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Record W7115696363 · doi:10.71846/18-wcee-2575

SEISMIC RETROFIT AND RESTORATION OF ST ANDREW'S WESLEY CHURCH

2025· article· en· W7115696363 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

aboutThe title or abstract carries a Canadian signal from the geographic lexicon.
no affNo Canadian affiliation: this work is invisible to an affiliation-only frame.
No Canadian affiliation. An affiliation-only frame, the usual design, would never have seen this work. It is one of the works that make the case for inverting the frame.

Bibliographic record

VenueWorld Conference of Earthquake Engineering · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicMasonry and Concrete Structural Analysis
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsDowntownFoundation (evidence)Seismic retrofitFootprintWorshipCultural heritageArchBridge (graph theory)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

St Andrew’s Wesley United Church has stood prominently in the Downtown area of Vancouver, BC, Canada since 1933. Designed by Twizell and Twizell, St Andrew’s is a remarkable example of gothic revival style traditional to Europe. Its construction used locally sourced stone, in combination with unreinforced concrete to create its soaring walls and massive arches. At a footprint of 2,277 square metres (24,500 SF), and standing over 27m (90ft) at its bell tower, it remains one of the largest places of worship in the City of Vancouver. It is also recognized as both a municipal and provincial heritage site, creating the need to be highly respectful when considering a visible alteration. After decades of natural deterioration, leaking roofs and reoccurring repairs led to a need for a significant intervention. Deteriorating plaster and clay tile that lined the interior of the church initiated a broader investigation of opportunities for conservation and repair, including a large-scale seismic upgrade. This led to a comprehensive project scope involving a seismic upgrade of the primary structure to 100% of the 2015NBCC; seismic restraint of façade stone; replacement of all mechanical and electrical systems; and a complete replacement of all interior plaster surfaces using “match cast” plaster shells to perfectly replicate the original appearance. Structurally, the heritage aspect required imposing a very tight lateral drift limit. We combined this with elements that were designed for controlled yielding at selected elevations that suited the flexural geometry of new shear walls, and to limit foundation forces. Gravity support elements, including the massive columns and arches supporting the roof were upgraded with carbon FRP wrapping to promote resilient behavior. This presentation will be a snapshot of how we were able to preserve and upgrade this architectural gem, while still maintaining its heritage significance. We will give insight on our thought process and the challenges we had to overcome to create a structural load path in a challenging existing building. This project was recognized locally, and nationally for its contribution to engineering excellence and heritage restoration. In 2022, RJC received the Canadian Consulting Engineering Award of Excellence, as well as the Association of Consulting Engineers of BC Award of Merit. This year RJC was further recognized by the City of Vancouver for Outstanding Achievement for Heritage Conservation.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: Simulation or modeling
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.144
Threshold uncertainty score0.589

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.012
GPT teacher head0.200
Teacher spread0.187 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it