Licensed U.S. architects working globally, a group that is growing, need support from the American Institute of Architects in several ways, including promoting and endorsing a strategic plan that enables U.S. architects to gain professional practice licenses in foreign jurisdictions. AIA also should endorse the International Union of Architects’ (UIA) professional advisory standards, international education standards and international accreditation/validation standards. Image There is a growing need for U.S. architectural services in developing nations, the urban areas of which have few architects per capita. “The AIA should be advocating practices that enable its members to diversify their geographic, civic and cultural
The American Institute of Architects has released an Excel-based tool that generates a report on predicted energy use and project modeling. The tool, called the 2030 Commitment Annual Progress Reporting Tool, is part of the group's push to get its members to design carbon-neutral buildings and practice architecture in a more sustainable way. Although the tool was designed for architecture firms only, it is being tweaked for use by structural engineers. AIA released the tool at its 2010 convention in Miami. To date 105 architects have signed on to the AIA's voluntary 2030 commitment program, said Kelly Pickard, AIA's project
The U.S. Green Building Council is defending its decision to uphold the highest certification to be granted a public high school under its green-building rating system, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The engineers who filed the challenge to the LEED-New Construction Gold certification on behalf of a group of taxpayers in Eagle River, Wis., say the decision to uphold the certification damages the credibility of USGBC. The consulting engineers were pro bono technical experts for the five people who filed the 125-page appeal on Dec. 23, 2008, when Northland Pines High School was two years old. Consulting engineers
The nation’s first voluntary rating system for sustainable landscapes, called SITES, has selected 175 pilot projects to test its green-landscape design, construction and maintenance program. The goal is to apply “The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009” to real projects to see whether the four-star rating system needs tweaking. Feedback from the pilots will be used to revise the SITES’ final rating system and inform the technical reference manual, scheduled for release in 2013. The fledgling SITES, under development since 2005, is modeled after the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-building rating
A 70-story, folded, creased and curved stainless-steel curtain wall on an 867-ft-tall apartment building has been called "Gehry only on the outside," as if the building is a fake Frank. It's true that, when it opens next year, New York City's tallest residential tower won't be an internationally acclaimed cultural icon, as is the architect's now-12-year-old Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. The 76-story high-rise is not as colorful, whimsical and structurally innovative as the nearly decade-old Experience Music Project rock 'n' roll museum in Seattle. The new tower is not as description-defying inside and out as the six-year-old Walt Disney
PNA used finite-element analysis to reduce the free-form shapes to single curves. Gehry refined the shapes, based on PNA rules, so that more than 90% of the surface has a single curvature. This was accomplished by slight segmentation at the panel joints, says Budd. �We did the work zone by zone and face by face,� says Budd. �It was an iterative process,� adds Bowers. The contract-document phase began in January 2007. Gehry developed the surfaces and the wire frame for the curtain-wall units in collaboration with PNA. The performance mock-up was completed and tested in early 2008. PNA signed its
Some 200 Haitian engineers and engineering students gathered in Port-au-Prince on May 20-22 under a tent in plus-90°F heat to learn about seismic-resistant design and construction. The four introductory courses—which covered topics such as the seismology and seismicity of Haiti, earthquake-resistant design principles and rapid building assessment methodology—were held thanks to an agreement between the University of Quisqueya (UniQ) in Port-au-Prince and the University at Buffalo’s Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (UB-MCEER). Photo: UB-MCEER Seminar tents housed 100 participants each day. Photo: UB-MCEER The introductory seismic program included field evaluation training. Related Links: Congress Moving on Aid for Haiti,
Valuable lessons can be learned and possibly applied to modify U.S. seismic design codes and practices from the behavior of structures during the magnitude-8.8 earthquake that rocked Chile on Feb. 27, said the leader of a team representing the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which visited Chile from April 5-12. In April, ASCE also sent assessment teams from its Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI) and its Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (TCLEE). Photo: ASCE/SEI Assessment Team In Concepción, one side of the Torre O’Higgins Office Building is undamaged as the walls are
In the latest round of a heated dispute between McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. and the owner of the distressed McGuire Apartments, a 25-story tower in Seattle, the St. Louis-based contractor maintains the concrete frame’s corroding post-tensioned slab system can be fixed for less than $2 million. McCarthy calls the local owner’s refusal to make “simple” repairs, its ejection of tenants and its proposed dismantling of the nine-year-old building “irresponsible acts.” + Image Image: Whitlock Dalrymple Poston & Associates Pitting Contractor’s summary of pitting corrosion on tendons of 25-story building’s post-tensioning. Photo: Whitlock Dalrymple Poston & Associates Samples Tendon failure tests
Writers of standards—both for general structural design and, in particular, structural steel design—rolled out their 2010 versions this month, completed in time to be referenced in the upcoming 2012 edition of the model “International Building Code.” An overriding goal, say the engineers responsible for the revisions, is to make the standards simpler to understand and use. Illustration: AISC Weld-access-hole geometry is included in steel standard, despite a patent issue. The major editorial change to ASCE/SEI 7-10 “Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures” from the 2005 standard is a “complete” reorganization into a multiple-chapter format—first introduced for seismic loads
