A project to rescue a dilapidated, 178-year-old house on the edge of Washington, D.C.'s National Mall won a $1-million grant on Dec. 9 from American Express.The lockkeeper's house served a freight canal, located near where the Washington Monument is now. Canals formed an inland freight transportation system, which was eclipsed by railroads in the 1870s.Boarded up since the 1970s, the house will be moved back from the road and undergo extensive interior and exterior restoration.
Photo Courtesy of Gehry Partners LLP/Projectcore Frank Gehry's design for the Mirvish + Gehry Toronto (above), including 305-m and 275-m towers, is reminiscent of the architect's first high-rise (below), in New York City. Photo Courtesy of Forest City Ratner Related Links: Projectcore Inc. WSP Group If all goes according to plan, architect Frank Gehry's second high-rise building, a 305-meter-tall skyscraper currently entering its schematic design phase, would become, at 305 meters, Canada's tallest building. The planned residential building, which received Toronto City Council approval in July, is expected to be under construction in 2016 and take four and a half
Photo by AP Wideworld One worker died in the first bridge collapse, while the second occurred more than 12 hours later. The fatal collapse of an under-construction pedestrian bridge and—more than 12 hours later— the overnight crash of another nearby span at a $49-million community-college project in Raleigh, N.C., have contractors, engineers and state safety officials stumped for a cause of the two failures at the Wake Technical Community College Building F project.On Nov. 13, around 10:30 a.m., workers with Skanska USA Building's subcontractor, Central Concrete of North Carolina, were placing concrete on the deck of a bridge, connecting Building
Photo by Iwan Baan Related Links: Progress is Slow but Steady at World Trade Center Development Manhattan's 1,776-ft-tall One World Trade Center Officially OpensThe $3.9-billion One World Trade Center—the Western Hemisphere's tallest building, thanks to a 441-ft-tall spire—officially opened on Nov. 3, more than 13 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed the original 110-story Twin Towers. The 104-story tower—designed by architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with structural engineer WSP Cantor Seinuk and mechanical engineer Jaros Baum & Bolles after an early collaboration with Studio Daniel Libeskind—has redundant and beefed-up structural and mechanical systems, and the air-supply
Related Links: Homes That Float Quake-Resistant House Passes Shake Tests With Flying Colors A small but significant house in the U.K. is substantially complete and set to be occupied next month.The 225-sq-meter cottage, located on a flood-prone island 10 m from the edge of the River Thames in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, is the U.K.'s first amphibious house—but likely not its last. Called Formosa, the house, which sits on the ground, has a concrete tub-like basement foundation that floats during floods.The house is designed by BACA Architects with structural engineer Techniker and hydrological engineer HR Wallingfords, to handle up to 2.5 m
Recent shake-table tests on a wood-framed house with a newly developed low-cost structural system for seismic resistance confirmed researchers' predictions of drastically reduced earthquake damage. The goal of the study, considered a big step toward more quake-resilient single-family housing, is
Related Links: Corvette Museum Will Make Sinkhole a Permanent Fixture Repairs Under Way at Corvette Museum After Sinkhole Swallows Cars That sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum that ate eight Corvettes in February, revving up whopping increases in visitors and sales at the venue, will be filled in this winter.The Bowling Green, Ky., museum’s board of directors had kept that option open in an earlier vote to leave the sinkhole open. But the extra cost and the possibility of harm from humidity from the gaping hole in the ground – caves run off two sides of it – changed their
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 &
Related Links: Bored of the Rings: Alice Goes Underground in New Zealand SubTropolis Website General contractor Mark Meyer's clients have been keeping him in the dark quite a bit recently— working underground, that is—and he couldn't be happier.Over the past 12 months, his firm, Meyer Brothers Building Co., has been working on two unusual projects as part of an ongoing expansion of SubTropolis, a roughly 6-million-sq-ft facility in Kansas City, Mo., that bills itself as the world's largest underground business complex.While working 150 ft below the surface in low-lighting conditions has its challenges, Meyer says there are upsides to building