Plaza Bridge at Marine Way in Irvine, CA; 

Biggs Cardosa Associates, Inc. in San Jose. 

The 2020 Golden State Award goes to Biggs Cardosa Associates, Inc. for

the Plaza Bridge at Marine Way in Irvine.

Having outgrown its headquarters in Irvine, tech company Broadcom sought a new home. Hoping to keep the company in the city, the City’s planning commission approved a master plan for a two-million-square-foot research and development campus on property owned by developer FivePoint on the border of the Orange County Great Park. The site consisted of two parcels bisected by a new road, Marine Way. Because Broadcom needed a landscaped central courtyard for all its employees, the master plan called for creating a 398-foot by 130-foot landscaped Plaza Bridge – essentially the size of a football field – over Marine Way at the heart of campus.

Biggs Cardosa was the prime consultant responsible for providing structural design consultation services and coordinating a team of sub-consultants under a modified design-build contract with DPR Construction.  

The Plaza Bridge is a cast-in-place concrete slab supporting a landscaped park. Because of the bridge’s size, the structural design had to meet strict California Fire Code and NFPA requirements for tunnels and be able to resist a 13,000-gallon gasoline tanker fire event, combined with a heavy goods vehicle loaded with ordinary combustibles. After extensive research, Biggs Cardosa developed a unique system of rebar clearances - as high as 6” – and high concentrations of polypropylene fibers, an inexpensive alternative to typical fire sprinkler or spray foam systems. To enable the landscaped plaza to support soil and trees (anticipated to weigh as much as 17 tons at maturation), Biggs Cardosa incorporated foam below the soil at strategic locations to reduce loads. A complex waterproofing and drainage system manages stormwater and water from the irrigation system. Within the Marine Way tunnel, concrete bas-reliefs of a tree pattern extend along the west wall, illuminated from above by color-changing LED lights. The project also included a separate vehicular bridge to the north of the Plaza Bridge.

Congratulations Biggs Cardosa Associates on winning the 2020 Golden State Award!!!

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