Earthquake prevention

Here is a snap of the front face of a set of residential lofts near my home on Capitol Hill. This building is of quite recent vintage, and (as you can hopefully tell) has a sort of industrial-chic look about it: it is unabashedly rectilinear, and the materials are all industrial-looking. I assume this is all deliberate.

As I understand it, the big steel cross-braces on the outer shell of the building, that the designers chose to flaunt in this case by painting them bright orange, are structural reinforcements in case of earthquake.

The framing here is part of my initial fumbling attempts to break myself of the habit of composing my images with all straight lines parallel to the edges of the frame. Hopefully the angle adds a little motion to the composition here?