Photo by Eduardo Miranda/Stanford A wood-framed house sitting on a system of new, low-cost base isolators survived two series of shake-table tests with no structural damage. Photo by Eduardo Miranda/Stanford Dish-shaped isolator made from galvanized plates and high-density plastic allows the house to recenter itself after an earthquake. Related Links: New Concrete Bridge Bent System May Minimize Seismic Damage Shaking Things Up to Improve Seismic Design Recent shake-table tests on a wood-framed house—equipped with newly developed low-cost seismic base isolators—confirmed predictions that the two-story house would come through structurally unscathed. The goal of the research, considered an important step toward
Photo By Nadine M. Post/ENR The 1,776-ft-tall One World Trade Center is expected to open this fall. Photo by Nadine M. Post/ENR Completion of the nearly $4-billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub is expected in about a year. Related Links: At New York's New World Trade Center, Uncommon Cooperation Lower Manhattan's beleaguered World Trade Center redevelopment is inching slowly forward, with some major milestones expected in the next year or so.The 1,776-ft-tall One World Trade Center—the tallest building in the Americas—is set to open this fall. It will be nearly 60% leased, says the Port Authority of New York &
Modular-building boosters, including traditional owners, developers, contractors and designers, maintain that off-site construction is faster, safer, leaner, greener, better quality and potentially less costly than site construction.
Photo by Amy Barkow The seven-story Stack's 56 modules went up in four weeks. The speed could have been increased were it not for transportation restrictions across the George Washington Bridge that limited to four the number of modules delivered to the site each night from the plant. Photo Courtesy of Gluck+ Related Links: Moving Modular Forward The Promise and Pitfalls of Modular Buildings Mortenson Uses Off-Site Construction to Speed Denver Hospital Delivery Project Frog's Kit-of-Parts Approach Allows Better Design By Avoiding Trucking Limits The Stack Gluck+ Stacking Up It's not easy to be first. The team that built the
Related Links: The Promise and Pitfalls of Modular Buildings Project Frog's Kit-of-Parts Approach Allows Better Design By Avoiding Trucking Limits Despite Challenges, Developer of the Stack Thinks Modular Is the Way To Go Mortenson Construction H+L Architecture Mortenson Construction's Bill Gregor is a big fan of off-site construction. Still, he is careful not to do prefab for prefab's sake. To nail down the contractor's component preassembly strategy for the $623-million Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital Heritage Project in Denver, Mortenson held a prefab charrette during the job's preconstruction and programming phase that included the owner, the contractor and the architect.The exercise
Photo Courtesy of Project Frog Only the bathroom pods (above) of Project Frog schools are volumetric. All the other components come in kits assembled on-site. The approach frees the architect to design without transportation constraints. Photo Courtesy of Project Frog Related Links: Kit-of-Parts School Goes Up Fast The Promise and Pitfalls of Modular Buildings Mortenson Uses Off-Site Construction to Speed Denver Hospital Delivery Despite Challenges, Developer of the Stack Thinks Modular Is the Way To Go Project Frog Bernards The architects and fabricators that formed the six-year-old Project Frog were tired of mediocre modular buildings. Their idea was to work
Photo by Nadine M. Post/ENR Rift grows between owner and construction manager, after CM halted work on B2 BKLYN, at about one-third of its planned 32-story height, next to Barclays Center at the Pacific Park Brooklyn complex. Related Links: High-Rise Modular Construction Forces Major Adjustments Skanska USA Building Inc. Forest City Ratner Cos. Pacific Park Brooklyn The developer and the construction manager for the world's future tallest modular tower—under construction at the $4.9-billion Brooklyn, N.Y., development formerly known as Atlantic Yards—have sued each other over delays and cost overruns on the 32-story project, called B2 BKLYN.The suits, filed on Sept.
Related Links: New Atlanta Falcons Stadium Design More Than a Box With a Lid HOK 360 Architecture Populous If all goes as planned, global architect-engineer-planner HOK will be back in the sports design game, almost six years after HOK Sport + Entertainment broke free of its parent company to become Populous. By November, HOK expects to seal a deal to acquire the decade-old sports-venue specialist 360 Architecture.Since January, when the five-year noncompete clause lapsed between HOK and Populous, HOK has been "trying to figure out how to get back into sports architecture," says Bill Hellmuth, HOK's president. Architect 360 seemed
William Jefferson Clinton Children's Center for Fondation Enfant Jesus is designed to use local materials, have natural ventilation and be independent of Port-Au-Prince utilities, which are not reliable. If all goes as planned, the children of Haiti will soon have a small but powerful symbol of hope in the form of a 6,000-sq-ft building.
Related Links: Niche Products Emerge to Help Reduce Bird Deaths Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority National Audubon Society The National Audubon Society has lost its battle for a bird-friendly envelope enclosing the state-owned Minneapolis stadium, just starting construction for the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings. But the defeat, though deflating, has a silver lining, says Audubon. The group went public with its 14-month campaign against a transparent facade after the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority refused to switch to bird-friendly fritted glass for the $975-million facility."While, ideally, we hoped to find a solution through collaboration, the decision of the Minnesota Sports Facilities
