California Memorial Stadium retrofit

A team of Berkeley Engineering faculty, working as part of the campus seismic review committee, advise on the retrofitting of Memorial Stadium, which sits directly astride the Hayward Fault.

The project took years of planning and cost more than $445 million for the stadium upgrades and an additional $153 million to build and integrate a new student-athlete center in the old stadium’s footprint. Today, the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, as well as other academic programs, are located in the Memorial Stadium complex. California Memorial, designed by John Galen Howard and completed in 1923, sits atop the Hayward Fault, which is still seismically active. The redesigned stadium was put together in four modular parts. The upgrades include gigantic shock absorbers and massive concrete seismic blocks, which allow for the stadium to partially float over the fault, giving some measure of safety in the event of major seismic activity on game day.

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