SEISMIC RETROFIT AND RESTORATION OF ST ANDREW'S WESLEY CHURCH
Bibliographic record
Abstract
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.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
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.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".