The contractor for an occupied, 26-story apartment building in Seattle that has corroding post-tensioning cables disagrees with the owner’s assertion that the nine-year-old high-rise will become unsafe. McCarthy Building Cos. also disputes the cause and scope of the damage to McGuire Apartments, built for $33 million, stated by the local owner, Carpenter’s Tower LLC. Photo: Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times Problems of Seattle high-rise are too costly to fix, says owner. The contractor disagrees. On April 10, the owner announced plans to vacate the building over several months “due to extensive construction defects, which are financially impractical” to repair. A
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, claims that a three-year-old student recreation facility at its main campus fails to meet some seismic requirements under the 2002 Uniform Building Code. The structure remains open, but a warning notice is posted. Photo: Luetta Callaway Investigator alleges differences between flexible and rigid components cause problems. Related Links: Engineer�s Report on UNLV Building Designed by the Phoenix office of DMJM Design, a unit of AECOM, with St. Louis-based Hastings+Chivetta Architects Inc., the building is likely to end up in court. Bennett & Jimenez Inc., Las Vegas, which has since shut down, was the structural
Design and construction of Minneapolis’s Target Field, a $545-million ballpark for baseball’s Minnesota Twins, was like stuffing 12 lb of potatoes into an 8-lb bag. The eight-acre site not only was hemmed in on all sides by roads and rails, it really needed 12 acres to comfortably accommodate the program for a 40,000-seat ballpark. Because the neighbors were so close, there was no lay-down area or viable crane path outside the bowl’s footprint. Thus, the ballpark had to be constructed from the inside out, which builders consider far from ideal. Slide Show Photo: Mortenson Construction The many restrictions, including up
Poor quality, often homemade concrete led to widespread building damage in Port-au-Prince following last month’s earthquake in Haiti, says Ken Hover, an engineering professor at Cornell University who had recently returned from the devastated city. Slide Show Photo: Ken Hover Some buildings suffered cracks rather than total failure from Haiti's devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12. Hover made his remarks Feb. 3 at the World of Concrete tradeshow in Las Vegas. He had performed structural assessments for two university-backed Port-au-Prince health clinics from Jan. 20-25. The clinics consisted of 15 separate structures. Hover says he used California's post-earthquake investigation
In an unusual move in the highly commercialized sports market, the city council of Irving, Texas, voted on Dec. 31 to award naming rights to the demolition of Texas Stadium to Kraft Foods Global. The city council says the partnership, nicknamed “The Cheddar Explosion,” will yield $1 million in promotional value for the city. Kraft agreed to pay $75,000 for the naming rights and provide an additional $75,000 in products to local food banks. Weir Bros. Inc., a Dallas-based contractor, received a notice to proceed on the demolition project on Oct. 20, 2009. The implosion of the stadium is tentatively
The specific date in December for the implosion of the faulty, 376-ft-tall condominium tower on South Padre Island in Texas has not been set. But the demolition contractor says it has solved almost all the quandaries of one of its most challenging razings using explosives. If all goes according to plan, when the dust settles, Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI) will have broken the height record, which it set in 1975, for imploding a reinforced-concrete tower. Slide Show Photo: Controlled Demolition Inc. Aluminum alloy shores around failed columns have to be factored into implosion plan. Photo: Controlled Demolition Inc. Walls were
When the University of Chicago’s Joe and Rika Mansueto Library opens its doors in spring 2011 as planned, it will combine distinctive above-ground architecture with sophisticated underground support. Designed by Chicago architect Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Inc. and built by Barton Malow Co., the one-of-a-kind library will feature reading areas enclosed by a four-story glass-and-steel dome above a five-story-deep, climate-controlled underground storage vault that will protect and automatically deliver up to 3.5 million periodicals, books and rare research materials. Photo: Barton Malow Co. Oval-shaped glass dome will rest on a 120-ft by 240-ft slurry wall, initially drawn as a perfect
The Portland Cement Association is defending its sample ordinance for high-performance buildings despite strong objections from critics and a call to withdraw the proposal. “PCA will continue to promote our concepts and views, work to educate the general public and encourage the adoption of more stringent building-code requirements by state and local jurisdictions for the good of the people and their communities and the environment,” says Stephen S. Szoke, PCA’s director of codes and standards. The group has “no intention” of withdrawing its recommendation for code changes, says Szoke, the lead author of the controversial document. He says PCA plans
As stormwater runoff from streets and parking lots becomes an ever-more sensitive environmental issue, eliminating it altogether with pervious pavement can be an elegant solution. Two projects now under way in Connecticut and Minnesota have facilities owners, municipal officials and the paving sector taking notice. One involves a parking lot at a university committed to cutting its impervious surfaces by half. The other is a public road in Minnesota, where a city engineer insists he is not experimenting; he is just applying a best-fit solution to a 50-year-old problem. Both applications share one thing in common: they are engineered to
Builders of the U.K.’s tallest skyscraper, London’s Shard, will save valuable time by excavating its three-floor basement while slipforming the core. A novel machine is now at work, plunging columns into pile tops some 15 meters below ground to prop up the rising core as soil beneath is removed. Slide Show Photo: Peter Reina / ENR The small site sits hard against the busy London Bridge railroad hub. Related Links: Top Down To Speed Shard Building With the core on the critical path, “the month or two” top-down exercise is “giving us breathing space,” says Bob Gordon, chief engineer of
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