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Opus Center

Coordinates: 47°35′49″N 122°19′41″W / 47.597°N 122.328°W / 47.597; -122.328
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Opus Center
Opus Center (right) and adjacent 505 Union Station
Opus Center is located in Seattle WA Downtown
Opus Center
Location within downtown Seattle
General information
Address625 Fifth Avenue South (Opus Center East)
605 Fifth Avenue South (Opus Center West)
705 Fifth Avenue South (Opus Center South)
Town or citySeattle
Coordinates47°35′49″N 122°19′41″W / 47.597°N 122.328°W / 47.597; -122.328
Design and construction
Architect(s)Andre Bilokur[1]
Architecture firmNBBJ
Structural engineerCoughlin Porter Lundeen[2]
Civil engineerCoughlin Porter Lundeen[2]

Opus Center is a set of four office buildings built in Downtown Seattle. The structures, completed in 2000 or 2001, are four, nine and eleven stories tall, and two of them are constructed on a lid over the underground Chinatown transit station, completed in 1985.[3][4][5][6] Until 2011 it was the headquarters of Amazon.com.[7]

Engineering details

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The building's engineering is unusual because of the placement over the transit tunnel, and for other reasons. Part of the structure is cantilevered over the 1985 load-bearing columns that did not match the later building's design. Because of the tunnel, four buildings are designed as one seismic unit, including a rubber membrane serving as a joint between all the buildings and 505 Union Station. It was the first building in Seattle with perimeter moment frame design since the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which exposed national safety concerns requiring re-review of this technique.[2]

References

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  1. ^ Opus at Union Station, BiLT Architects, archived from the original on 2016-04-03
  2. ^ a b c Jill Jago (November 9, 2000), "Seattle's biggest jigsaw puzzle", Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce
  3. ^ "Opus Center @ Union Station". Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. November 9, 2000. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
  4. ^ "Opus Center East", Emporis, archived from the original on October 24, 2020{{citation}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  5. ^ "Opus Center West", Emporis[dead link]
  6. ^ "Opus Center South", Emporis, archived from the original on August 4, 2020{{citation}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  7. ^ OPUS CENTER AT UNION STATION, The Opus Group