SUMMARYConnecting to their surrounding beams and columns, unstiffened steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) are widely used as an appropriate lateral resisting system for designing and retrofitting of structures against lateral loads. The base philosophy for the performance of such systems, post‐buckling tension field formation, needs strong enough boundary elements to form. However, in some cases, relatively low performance demand needs panels with impractical thickness. To overcome the construction limitations, the designer is forced to use thicker plates, and consequently to satisfy the post‐buckling tension field philosophy, heavier column sections must be used. A novel configuration of steel shear walls, beam‐attached SPSWs, in which the size of the column section is released to be as a function of the plate thickness and removes the wasteful need for heavy columns, is proposed in this paper. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.