The tower’s mat foundation included a section under the core that was poured 12 ft deep.
Photo courtesy Turner Construction

Although the residential tower goes high, it doesn’t go wide, featuring an 8,500-sq-ft floor plate. The design concept ultimately creates a unique product in Atlanta with nearly every residential unit having two cardinal views of the city, says Dave Brown, principal at TVS, the project’s designer. He notes that most large residential towers in the city have limited views and long hallways with perhaps dozens of neighbors. “It’s a differentiator in the market to have a floor plate where it’s you and seven other neighbors on a floor,” he adds.

While stacking different programs on top of each other always presents structural challenges, the tower’s tall and thin design created a higher degree of difficulty. Brown says that the small floor plate coupled with its core and shear walls made it impossible to resist wind loads using structural systems that are common on mid-rise buildings. Working with structural engineer Walter P Moore, the team devised an outrigger beam system at levels 39 and 40 that ties the core to the perimeter columns.

At the base of the residential tower, Brown says the systems incorporate columns that slope toward the outside edge of the office footprint. “If you’re on the top five levels of the office, you’re going to see these columns coming down through your space that are angled,” he adds.

In November 2023, crews installed approximately 4,500 cu yd of concrete during a 24-hour continuous pour.
Photo courtesy Turner Construction

The site is not only tight, it’s rocky. With bedrock and potential water table issues just below grade, the project was limited to only one basement level. TVS designed that space to house primarily service areas, including the loading dock as well as some building systems, including the main electrical room.

The entire concrete structure sits on a mat foundation with caissons, with the foundations under the core poured up to 12 ft thick. With bedrock just below grade, crews led by Turner Construction rock socketed most of the caissons. The mat foundations were created during two pours. In November 2023, crews installed approximately 4,500 cu yd of concrete during a 24-hour continuous pour. One month later, the team completed a second 1,700-cu-yd mat foundation pour.

For the largest pour, Turner leveraged three separate batch plants in the metro Atlanta area to ensure that there wouldn’t be any capacity issues. The team was able to get closures along adjacent streets for staging pump trucks and cycling through concrete trucks. A nearby private drive was used to stage up to 20 trucks, allowing the team to avoid queueing on city streets. More than 500 truckloads of concrete were used throughout the entire pour, enabling crews to install approximately 185 yd per hour.

As this was a massive pour for the Atlanta area, the local team leveraged experience from other offices while making sure to involve its own staff. “We put out somewhat of an all-points bulletin to the local Turner Atlanta office, and we had several people volunteer from other project sites to help guide, manage and handle the work that took place over those continuous 24 hours,” says AJ Bargoti, project executive with Turner’s Atlanta business unit. “It was a really unique experience to have several other of our teammates join who weren’t assigned to the project.”

For the facade at the ground level, crews installed glass and natural materials like limestone.
Photo courtesy The Rockefeller Group

As the structure came out of the ground, Turner followed a sequence that allowed roughly a third of the building on the western edge to be built separately. This allowed the team to efficiently build the core on a tight zero-line site, then come back and add the western portion.

“We used that west area as our staging area,” Bargoti says. “Eventually, you get to a point to where you have to build that expansion for other logistical reasons, like crane mobilization. We had a second crane on this job and eventually had to make sure we didn’t have a conflict there.”

Bargoti says the design of the 750-car parking garage was relatively conventional from a constructibility standpoint with a few unusual elements, including the addition of some private garages. Above the parking, the office floors had to be stick built because there wasn’t enough repetition for shared formwork.

On the tower, unlike the office spaces, the team was able to use a table formwork system as each floorplate was similar. Crews were able to split the floors into two concrete pours and could turn over a floor every five working days.

Adding the outriggers to the tower required additional planning. “Our structural superintendent looked at these outrigger beams very early in the project, understanding that we would need to coordinate with our trade partners,” says Dan Cassidy, senior project manager at Turner Construction. “The rebar in there are large, and you have coupler materials to allow them to span the entire width of the floor. So it’s a dense, heavy operation that had to be constructed [below] and flown into place. In some cases, it was constructed on the 39th and 40th level because of just how much reinforcement needed to be put into place.”

From the second level to the start of the top of the office building, precast panels were installed that complemented natural materials on the ground floor, such as limestone.
Photo courtesy Turner Construction

As pours on a floor were completed, a unitized window-wall system followed behind to add the tower’s facade and close in the floor. The panels were kept relatively similar to maximize repetition and keep installation easier. For the facade on the lower levels, crews added natural materials like limestone at the ground level. From the second level to the start of the top of the office building, precast panels were installed that complemented the natural materials below.

As a tall building, the crews also had to account for vertical compression. From the window wall system and concrete slabs to the plumbing and even cabinets, installers had to account for future predicted vertical shortening over time. “Where that came into real focus was on the corners because you may have a corner element that is closer to the core than another element,” Cassidy says.

Peak workforce for the project was roughly 325, with approximately 1,800 unique workers. At topping out, crews had completed more than 800,000 work hours. Throughout the project, Turner had to pay extra attention to the capabilities of its trade partners from a safety, quality and logistics standpoint. “The Atlanta market hasn’t seen a tower like this in more than three decades,” Bargoti says. “We put a lot of time and effort into making sure that, as the trades were coming on board, they bought into the plan 100% and understood what’s required, whether it was the vertical means of going up and down the building to parking. Every single element.”

When completed, 1072 West Peachtree will deliver 224,000 sq ft of office space, 357 residential units and 6,300 sq ft of ground-floor retail. In addition to its office and residential components, the building will offer an acre of indoor and outdoor amenities. The building’s stacked design creates outdoor space; the exposed top of the parking garage is available as outdoor space for office tenants and the top of the offices can be used by residents. The Sky Garden will feature Midtown Atlanta’s largest outdoor deck, designed with seating areas for collaboration or relaxation. There will also be a flexible-use lawn for gathering, gaming and hosting events overlooking the city.

When completed, 1072 West Peachtree will deliver 224,000 sq ft of office space, 357 residential units and 6,300 sq ft of ground-floor retail. The building’s stacked design creates outdoor spaces, including Midtown Atlanta’s largest outdoor deck.
Rendering courtesy The Rockefeller Group

“Rockefeller and Turner have been great partners,” Brown says. “I think the three of us make a point of meeting every month to talk about how things are going [and] where are the rough spots. It’s just been a really nice partnership having Turner on board very early on in the process. It was very collaborative.”