CHAPTER VII SEISMIC ISOLATION DEVELOPMENT IN U.S.: CASE STUDIES M.C. Constantinou State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA ABSTRACT This section describes the development and application of seismic (or base) isolation in the United States. Significant strides have been made in the implementation of the technology. This is attributed to recent advances in seismic isolation hardware and the removal of a number of impediments, which delayed widespread implementation in the near past. INTRODUCTION Recent advances in isolation system hardware and the potential advantages offered by seismic isolation resulted in the construction of a number of isolated structures in the U.S. In the past, a number of impediments delayed the implementation of this technology until 1986, when the first isolated building, the T. T. Soong et al. (eds.), Passive and Active Structural Vibration Control in Civil Engineering © Springer-Verlag Wien 1994