Using the New AISC and ASCE Specifications for Sustainable & Resilient Structural Stainless Steel Design

Catherine Houska is an internationally recognized architectural and structural metals consultant with over 35 years of experience, author of more than 200 publications and frequent speaker. She is a subcommittee Vice Chair for AISC 370 Specification for Structural Stainless Steel and an active in the committees for AWS D1.6 Structural Welding Code Stainless Steel, AISC 313 Code of Standard Practice for Structural Stainless Steel Buildings, AISC Steel Design Guide 27: Structural Stainless Steel, and ASCE/SEI 8 Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Stainless Steel Structural Members.

At ASTM, she Chairs ASTM E60.80 General Sustainability standards, which develops international sustainability and resilience standards, and a member of the US TAG to ISO TC59 SC17 Sustainability in Buildings and Civil Engineering Works. In ASTM A01 on Steel, she is the author or technical contact of several structural stainless steel standards. Catherine is also a member of AMPP, CSI, ASM, and ASTM committees E06, E50, E54, and G01.

Ms. Houska is President of Catherine Houska Consulting, LLC in Pittsburgh, PA. She has a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering & Materials Science from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University. She has received two society and 5 regional Technical Awards from the Construction Specifications Institute.

Ben Caldwell AIA, CSI, CCS, LEED AP BD+C is an Architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), licensed in New York, California, and Connecticut. A member of SOM’s Senior Technical Team and SOM’s Specification Department, with over thirty years of experience in materials research, specifications, and technical design on all types of building projects in the United States and abroad.

He is a Principal on NFPA “Fire Tests” and “Structures, Construction, and Materials” Standards Committees.

Michael is co-founder and President of TriPyramid Structures. Michael’s training is in aerospace and mechanical engineering. Prior to partnering with Tim Eliassen to found TriPyramid he worked designing yacht hardware at Navtec and in many facets of the sailing and offshore marine industries. He has experience as a builder, a designer, and a user of complex rigging and hardware systems. This breadth of experience helps him lead the team at TriPyramid to find solutions that meet all of the design challenges: aesthetic, structural, budgetary, and serviceability.

Matt holds senior positions at both Montanstahl (Europe) and Stainless Structurals (US), which are the world’s two premium, high tolerance, manufacturers of structural stainless steel sections. They are sister firms who’ve supplied structural stainless steel sections for many well known projects, including the 1st use of duplex stainless steel in a glass curtain wall (7 WTC) and subsequent projects where it’s much higher strength, energy absorption and fire performance was used to create a much more resilient 1st floor entrance designs without the need for much heavier sections.

Matt has also played a key role in revising /developing new ASTM standards to fill holes that existed. He is also a member of the AASHTO /NSBA committee developing a duplex bridge design guide, and has closely followed the development and revision of AISC 370 & 313.

Richard Green is Principal / Owner of Green Facades. He is a global expert in the area of facades and structural glass and his experience encompasses all stages of a building enclosure’s life-cycle. He received both Bachelor and Graduate Diploma in Structural Engineering from Monash University in Australia specializing in light-weight structures, and he has formal training in corrosion technology.

Richard’s specialty is the design and analysis of complex façade structures. He has been involved with a number of world leading and award-winning projects covering a wide range of building types. Curtainwall and high rise towers include Mahanakhon with OMA/ Ole Scherin, Shenzen Stock Exchange with OMA, and Brookfield Place in Calgary with AFK/Dialogue. He has worked on significant airport extensions in Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, Changi Airport in Singapore and was the lead designer for the façade of the Main Terminal Building of Helmut Jahn’s Suvarnabhumi Bangkok International Airport in Thailand.

Richard has worked on cultural facilities on six continents and such iconic buildings as the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center by Renzo Piano in Athens, Greece; the restoration of the Sydney Opera House; the Amazon Spheres with NBBJ; and, the refurbishment of the Seattle Space Needle with Olson Kundig.

Richard is the technical chair for the ASTM Structural Glass Committee and has an advisory role to Eurocode EC11. He is a member of the technical committee for the American glass standard ASTM E1300 and he was formally a member of the technical working group for Australian Standard AS1288, Glass in Buildings. Richard also represents the United States on International Organization for Standardization ISO (TC160) as an ‘Expert’ for matters regarding strength and use of architectural glass.

Richard is a Professional Engineer registered in the states of Washington, New York, Texas and Colorado USA and is a Chartered Professional Engineer in Australia, where he also is a Registered Building Practitioner in the State of Victoria. He has presented at many international conferences including giving keynote speeches for Glass Performance Days, Façade Techtonics and COST Structural Glass.

Jack Murphy is Executive Editor of The Architect’s Newspaper. Previously he was Editor of Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston and an adjunct professor at the University of Houston. His writing has appeared in Architectural Record, Dwell, The Architect’s Newspaper, Texas Architect, Places, Cite, PLAT, Paprika!, the SF Gate, the Houston Chronicle, and the New York Review of Architecture, among other publications. He received an Honorable Mention for the Pierre Vago Journalism Award 2020 from the International Committee of Architecture Critics. He earned degrees in architecture from MIT and Rice University and contributed to award-winning architectural practices in Texas, New York, and Massachusetts.