Related Links: Record-Size Swimming Pools Come to the U.S. for the First Time A Closer Look at Record-Sized Pools That Resemble Oases The aquarium business "is dependent on the engineering challenges of containing water and resisting corrosion of materials; longevity; and low maintenance,” says Peter Chermayeff, an architect who has been designing major aquariums around the world for over 50 years.Aquariums—for which ENR has compiled a list at left of the world's largest—are typically built by general contractors with experience in the water and wastewater sectors. One example is Brasfield & Gorrie. The contractor's first fish habitat was Atlanta's Georgia
Related Links: DeSimone Consulting Engineers Bjarke Ingels Group Getting into a construction groove at the Grove at Grand Bay in Miami was not easy, due to the drastic and sundry twists of the 21-story towers. Getting the gravity- defying concrete structures to twist without falling over also was tricky.The two residential towers in Coconut Grove were angled and eccentrically shaped by Bjarke Ingels Group, with Nichols, Brosch, Wurst, Wolfe + Associates, to optimize views of Biscayne Bay.Set for completion in October, the buildings face each other like a couple dancing the twist. Each has rounded exposed perimeter columns that slant
By Nadine M. Post/ENR Wood proponents have proposed code changes that would allow residential buildings with heavy-timber structures to be nine stories and 100 ft tall. The American Wood Council, on a roll after it succeeded in getting new provisions into the 2015 International Building Code that allow heavy-timber structure within exterior walls, is proposing even bigger changes for the 2018 IBC, currently under development. The proposal would allow two- or three-hour-rated heavy timber to “safely serve in diverse structures” as tall as 100 ft, said Paul D. Coats, Southeast regional manager for the American Wood Council (AWC), at the
Photo courtesy of EarthCam Stadium-bowl concrete work, two-thirds complete, is expected to be done by the fall. Related Links: New Atlanta Falcons Stadium Design More Than a Box With a Lid Concrete work on the New Atlanta Stadium for football’s Atlanta Falcons is two-thirds complete and expected to be done this fall, says Wayne E. Wadsworth, principal in charge for the stadium’s general contractor, the Holder-Hunt-Russell-Moody Joint Venture, which holds a $1.078-billion guaranteed maximum price contract.For the structural concrete bowl, the work is all about the megacolumns that will support the structural steel for the signature kinetic roof, says Wadsworth.
By Nadine M. Post/ENR Crews and a crane coax an 11th-floor module into place for the delayed 32-story B2 BKLYN residential building. Work got underway again on April 24, after an eight-month hiatus. Related Links: Skanska, Forest City Ratner Sue Each Other Over World's Future Tallest Modular Building After an eight-month construction hiatus triggered by delivery and fit-up difficulties at the modular plant, crews once again are installing modules on the future 322-ft-tall B2 BKLYN in New York City, which, if completed next year as now planned, will rank as the world’s tallest volumetric modular building. The record holder for
Related Links: Danger: Railroad CrossingBuilding Manhattan's Hudson Yards Construction Begins on Hudson Yards' $700M Eastern Platform NYC Hudson Yards Developers Name Tutor Perini as Contractor, Form JV with Tishman Structural engineer Thomas Z. Scarangello is no stranger to the Long Island Railroad's West Side Yard in Manhattan, which is going under cover thanks to the 28-acre Hudson Yards development.The current chairman and CEO of Thornton Tomasetti (TT) first studied the yard in the late 1990s, when there was talk of a baseball park there. And he was involved again when New York City made its bid for the 2012 Olympic
Construction begins on Hudson Yards' $700-million Eastern Platform NYC Hudson Yards Developers Name Tutor Perini as Contractor, Form JV with Tishman Rolling trains underfoot. Around-the-clock operations. Caissons needled in between tracks. Hundreds of work-arounds to avoid tunnels and buried utilities. Track-outage hopscotch. Two-hour work windows. Sudden schedule changes. Constant scrutiny. Deadline pressure.The 11.2-million-sq-ft first phase of Manhattan's 17.4-million-sq-ft Hudson Yards—a 28-acre minicity on
Related Links: Skills Shortage Challenges New Zealand Earthquake Rebuild Teams Mobilize to Rescue Survivors, Assess Damage in Nepal Seismic researchers say they have found a number of worrying anomalies in how mid-rise and high-rise buildings with reinforced concrete frames behaved during the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes near Christchurch, New Zealand.“Many plastic hinge zones in reinforced concrete beams of multistory buildings performed unexpectedly,” says Charles Clifton, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Auckland. “It was seen that a few wide cracks developed, rather than the expected large number of hairline cracks.” As a result, the embedded
Related Links: Leslie E. Robertson Associates Diller Scofidio + Renfro Sciame Construction Gensler Find the load paths. That could have been structural engineer Daniel A. Sesil's mantra while seeking support for the daring southern portion of Columbia University Medical Center's 15-story Medical and Graduate Education Building in Upper Manhattan.Though it encloses only about 100,000 sq ft, the $77-million base building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has a split personality. The northern section is conventional. In dramatic contrast, the southern side is brazenly asymmetrical. DS+R describes the mind-bending form as a glass-enclosed "cascade" of interconnected study and social spaces that
Related Links: Best of the Best 2014 With demand rising for its H-47 Chinook heavy-lift military helicopter, the Boeing Co. sought to increase production and efficiency at its Ridley Park, Pa., campus while maintaining ongoing operations. The resulting five-year Chinook H-47 Focus Factory Conversion Program transformed the company's historic 85-year-old industrial helicopter production complex through several major capital renovation, modernization and new construction projects.More than 1,500 construction workers logged nearly 750,000 hours without disrupting the existing facility's 24-hour, seven-days-a-week assembly operations—often working less than 20 ft from a temporary demising wall. When completed in April 2014, the project boasted a
RSS
