Meeting/Event Information

Soft-Story Buildings

Speaker: Thor Matteson, Structural Engineer and Author

Wednesday, October 12th 

6:30 pm Log in for Meet & Greet

7:00 pm Education hour begins 

You Must Register in Advance for This Event! 

Fee: $10.00, free to paid chapter members

Click the registration button which can be found at the left (in an email), right or bottom of the page (on the web).

If you are not a Paid Member of the Silicon Valley Chapter, you must register as a guest and pay the $10 fee.  On the registration page simply click “Continue as A Guest.”

You will then be provided a link to register for Zoom access to the meeting. You must complete them Zoom registration in advance to be provided the link into the event.

Thor has presented to the chapter many times over the years, and to the delight of many is back in October for yet another lively discussion and learning session.   The presentation is on "soft-story" buildings - what a soft story is (and is not!), methods to strengthen them,  some of the engineering and construction challenges, and how the product Thor invented solves many of those challenges.

Thor Matteson has practiced structural engineering since 1990.  He has designed hundreds of earthquake retrofits.  He wrote two books relating to earthquake retrofits and wood-framed shear walls, and has served on several task forces developing earthquake retrofit standards for FEMA, the City of San Francisco, and the California Earthquake Authority.  Currently he serves on an ICC committee that is finalizing ICC 1300, the "Residential Seismic Assessment and Retrofit Standard," set to be included in the 2023 family of I-codes.   Mr. Matteson was frustrated that a better system for bracing soft-story buildings was not available, so he invented his own system, patented it, ran full-scale tests, and had it independently evaluated for building code acceptance.  He founded Quake Brace Mfg. Co. in 2018 to produce his "SkinnyBrace" system.  The system has been permitted and installed in over a dozen Bay Area jurisdictions.

** An attachment has been added to the bottom of the email announcement and is located below the "Documents" header on the right side of the webpage announcement.

 
Thor has written two books: "Earthquake Strengthening for Vulnerable Homes," and "Wood-Framed Shear Wall Construction--an Illustrated Guide" and has served as subconsultant developing codes and guidelines for residential earthquake retrofits under the Applied Technology Council (ATC), the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER).