Courtesy of Hill International The nine faces of the three tallest buildings in Baku contain of some 10,000 LED light fixtures that evoke a raging fire against the night sky. "Tower light, tower bright, will you guide my way tonight?" A three-building project under way in Baku, Azerbaijan, gives a new twist to a familiar lyric and a new look to the Caspian Sea city's skyline.The Baku night sky first brightened on May 13, when the team flicked the switch on the thousands of red, green and blue LED lights on the nine facades of the three buildings, named the

Trahan Architects The mixed-use project will include retail, office, residential and entertainment spaces. Trahan Architects The development is adjacent to Erqi Tower, a double pagoda that is Zhengzhou's main tourist attraction. Trahan Architects has been selected by the Henan Hongguang Industry Group to design an $880-million mixed-use project in Zhengzhou, the capital and largest city of China's Henan province.The Baton Rouge, La.-based firm's design concept envisions a 4.3-million-sq-ft complex, with two sloping, flat-top towers and a large atrium. It will occupy a 6.9-acre triangular site in the city's main shopping district, adjacent to Erqi Tower, a 14-story double pagoda that

Related Links: San Francisco Skyscraper Lifts Stature of Seismic Design Performance Design Floodgates Open on the West Coast Strong Motion Center Scientists say there is a 63% probability of a damaging earthquake in the Bay Area in the next 30 years. Officials in quake-prone California recently took a step toward making the best of the Big One, when it does hit, by installing the densest array of accelerometers in any U.S. skyscraper to date. The 72 sensors, activated recently in the tallest tower in the U.S. built using performance-based seismic design, are expected to yield valuable data about the behavior

Related Links: Global Skyscraper Group Ventures into Research for the First Time Megaprojects: Songdo International Business District Unusual double-helix external bracing will stabilize a 620-meter-tall tower at the center of the 20-building Yongsan International Business District, planned for a 3,000-hectare site next to the Han River in Seoul, South Korea. The conical skyscraper is among the first of the major buildings scheduled to start construction soon, now that conceptual designs for the 3.4-million-square-meter brownfield development have been completed.Teams of local and international architects and engineers announced their concepts for each of Yongsan's planned buildings earlier this month, marking the start

Photo courtesy of UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering Researcher preps specimen's base-isolation system for the shake test. Photo courtesy of UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering The five-story building featured a fully equipped intensive-care unit and surgery suite. In the first of a series of seismic shake-table tests to gauge the effects of major earthquakes and fire on a hospital’s non-structural components and systems, a five-story specimen and its contents came through with flying colors. The excellent performance on April 17, attributed to the specimen's base-isolation system, came as no surprise to researchers at the University of California, San Diego, who

Standards Engineers To Develop Guidance On Disproportionate Collapse The Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers is seeking volunteers to join a two-year project to develop a standard for the mitigation of disproportionate collapse in buildings. Among its many provisions, the standard likely will address the risk assessment necessary to determine the need for extra collapse resistance against extraordinary damaging events. In another standards action, SEI/ASCE plans to release for public comment an updated standard on seismic rehabilitation for existing buildings; that standard is expected in May. ASCE/SEI 41-13 is scheduled for completion in September; it will

Rendering Courtesy Elkus Manfredi Proposed New Balance headquarters building (left) will anchor a 14-acre complex that will include a 175-room hotel (center). Athletic shoe manufacturer New Balance plans to build a 14-acre world headquarters complex featuring LEED-certified buildings in Boston's blighted Allston-Brighton area, located along the Massachusetts Turnpike. The proposed complex includes at least four office buildings, restaurants, a 175-room hotel and a sports complex with a 200-meter track-and-field facility, according to a master plan filed with the Boston Redevelopment Authority on March 21. The new 250,000-sq-ft headquarters building, designed in the shape of a running shoe, will not exceed 130

Surprisingly positive results from the first of four large-scale tests of reinforced-concrete link beams with embedded structural steel sections have further opened the door to more-constructible concrete towers in highly seismic zones. Link beams over openings in concrete shear-wall cores have long been the bane of builders because of intense reinforcing-steel congestion, which slows construction.During the first-ever large-scale test, the beam performed much better than anticipated. Given the importance of link beams in core-wall buildings, understanding performance at a meaningful scale is of "critical importance," says Ron Klemencic, president of structural engineer Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA), Seattle.MKA is one of

The main structural elements of the retractable skylight, each 10.5 tons, had to be lifted at night onto their rooftop rail girders, using three cranes.

With all the heavy lifting done, three waterfalls cascading and the fish spawning, no one would suspect how much strenuous exercise it took to design, engineer and construct a 1,225-ft-long replica of Salt Lake City's City Creek.