring and the tenant moves out and you're left with all the wiring.

the cost to the landlord is to remove this wiring. >> that's why it's nice to have a trench. but if you don't have the trench system then you just go overhead. it's pretty simple. you go to the electrical closet. you pull the wires, you go overhead, into your ceiling and drop down into your walls. almost everything you do you're trying to do overhead. that's what's great about the sooilg ceiling systems and the tall floor systems. >> the problem with that is you have to have your walls run all the way up. and in some spaces what they like is they want their partition wall here and then the entire space to be those four-foot-high partition walls. >> actually there is a code requirement that says if the partition walls are over four feet nine inches, if it's over that it forms a corridor wall. so everyone wants to ceeb it

less than that. >> then you can't bring the power down. >> there is a little -- >> you get around it you make a tunnel for it. >> so you can get your fire rating. you can maintain the egress and the one-hour ratings to get out, you simply make a tunnel, looks like an n upside down, you make the whole thing one hour rated, and run your duct through. >> is there anything else -- >> i do have this question. >> let's talk about all the rest of the rest of bits and pieces. >> these are probably what you would call a black iron strut, and they were popped off the wall so that they could build a stud wall in front of it. and they just bent them down to keep them out of the way. >> it was some structure it was holding up. what do we have here? >> copper water lines, water,

potentially there was a fountain here. this is a sewer vent of some kind. this may have been -- >> like an abandoned water. >> like water or gas or something. sewer. >> do they have gas in the ceiling? >> some do. >> want to see how a plaster wall is made? the black of the plaster wall is expanded metal lath and then it's plastered on the other side, in a couple of different layers, not just one. >> to give you an idea of the strength can, this is really strong. and it is cut in half, and i'm i'ming on it. >> we just did some earthquake testing over at u.c. berkeley and it turns out that it is the assembly of things that adds a lot of things to it. the individual segments may not be that strong, the lath, the

plaster, but when you put things together you get very strong in summary. >> this thing part's got to come up, we came up the freight elevator. this is the main elevator. so in this building, there are four elevator bank. and each bank services a quarter of the building. you don't want to get in on an elevator, and have 52 floor buttons. when they create high rise buildings they create elevator banks and break the building up into sections or quadrants. and this elevator services 1 to 14. there are other elevator banks but the they bypass these floors, service 15 through 28. another elevator bank services

other floors. what is interesting is, on these super-tall buildings, since the elevator takes up so much space, they have a superelevator that takes you from the first floor to the 50 floor lobby. and they've moved the lobby up higher up into the building, and then they redistribute you. because the elevators take up so much space in the building, and -- >> there's a whole new elevator control industry that's in play, that's coming underway? where they have offered intelligent design of elevators. >> intelligent design. i've heard about them, where you've got different people on different floors pressing different buttons at different times. the computer system is analyzing where the people are and picking

up the best way to deliver people. >> there's some disabled access issues about people in wheelchairs have to wait for certain other elevators but we'll get over that disabled access. >> the other thing that is interesting is that the elevators will call you for your floor. you put your card up to the elevator, and it brings an elevator down, and says get into elevator number l, you step into elevator number l and there's no floor button to push. it's already been preprogrammed that your security pass is going to take you to floor 13. >> we had a question about how this and other buildings perform in earthquakes. i know that the transamerica pyramid, i think it was instrumented and i keep reading that it drifted a foot in the loma prieta earthquake.

doesn't seem like much to me. how do these buildings perform in seismic events? >> historically no modern high-rise building has ever collapsed in a major event except for one building in mexico city where it was designed as an office building and the government converted it to a book warehouse. and they filled the floors up this high with paper. which effectivelily mad effectie building three times heavier than it should be. as a class, these buildings are probably some of the best buildings you could be in. >> but there was an interesting anomaly that came up as a result of the northridge earthquake in los angeles in the '90s. that was the welded steel joints which we up to that point thought were absolutely

terrific, allowed a lot of movement, turned out to not just fail but to be weaker than we thought, to crack. there was an enormous effort coming forward, to figure out how this happened, how to prevent that in the future. >> part of the problem with those, the city has an ordinance on a certain size earthquake is that you will come out and inspect the welded joints. >> a welded joint is one of the places where the beam and the column -- >> this particular building has been instrumented andettes been reviewed by the author of the northridge report. >> instrumented means there is seismic motion instruments so as the building sways it can record what the duration is and what the forces are. >> this building's response was this building was so

conservatively designed, you couldn't believe how conservatively designed it was. that was one of the authors of the northridge report. >> some buildings are not as sceflconservatively designed. >> they changed the design of the buildings after northrich. the two connecting the beam is now kind of tapered in a little bit. >> dog boned. >> dog bones in a building. so we expect most high rise buildings to perform quite well. some of them will have a lot of investigation to do. >> well, the biggest issue would be glass. in general, if you're downtown, stay in the buildings. the buildings are perfectly safe. the biggest issue is probably -- well, my mind is, that's my office. >> you're a whole lot safer in the building. >> my life, ten hours a day

seven days a week in that building. that building is a brunier building, same gieg who designed this building. for 40 years this guy was brilliant. so i'm in a 27 building. i'm staying in the building. i don't want to be on the street because i don't want to be can climbing through the glass. stay in the building. if you're in the street and there's an earthquake, jump into the building. thereto going to be a lot of things falling. >> who knows what's going to be falling? we've seen that a lot. >> are there any other questions? >> older high rises are not required to make special let retrofit? >> there is no requirement for any retrofit except for brick buildings in san francisco. some older high rises do pose a potential problem. those are the ones that are not steel but concrete buildings.

older concrete buildings. >> that's a problem that we haven't quite greapsd politically. because those buildings are the exact same buildings that were built up into the 60s has very high-end residential contents. very high end. those owners are going to go ballistic when they say retrofit your building. there is not a lot of nonduck tile concrete frame office buildings. there is a few. the majority of them are steel. the building i'm in it has been evaluated and it has compared well with -- >> is it a coul concrete buildi? >> it is right there. >> the concrete building on the west coast is third street, built just a couple of years back. >> modern concrete buildings we think are very good. but the buildings that were built before the mid 70s, when the codes changed, the buildings

that are built out of concrete are a hazard maybe. >> 1920 to 1970, there is a class of buildings we're struggling with. in 1971 they built a hospital out of this. and a week before the hospital opened, they had the san fernando earthquake and the building collapsed. now, trust me, when you have a hogs collapse, you've got a lot of attention. and they banded in the next code cycle. >> so there is a class of high rise buildings that it's a potential hazard. it's not the downtown office buildings. it's these tall concrete high rise buildings and they have a problem in mexico city with that. >> when the when they do the ba, they've got four of them all the way around. >> here is the fire sprinklers. somebody accidentally hits the

fire sprinklers. >> they bring the stove top of drum, 55 foot high, retur run to turn it off and the other guy gets the next 55-gallon garbage can. >> it used to be, if you fire sprinklered your building, you got a real cut on your insurance. now if you fire sprinkler your building, insurance companies are thinking, the water damage is so high, maybe the rates should go up. >> it gets a minute to a minute and a half before that fills up. >> that's why they have four on a floor, and keep filling it off. one guy goes to turn it off and another guy goes to get the next drum, he brings it over and gets the next drum and pulse i pumz . >> i think that's all for today. i want to thank the building

owners for letting us use their beautiful space. thank you all and we'll see you on the third thursday next month. [ ♪music ] [ ♪music ]

>> i'm your host of "culturewire," and today, here at electric works in san francisco. nice to see you today. thanks for inviting us in and showing us your amazing facility today. >> my pleasure. >> how long has electric works been around? >> electric works has been in san francisco since the beginning of 2007. we moved here from brisbane from our old innovation. we do printmaking, gallery shows, and we have a fabulous retail store where there are lots of fun things to find. >> we will look at all of that as we walk around. it is incredible to me how many different things you do. how is it you identify that san francisco was in need of all these different services? >> it came from stepping out of graduate school in 1972.

i wrote a little thing about how this is an idea, how our world should work. it should have printmaking, archiving, a gallery. it should have a retail store. in 1972, i wanted to have art sales, point-of-sale at the grocery store. >> so you go through the manifesto. with the bay area should have. you are making art incredibly accessible in so many different ways, so that is a good segue. let's take a walk around the facilities. here we are in your gallery space. can you tell me about the current show? >> the current show is jeff chadsey. he is working on mylar velum, a smooth, beautiful drawing surface. i do not know anyone that draws as well as he does. it is perfect, following the

contours and making the shape of the body. >> your gallery represents artists from all over, not just the bay area, an artist that work in a lot of different media. how to use some of what you look for in artists you represent? >> it is dependent on people are confident with their materials. that is a really important thing. there is enough stuff in the world already. >> you also have in his current show an artist who makes sculpture out of some really interesting types of materials. let's go over and take a look at that. here we are in a smaller space. project gallery. >> artists used the parameters of this space to find relationships between the work that is not out in the big gallery. >> i noticed a lot of artists doing really site-specific work. >> this is a pile of balloons,

something that is so familiar, like a child's balloon. in this proportion, suddenly, it becomes something out of a dream. >> or a nightmare. >> may be a nightmare. >> this one over here is even harder to figure out what the initial material is. >> this is made out of puffy paint. often, kids use it to decorate their clothes. she has made all these lines of paint. >> for the pieces we are looking at, is there a core of foam or something in the middle of these pieces that she built on top of? >> i'm not telling. >> ah, a secret. >> this silver is aluminum foil, crumbled of aluminum foil. her aesthetic is very much that quiet, japanese spatial thing that i really admire. their attention to the materiality of the things of the

world. >> this is a nice juxtaposition you have going on right now. you have a more established artists alongside and emerging artists. is that something important to you as well? >> very important in this space, to have artists who really have not shown much. now let's look at other aspects of electric works operation. let's go to the bookstore. >> ok. >> in all seriousness, here we are in your store. this is the first space you encounter when you come in off the street. it has evolved since you open here into the most amazingly curious selection of things. >> this was the project for the berkeley art museum. it was -- this is from william wiley's retrospective, when he got up onstage to sing a song,

270 people put on the cat. >> it is not just a bookstore. it is a store. can you talk us through some of your favorites? >> these are made in china, but they are made out of cattails. >> these pieces of here, you have a whale head and various animals and their health over there, and they are jewelry. >> we do fund raisers for nonprofits, so we are doing a project for the magic theater, so there are some pretty funny cartoons. they are probably not for prime time. >> you sort of have a kind of holistic relationship where you might do merchandise in the store that promotes their work and practice, and also, prince for them. maybe we should go back and look at the print operation now. >> let's go. >> before we go into the print shop, i noticed some incredible

items you have talked back here. what are we standing in front of? >> this is william wiley, only one earth. this is a print edition. there are only eight total, and what we wanted to do was expand the idea of printmaking. this is really an art object. there we go. >> besides the punball machine, what do you produce in limited edition? >> there is the slot machine. if you win the super jackpot, you have saved the world. >> what about work? >> the right design, it was three volumes with lithographs in each volume. the cab of count dracula with 20

lithographs inside and lined with beaver fur. really special. >> let's move on to the print shop. >> ok. the core of what we do is making things. this is an example. this is a print project that will be a fund-raiser for the contemporary music players. we decided to put it in the portfolio so you could either frame at or have it on your bookshelf. >> so nonprofits can come to you, not just visual are nonprofits, but just nonprofits can come to you, and you will produce prints for them to sell, and the profits, they can keep. >> the return on investment is usually four times to 10 times the amount of investment. this is for the bio reserve in mexico, and this is one of the artists r