Megaproject. Channel Tunnel Rail Link crowns infrastructure work, contributing 40% of Arup’s revenue. (Photo Courtesy of London & Continental Railways) Talk to executives at the design firm Arup Group and it won’t be long before they mention the “key speech.” Written by the founder nearly four decades ago, the speech is a road map with unusual influence on the firm’s emergence as a growing global business with a diverse array of design and analysis skills among its 7,000 staff. With group sales rising 15% last year, “every part is growing,” says Chairman Terry Hill. “What is reassuring is that our
Prosperity is expanding the borders of the world construction market. The North American market boom has been well documented, but the Middle East now is growing despite regional tensions, thanks largely to the upswing in oil prices. Asia has been holding steady at a high level of activity. The huge European market, which largely has been static, is showing signs of recovery, led by Eastern European work. And Latin America also is stirring, thanks to rising prices for copper and other commodities, which has mining work flourishing. Related Links: Ranking: Top 200 International Design Firms Ranking: Top 150 Global Design
Griffin Matt Griffin has earned the right to be a bit cocky about the mutually beneficial marriage between cash-rich and dirt-poor Washington Mutual and the cash-poor and dirt-rich Seattle Art Museum Downtown. But even he had crafted an early escape plan, if the deal collapsed. In October 2002, WaMu and SAM had an agreement in concept. Each gave its architect six months to come up with a schematic design and then meld them. “There were times we weren’t sure it was going to work,” says Griffin, managing director of Pine Street Group LLC. If it hadn’t, WaMu and SAM had
The design of the Seattle Art Museum’s so-called bris soleil curtain wall system, with movable stainless steel panels to block out light, is called the hairiest part of the 1.3-million-sq-ft WaMu Center-SAM Downtown expansion. To the art museum, the curtain wall is the distinguishing element between the museum and the office tower. To others, it presented the biggest headache. That’s because it went through several design iterations and a 30% size reduction, mostly to reduce its cost. The changes would affect the structure it attaches to and the design of the museum’s mechanical system, with which it works to control
Art museum will expand over time (top drawings) as bank vacates leased space. (Image courtesy of LMN Architects) The long-range expansion plan for the Seattle Art Museum Downtown is so ambitious and confusing, even to the trained eye, that SAM has its architect for tenant improvements creating a master document. It will contain just about everything that anyone working on the interiors in the future might need to know about the museum’s initial $86-million addition-renovation project. The interior of the 12-story museum component was designed to accommodate the 25-year build-out—a series of two-story art galleries, offset and interlocking. But when
Stacked. Composite photo shows first use of buckling-restrained braces in U.S. high-rise. (Photos courtesy of Magnusson Klemencic Associates) Developer Matt Griffin, rainmaker for the bold deal in Seattle that joined a cash-rich, dirt-poor bank with a dirt-rich, cash-poor art museum to produce a $370-million mixed-use development, plays down the design distress and construction contortions created by commingling “suits and smocks” in a single tall building. Everyone else says the deal created a two-headed monster with a split personality. Washington Mutual, the nation’s fifth-largest mortgage lender, wanted to build its headquarters on property adjacent to and owned by Seattle Art Museum
(Photo by Michael Goodman for ENR) Engineers with the Maine Dept. of Transportation refer to July 11, 2003, as “Black Friday.” It was the day they received a call informing them that an inspection of the Waldo-Hancock Bridge over the Penobscot River had revealed crucial strand breakages in a suspension cable. While keeping the old steel bridge on U.S. Route 1 temporarily functional with a complex supplementary cable installation, MDOT now needed a fast-track process for its long-planned replacement (ENR 11/10/03 p. 24). “Our goal was to pour concrete by December of 2003” for a new bridge, recalls David Cole,
Regaining Stride. Maumee River crossing, now using a modified truss (right), will feature glass-sheathed pylon (top). (Rendering top courtesy of Figg; photo bottom courtesy of the Ohio DOT) Toledo’s Maumee River bridge, known officially as the Veterans Glass City Skyway, will be the second ever to utilize the cable cradle system designed by W. Denney Pate, principal bridge engineer with Figg Engineering Group, Tallahassee. After a fatal truss collapse halted work for 18 months, crews are now regaining momentum (ENR 3/1/04 p. 12). Crews have completed six of 128 cantilevered segments for the 1,225-ft main span. They average 9.5 ft
Challenging. Tight site squeezes in old and new digesters and new final sedimentation tanks. Brooklyn’s gritty industrial waterfront is bristling with frenetic activity as engineers and workers jockey about a tight site upgrading New York City’s largest wastewater treatment plant. The mammoth project, costing more than $3 billion, will process 310 million gallons of wastewater per day to federal secondary treatment standards by late 2007 and give neighbors much needed odor relief and community amenities. Since 1998, 800 to 1,000 workers from 25 prime contractors and hundreds of subcontractors have labored intensively on the 53-acre site to overhaul the treatment
The year 2006 marks the first year of the second decade of ENR’s annual Top 200 Environmental Firms list, and its results make clear that rumors of the environmental sector’s collapse are about as true as the celebrity gossip in tabloid columns. Even in the sixth year of a U.S. administration not known for a pro-green attitude, the Top 200 still crested on a market pushed by a booming global economy, more owner commitment to environmental spending and firms’ own zeal for growth. Firms report $37.5 billion in total revenue in 2005, an 11.5% increase over last year’s number that
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