Related Links: Another 'Death Ray' Building Heats Up Reflective Solar Rays Two developers say they will spend several million dollars on the facade of London’s 37-floor “Walkie Talkie” skyscraper to prevent the solar glare that caused scorching damage in the adjacent street last summer (ENR 9/16/13 p. 20).Lightweight, 38-centimeter-long metal fins, or brise soleile, will be fixed to the curved south facade of the building at 20 Fenchurch St. in a six-month operation, subject to planning approval from the local authority. Eight levels of fins are planned for each floor, from No. 3 to No. 34.Solar-glare investigations ordered by the
Photo courtesy of Fentress Architects Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, Denver Related Links: Judicial Center Completed Two Months Early 2013 Best of the Best Projects Winners The 600,000-sq-ft Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center (CJC) capped a prominent, important project for the state of Colorado. The site is situated along the perimeter of Denver's historic Civic Center Park and next door to the state capitol.Designed to create a more efficient state judicial system, the CJC consolidates seven judicial and legal agencies that had leased office space in 10 different Denver locations.The halls and floor of the four-story glass atrium
Photo Courtesy Silverstein Properties After five years of construction, 4 WTC—the first tower on the original 16-acre World Trade Center site—was set to open on Nov. 13.Designed by Fumihiko Maki, the 977-ft-tall office building is the shortest of the four towers planned for the site. Tishman Construction is the construction manager for the 2.3-million-sq-ft structure as well as for 1 WTC, which is set to open early next year, and 3 WTC, a 1,170-ft tower whose eight-story podium is nearly completed. Two WTC has so far been built to street level. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey
Related Links: LA Times: Mayor Garcetti Suggests Czar for Earthquake Preparedness Simpson Gumpertz & Heger California Institute of Technology Renewed earthquake paranoia has hit Los Angeles since an Oct. 12 report in the Los Angeles Times labeled more than 1,000 buildings as "at risk" for collapse in a quake. In response, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) promised to appoint a quake "czar" to determine if retrofits of the city's older reinforced-concrete structures are needed.The Times' list—compiled through building-permit research and an owner survey—includes mostly reinforced-concrete buildings engineered between the 1960s and the mid-1980s. "This class of building exists in
Related Links: AIA Press release on Trade Mission Opportunities for architecture and design firms are abundant in Brazil, but the best way to take advantage of those opportunities is to have boots on the ground, says Andrew Goldberg, the American Institute of Architect’s (AIA) managing director, government relations and outreach, who returned from a five-day trade mission to Brazil Oct. 10th.“The main thing we learned was that if you want to do work in places like Brazil, you really have to commit, and you need to be there… You need to be there on the ground, building relationships,” he says.The
Related Links: Vegas Hotel Is Like a Giant Sun Reflector, Says Pool Visitor Sandblasters Tone Down Glare-Prone Disney Concert Hall With the current fashion of curvaceous buildings, the need to shed light on solar glare is becoming an increasingly important design consideration. London's "Walkie Talkie" skyscraper is the latest to reflect "death rays" that partially melted a car and almost set fire to a barbershop's entrance.As Londoners basked in an uncharacteristically sunny summer day, the concave elevation of the incomplete 37-floor building at 20 Fenchurch St. focused solar rays onto the opposite sidewalk, melting part of a Jaguar's roof and
Related Links: American Insitute of Architects The American Institute of Architects and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Advanced Urbanism, in collaboration with the Clinton Global Initiative and others, are expanding into urban-health design as never before. AIA recently launched a 10-year research project aimed at developing model methods to alter the urban environment in ways that would improve physical well-being.The goal of "Decade of Design: Health and Urbanism" is to focus attention on health through research, community planning and community engagement. The aim is to "better understand the link between health factors and city form," says Alan M.
Related Links: Bids Solicited for Tunneling in India's Treacherous Himalayas India Blackout Affects 600 Million People Chicago-based design firm dbHMS is finalizing a master plan with the goal of making India’s $260-million Nalanda University campus a net-zero energy user. The 370,000-sq-meter project in Rajgir, in the eastern state of Bihar, is expected to start construction by the end of 2013.dbHMS is working with architects Vastu Shilpa Consultant of India, which won the project via the university’s international design competition.According to the firm, the plan for the Nalanda project is to install the world’s first application of a non-experimental desiccant-assisted evaporative
Samsung C&T Corp. has started construction of a multi-use tower that is slated to become the tallest building in Singapore, at 290 meters, when completed in 2016.The South Korea-based contractor won the design-build contract in March for GuocoLand Ltd.’s Tanjong Pagar Center. By late July, secant piling work was complete and preparations for first-floor construction had begun. The project is using top-down construction methods to speed the work.The center is located in the city’s commercial business district, above the Tanjong Pagar MRT station. When completed, the complex will feature 158,000 sq m of space and three basement levels.The center comprises
Structural fire engineering is heating up in the U.S. and Europe, thanks in large part to the "traveling fires" observed on Sept. 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center.