Southcentre Mall Sporting Life Expansion

Calgary, Canada

As a former Olympic host city situated next to the Rockies, sports and active lifestyles are a part of Calgary’s soul. It’s no coincidence that Sporting Life chose Calgary as the place to open its first store outside Ontario.

Southcentre Mall Sporting Life Expansion

Calgary, Canada

Canada’s most prestigious sporting goods, lifestyle, and “fashletics” retailer opened the doors to a new 46,000 ft² space at Calgary’s Southcentre Mall in 2016 to blend the best in fashion, sport, and customer service.

To provide a grand entrance to the Sporting Life retail store from the existing mall, renovations to the existing mall structure were necessary. Various options were investigated, including the removal of existing building columns, until the proper design solution was arrived at. The final design called for the introduction of new skylights and associated roof framing to introduce natural light into the mall corridor.

location

Calgary, Canada

Client

Sporting Life

Size

4,274 m² (46,000 ft²)

Architect

DIALOG; Reich+Petch Architects Inc.

Role

Structural Engineering Consultant

Large Span Concrete Framing

Challenge

The building column grid proposed by the client was about a 10 metre (33 foot) maximum span. Our structural challenge was to achieve this span while maintaining acceptable floor-to-floor heights and working within the existing mall floor elevations.

Solution

A sleek, two-way slab system with continuous drop panels was determined through high-level computational analysis to be the most feasible structural system.

Slender Columns

Challenge

Sporting Life was looking for a two-storey volume on the retail side of the store to achieve an open, natural feel.

Solution

To achieve the envisioned design, tall, slender structural columns spanning 9 metres (30 feet) from the second-floor slab level to the underside of roof structure were required. A light-weight roof structure was beneficial in reducing the structural demand on these columns. Still, second order buckling analysis was conducted to achieve the required structural design.

Aggressive Cantilevers

Challenge

A seamless transition from the existing building’s façade to the new building needed to be ensured while maintaining an architecturally appropriate and feasible structural grid.

Solution

It was determined that the second-floor slab would cantilever 4 metres (13 feet). The slab elevation of the new building had to meet the elevation of the existing building at both the time the store opened and after several years of structural deflection and creep. Detailed slab camber calculations were conducted to ensure the long-term deflections of the slab edge were within acceptable limits with respect to the existing building structure.

Learn more about how Entuitive approaches engineering challenges, and discover why Engineering Performance matters for your project.

Southcentre Mall Sporting Life Expansion