The construction industry has been suffering for two years through the toughest recession in 20 years, perhaps longer. The depth of the downturn has burned away the industry's natural optimism, and major firms are taking a hard look at the market and at the U.S. economy. However, they now are starting to believe that a recovery should begin next year. 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
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
Engineers inspecting Chile’s structures after the magnitude-8.8 earthquake that struck the nation’s midsection on Feb. 27 say Chile’s modern buildings are more robust than many equivalent buildings on the West Coast of the U.S. Even concrete frames under construction fared well in the second-strongest temblor on record, say seismic experts. Photo: Miyamoto International Inc. Tower in Concepción appears to lack vertical reinforcing and horizontal confinement. + Image “It’s amazing how little structural damage there is on new buildings,” says Scott Nyseth, a principal in the Vancouver, Wash., office of Miyamoto International Inc. The amount of shear wall per sq ft
A multidisciplinary team of U.S. earthquake researchers and design engineers, organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), is leaving Feb. 28 to spend six days in Haiti. The team, under the leadership of Reginald DesRoches, Professor and Associate Chair of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, will document scientific, engineering and societal effects of Jan. 12’s magnitude-7 earthquake. The goal is to focus on the disaster’s impacts on people, the performance of structures and lifelines, and the enormous societal challenges of relief, recovery and rebuilding, says the Oakland, Calif.-based EERI. Team members plan
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
What is not a movie studio but occupies 35 acres and, when completed, will look like a small city with five-story buildings, a subway station, and one- and two-story houses on a suburban-style street? Answer: the future 2.4-million-sq-ft New York City Police Academy. The $1.5-billion-plus project’s $656-million first phase is expected to start construction in a few months. Photo: Perkins+Will / Consulting Architect: Michael Fieldman Architects Thirty-five-acre New York City site has rotten soil, security restrictions, height limits. For the designer, the sprawling site is confined relative to an extensive overall program, which includes 20 buildings, and many constraints. “Lots
Staying just hours ahead of another snow storm expected to hit Virginia’s Dulles International Airport on Feb. 10, about 40 workers from Miller & Long Concrete Construction, Bethesda, Md., installed 65 towers to shore the sole-surviving aircraft hangar unit at the three-year-old United Jet Center. Three other units at the private hangar collapsed during a Feb. 6 storm, which dumped 35.5 in. of wet snow on the facility’s roof. No one was injured during the three collapses, but many of the 14 aircraft were damaged. Photo: AP/Wideworld Failed Roof of manufactured-steel structure in Virginia had at least 35.5 in. of
Structural engineers on reconnaissance missions in quake-ravaged Haiti observing the salvaging of compromised building materials are extremely concerned about premature rebuilding. The work, getting under way, is perpetuating the very poor construction practices that caused hundreds of thousands of collapses and more than 170,000 deaths in the magnitude-7 earthquake that struck on Jan. 12 with an epicenter 25 kilometers from Port-au-Prince. Photo: The United Nations The United Nations headquarters in Haiti, constructed without seismic resistance, was one of the newer reinforced concrete buildings that did not survive the earthquake. Photo: MCEER-AIDG Haitians walking near a dangling roof slab at the
Two years ago, Haiti hosted the first-ever disaster-reduction meeting, which was attended by more than 120 representatives of 21 nations of the greater Caribbean and 18 regional and international organizations. The November 2007 conference in Saint-Marc, called the “High-Level Conference on Disaster Reduction of the Association of Caribbean States,” produced a 27-point action plan for disaster reduction, which included a plea to make disaster-risk reduction a national priority. Related Links: Haiti Quake Recovery Planners Wait in Wings “Costly investments in infrastructure built in hazardous areas need to be protected, while the time needed for disaster recovery needs to be reduced,”
A preliminary damage assessment map for major buildings and infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is now available from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research's Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNITAR/UNOSAT). Photo: Eduardo Fierro, BFP Engineers Inc. Collapsed two-, or possibly three-story reinforced concretebuilding in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Sites marked as "No Visual Damage" may have major structural damage not identifiable in the imagery. Damage there is likely underestimated. The same goes for road and bridge damage, says the group. Of 110 selected sites, 58 or 53% are visibly damaged or destroyed. Of these, 88% are government buildings; 60% are churches, 50% are
