Reconstructing an Earthquake-Damaged Building, Kobe

The eight-story Kobe City Hall Building No. 2 suffered the collapse of an entire intermediate story, the sixth, as a result of the earthquake in January, 1995. It is judged that the collapse occurred at this location because the gap between the actual response and the design strength for seismic force input in the old seismic design code reached its greatest disparity at this story. Basic policies guiding building reconstruction in the aftermath of the 1995 quake were speed, the use of the state-of-the-art construction technology, lowest possible cost, and the use of sound portions of the structures after reinforcing them as necessary.