Of the three absolute requirements for life—water, air and shelter—only shelter depends on human ingenuity. This gallery celebrates the process of the intense communication and teamwork that modern construction requires of its participants to realize in metal, glass, wood and stone, the heights of design imagination.
Precast concrete panels incorporating fiber reinforced polyester Aslan 700 composite action NuTies being installed in a Fallbrooke estates school building in Lincoln, Neb. Photo by Doug Gremel.
Photographer: Don Crossland
Submitter: Amy Villasana, The Weitz Co.
Description: Crossland publishes kontakt, a Phoenix-based architectural design magazine. He sent this image to The Weitz Co., the contractor building 44 Monroe, a 34-story residential high-rise in the center of the picture. The $75-million project is set to wrap in July 2008. “My loft looks at the site,” says Crossland. “Last summer I watched a storm roll in and I grabbed the tripod and started shooting.” Lightning did not really strike the building’s crane, he says: “That was an optical illusion.”
Photographer: Matthew Glasshagel, Baker Concrete Construction, Monroe, Ohio
Submitter: Matthew Glasshagel
Description: Glasshagel visited Baker's twin condominium towers site in Miami several times on project review trips from the Ohio home office. "It's a really cool job," he says, noting the downtown, 43-story, 1.5-million-sq-ft structure is a "big footprint." The project used 66,000 cu yd of concrete, 7,000 tons of rebar, 950,000 lb of post tensioning cable and required 390,000 hours of labor. A heavy late-afternoon rainstorm blotted out the sun behind him, lending the picture its flat, odd light. The shot is surprisingly devoid of other tower cranes, considering that with so much development to date, the equipment is considered the city's official bird, he says.
Photographer: Paul Knapick, BBL Construction Services, Albany, NY
Submitter: Paul Knapick
Description: While adding a great room to an existing home in Guilderland, N.Y., near Albany, Knapick said he wanted to capture the "creative engineering" involved in turning a two-car garage and connecting breezeway into a wide-open, high-ceilinged living space. The steel and wood framing caught his eye. "Sometime in a picture, everything leads you in one direction," says Knapick, whose images have been selected in past ENR photo contests. "With this shot, your eye can kind of decide where it wants to go."
Photographer: Terri Meyer Boake, associate director, School of Architecture, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Submitter: Terri Meyer Boake
Description: Teaching building construction is no textbook case for Terri Meyer Boake, associate director of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo. She brings the field into her classroom through her photos. For an educational CD, Boake documented construction of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Crystals, designed by Daniel Libeskind, from start to stop. To get better access, she even bought a membership to the existing museum, which had viewing windows. This shot was taken from the 18th-floor balcony of a nearby hotel. "I found the [workers] captivating," she says. "Once the building is complete, those images and lessons are forever hidden from view."
Photographer: Mick Kotaro Miyake, Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co., San Francisco, Calif.
Submitter: Mick Kotaro Miyake
Description: Miyake says his role as San Francisco-based Hathaway Dinwiddie project manager gives him the chance to anticipate moments that can generate great photos, particularly when the lighting is dramatic. Such was the case with this photo taken at dawn of the new Britannia Oyster Point biotechnology research complex in South San Francisco, for which the firm is general contractor. "Those images are my favorites, morning and evening light, very strong contrast," Miyake says. "I spend a ton of time to wait, wait, wait until the moment comes," he says. "People don't understand how long it takes." The judges were impressed by Miyake's eye and timing.
Photographer: Gary Krueger, photographer, Los Angeles
Submitter: Jon Sansom, marketing manager, Morley Builders, Santa Monical, Calif.
Description: Gary Krueger, a professional photographer, frequently takes project photos for Santa Monica, Calif.-based Morley Builders. The firm asked Krueger to document a continuous concrete pour on the $100 million California Science Center expansion in Los Angeles that started around 3 or 4 A.M. Krueger says he likes to take pictures at twilight, but he shot this photo at the opposite end of the day with similar effect. just before the sun came up. "When you shoot things at twilight, you've got that half hour [where] you've really have this great sky...It gets to be very pretty."
Photographer: Steven Fruhwirth, marketing manager, Webcor Builders, San Mateo, Calif.
Submitter: Steven Fruhwirth
Description: As a marketing manager for San Mateo, Calif.-based Webcor Builders, Steven Fruhwirth routinely takes photos for his firm. Shooting this image of the domed roof atop the new California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco, completed in fall 2007, required him to climb onto a 100-ft-tall tower crane. The innovative structure includes skylights that provide light for plants and animals living in a manmade rainforest inside. The black covering between skylights is substrate for plants and grasses that will foster the building's new green roof. The location of workers on the side of the dome makes the photo interesting, says Fruhwirth. "You get a sense of the scale of the project," he says.
Photographer: Larry Erps
Submitter: Peter Bromley, Jones Concrete Construction LLC
Description: Erps, project manager for Ceco Concrete Construction, the formwork contractor on the Centerpoint condo project in Tempe, Ariz., shot the 3 a.m. deck placement last fall. Tempe is home of Arizona State University and there are a number of popular bars near the jobsite. "They close at 2 a.m.," says Erps, "and after an hour the trucks can use the parking lots." He also videotapes each pour. Like a football coach, “I watch game films, looking for efficiency.”
Photographer: Kimberly Wright, graphic designer, Balfour Beatty Construction, Plantation Fla.
Submitter: Kimberly Wright
Description: Wright, a graphic designer with Balfour Beatty, took this shot of a ladder in a shaftway at the City Place Office Tower in West Palm Beach, Fla. one day while looking for advertising and project profile images, which can call for just about anything. "It's always hard to find good construction shots, so the senior graphic designer and I often go to sites," Wright says. Wandering, they came across a ladder. "Someone had just stored it there and I liked the contrast in colors," she says. Maybe we will see this ladder in the Annual Report.
Photographer: Art Harvey, field engineer, CMC Construction, Miami, Fla.
Submitter: Desiree Cuenca, project manager, CMC
Description: Harvey, an avid amateur photographer, uses his knowledge of CMC operations to anticipate good shoots. He captured this one as a team lowered a 30-ft section of 16-in.-dia condensing water return riser through several floors on the EPIC Miami Hotel and Residences in downtown Miami. “They do this every fourth or fifth floor,” he says. Harvey’s images are often hung in the company office or submitted with progress payment estimates, but he notes that taking construction photos is mostly just plain fun.
Photographer: Daniel Faraone, Engineering Intern, Wexler & Associates, New York, NY
Submitter: Daniel Faraone
Description: While still living on campus at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., Faraone, who is now co-oping with Wexler, took this shot of demolition of the Noyes Center Dining Hall. The work is part of a campus-wide program to create a new residential college housing system. Faraone saw this moment in history while walking back from class. The sight of the machine striking a second-story wall from its perch on a pile of rebar and concrete stopped him in his tracks. "I witnessed the gradual destruction of ‘my’ Cornell University to make way for the new students arriving in the years to come," he says.
Photographer: Matthew J. Makes, package manager, cladding, Turner Construction Co., Dubai office
Submitter: Matthew J. Makes
Description: On a foggy November morning in Dubai, visibility was one or two car lengths as Matthew J. Makes drove to his job on the future world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai. On the way up the tower's hoist, the view improved. "By the time we reached the 81st floor, the clouds were about 40 levels below us," says Makes, curtain wall manager for Turner International. "I had my camera with me at the time and was able to get a few shots 'above the clouds,'" he says. The eerie view is of the skyline along Sheik Zayed Road, Dubai's main street.
Photographer: David Cox, DPR Construction Inc., San Diego, Calif.
Submitter: David Cox
Description: "There's not enough time to take all the pictures...there are so many scenic things happening out there every day," says David Cox, a superintendent with contractor DPR. He says he loves his digital camera that date-stamps every shot and allows him to create a visual diary of multiple images to reference later. Cox says he also uses his camera to observe other contractors' jobsites, such as this one near San Francisco, to observe and analyze equipment setups and approaches. At this site, Cox noticed an unusual crane erecting a tower crane, an image he chose to capture. "There was this little man up there directing this huge piece of iron," he says.
Photographer: R. Scott Lewis, ACCO Engineered Systems, Glendale, Calif.
Submitter: R. Scott Lewis
Description: Scott Lewis had been writing submittals and owners' manuals for 11 years with ACCO Engineered Systems, a mechanical-electrical-plumbing contractor in Glendale, Calif., when his boss realized his photography skills. He still writes, but for the last four years, Lewis has been turned loose with his camera. "I like the thrill of it," he says. "Every shot is different and I can carve out the light. For me, it is a different world." Lewis snapped this shot of company workers finishing installation of a 1900-ton centrifugal chiller at California State University, San Bernardino, and says it is just the kind of photo that allows all of his co-workers to realize the construction industry's dimension. "The office workers don't see this part of what we do," Lewis says. "This brings it home."
Photographer: Joshua Weingram, project manager, Dranoff Properties, Philadelphia
Submitter: Joshua Weingram
Description: Joshua Weingram, a construction project manager for Philadelphia-based developer Dranoff Properties, was walking through a unit of a new $125-million condominium and performing arts building under construction in the city's downtown when he noticed two ironworkers outside dismantling a tower crane. Already armed with a camera, he quickly leaned out the window to capture the image. "I couldn't resist," he says. "It was the closest I could get to seeing the workers' perspective as they dangled over one of the major streets of Philadelphia."
Photographer: Edward Bloom, Thornton Tomasetti, New York City
Submitter: Edward Bloom
Description: As curtain-wall consultant on the $350-million Federation Tower in Moscow, Thornton Tomasetti associate Ed Bloom has documented progress for more 18 months. The project consists of two towers of 85 and 53 stories with a central elevator spire reaching 430 meters high. It will be the tallest building in Europe when completed in 2010. Towers connect to the elevator spire by skybridges and are clad in unitized curtain-wall panels made in China. Thornton Tomasetti is structural engineer and curtain-wall consultant. Here, Bloom uses a Minolta Z2 camera to capture workers handling curtain-wall segments being lifted to position.
Photographer: Joseph Blum, People & Work Photography, San Francisco
Submitter: Joseph Blum
Description: Blum is an accomplished photographer who takes delight in cool construction work. "I thought this project was really great," he says of the $429-million California Academy of Science building under construction in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. "There was something about the triangular shapes and how they had to spin them into place—and the thing was being lowered with an overhead crane they were coordinating with an operator you can't see."
Photographer: Wayne Stocks, vice president, Thornton Tomasetti Inc., New York City
Submitter: Maya Cotton, Thornton Tomasetti Inc.
Description: On the site of a new 15-story tower for the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, shafts are drilled to stable material and filled with concrete, for a solid foundation. The first pour had already been done on this 9.5-ft-dia., 10-ft-deep shaft. The corrugated lining creates a slightly hypnotic visual effect, in addition to serving as the framework for the caisson cap. "We normally take site photos of cracks or bolts," says Stocks, "but I thought this one looked kind of cool. A lot of what we do gets covered up and is never seen again, so photos allow us to have a record."
Photographer: Larry G. Morris, Henry Bros. Co.
Submitter: Larry G. Morris
Description: Photographer Larry G. Morris calls this shot "frosty morning on site." He is corporate photographer at Henry Bros. Co., a medium-sized, 85-year-old general contractor and construction management firm in Hickory Hills, Ill., near Chicago. The company specializes in schools construction and uses photography extensively to track projects and build portfolios to obtain new work. "Anytime I go out on a site I usually shoot 100 plus--and I am out several times a week," Morris says. On this early winter morning, he says his photographer's eye focused on this composition and he shot many frames of it. "It was impressive," says Morris. "You see something like that and you just know."
Photographer: Jessie Delgado, project engineer, BE&K, Birmingham, Ala.
Submitter: Jessie Delgado
Description: Jessie Delgado, a project engineer with Birmingham, Ala.-based BE&K, loves to take pictures of projects he is working on, sometimes shooting 60 or 70 photos in a session. Delgado says he saw this worker at a jobsite on the grounds of the former Lorton correctional facility in Lorton, Va. and knew he had to capture the moment. "Every once in a while you get that one picture," he says. "It was the perfect angle of the sun, and he looked like he was working very hard." BE&K is converting buildings on the Lorton site into studios and galleries for working artists.
Photographer: Eddie Hidalgo, senior project engineer, Balfour Beatty Construction, Fairfax, Va.
Submitter: Ashley McCarron, Balfour Beatty
Description: Eddie Hidalgo came to the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. on Sept. 11, 2007 to take progress shots of Balfour Beatty's project to build a memorial to the 184 people who died there six years before in the 9/11 terror attack. The event is commemorated each year with an illuminated flag draped from the building. The $33-million memorial, scheduled for completion in September 2008, will feature 184 basins in a larger reflecting pool to recognize each of the victims. Hidalgo, who noticed this foreman lost in thought, believes it is a poignant image of the day
Photographer: Rick Kariolic, The Durst Organization, New York, NY
Submitter: Rick Kariolic
Description: Kariolic captures archival shots for Durst, the project owner. He found this group of workers on the 48th floor of the 56-story Bank of America tower in New York City as they were shaking out their first load of the day. The early light and the storied Manhattan skyline gives power to the scene. “It was not quite 7 a.m. and the sun wasn’t even coming off the horizon,” he says. “There was something about the colors and the shadows that stood out.” Not being able to see faces adds an additional layer of strength and mystery.
Photographer: Justin Anderson, project engineer, Rafn Co., Bellevue, Wash.
Submitter: Jennifer O'Rear, Rafn Co.
Description: Against a foreboding Seattle sky, castellated steel beams are lifted in by crane as the four-story Terry and Thomas office building tops out in a vision of metal and cloud. Project engineer Justin Anderson caught the moment on film as some of the last few beams were brought in. General contractor Rafn Co., Bellevue, Wash., began taking photos of the building's steel erection because "we were putting up all this steel, and realized we didn't have any good photos of the work being done," says Anderson. The castellated steel beams are used throughout the building's frame in an effort to reduce weight and materials, and to be more eco-friendly.
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