Workers are building the $810-million Olympic Stadium with 80,000 seats and a partial roof. But in 2012, soon after officials of London Games hang the final medals around the necks of the winning athletes, crews will move back in to shrink the venue down to its "legacy mode," with only 25,000 seats and no roof. Consequently, from the start of design, a "here today, two-thirds gone tomorrow" attitude dominated the team's thinking. The project marks “a new era of Olympic stadium design...demonstrating how a successful event can be blended with the long term needs of a community,” claims Rod Sheard,
By transforming a 250-hectare blot on London’s landscape into a permanent sports village, after a fortnight for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games, the shapers of the $11.5-billion park hope to leave a green mixed-use development that lives on well into the future. Furthermore, with the 75%-complete project on schedule and very close to its 2007 budget, they are touting the success of a collaborative contractual model that relies heavily on project management and involves sharing risk and reward among the main building team members. “For us, planning the Olympic Park was about legacy first,” says Dan Epstein, who
As the 2012 Olympic Games’ gateway venue, the $405-million Aquatic Centre is the 250-acre park's most flamboyant building, adorned by an aluminum-clad roof with a sweeping profile. But many agree the center will not look its best until workers clip its temporary wings, after the July 27 to Aug. 12 games. During the events, nearly two thirds of the 17,500 Olympic spectators will sit in two temporary wings, rising steeply from either side of the center. The curvaceous building is running 20% over its 2007 budget. Officials at the U.K. Dept. of Culture Media and Sport attribute the rise to
A $4-billion-plus highway that includes what will be one of the world’s longest highway tunnels will soon be under construction along the west side of Stockholm, Sweden. Image: Courtesy of Foster + Partners A rendering of the winning Slussen master plan to revitalize the waterfront area. + Image image: Courtesy of Vägverket. The route for the Stockholm Bypass Project, which will include one of the world’s longest road tunnels, skirts the city’s west side. Related Links: Foster+Partners Slussen Masterplan slideshow Project for Public Spaces blog: “Is Stockholm in Danger of Losing Its Waterfront?” Vägverket’s official site Stockholm Traffic Bypass Gets
The U.K.’s construction sector found some solace in the Oct. 25 publication of the country’s first national infrastructure development plan. It was announced a few days after the government outlined huge cuts in infrastructure and other public budgets aimed at eliminating its deep budget deficit. Credit: ffice of The Prime Minister Prime Minister David Cameron’s budget cuts spare the Crossrail London railroad tunnel. Related Links: London’s Massive Rail Project Gains Favor How far the U.K.’s six-month-old coalition government and its conservative prime minister, David Cameron, will go to cut the deficit is shown by their willingness to pull back on
Pakistan’s catastrophic floods this year overshadowed the Indus River’s pivotal role in irrigating the country’s farmland and generating its electricity. But even as river levees tumbled, engineers were completing plans to enlarge generating capacity of the Indus’ mighty Tarbela dam by 27% and to build the even larger Diamer Basha hydro project farther upstream. Photo: Courtesy Mott Macdonald Group Tarbela siltation prompted power planners to site a second dam upstream. Diamer Basha will be sited more than 300 kilometers upriver of Tarbela but will, nevertheless, boost the lower plant’s output by reducing sedimentation. Since Tarbela’s completion some 36 years ago,
The world’s longest tunnel, Switzerland’s 57-kilometer-long Gotthard Alpine rail crossing, broke through on Oct. 15. The Gotthard twin tunnels will be the longest of several being built through the Alps on the Milan, Italy, to Basel, Switzerland, corridor. The joint-venture Tunnel AlpTransit-Ticino (TAT) broke northward from its Faido section of the east drive into the awaiting Sedrun stretch, roughly halfway along the tunnel. The west tunnel’s breakthrough is scheduled for next spring. TAT used 8.8-meter-dia Herrenknecht Gripper tunnel-boring machines for most of the excavation. Because of difficult ground conditions on the south drives, including the Faido and Bodio sections, the
The U.K.’s North Sea gas reserves are running out. But rather than let gas pipes go to waste, the national transmission network owner plans to use some of them to send carbon dioxide captured from a Scottish coal-fired powerplant for disposal in depleted offshore wells. Photo: Courtesy of Scottish Power With E.ON U.K. dropping out of the CCS race, ScottishPower’s Longannet powerplant in Scotland is the last project standing in the competition for funding a carbon-capture facility. Photo: Courtesy of TCM Norway’s Technology Centre Mongstad hopes to complete its nearly $900-million CCS test facility by 2018. Related Links: Ten Minutes
Preliminary investigation points to unsuitable dam foundations as a potential cause of Hungary’s Oct. 4 tailings dam collapse. Seven people died, 150 were injured, and approximately 1,000 hectares of land were polluted heavily by caustic “red mud” surging from an alumina plant at Ajka, say Interior Ministry officials. Phot: AP/WideWorld Hungarian emergency teams appear to have saved the Raba, Moson-Danube and Danube rivers from the caustic pollution. But heightened pH levels caused by the sludge devastated fish populations in the Marcal River, according to government officials. Hungary’s other tailings dams are under investigation. Interior Ministry officials estimate that more than
Researchers in Northern Ireland report promising results from a demonstration project that used rods made with basalt fibers to reinforce a 22-meter-long concrete-deck section of a $1.5-million replacement bridge in County Fermanagh. The mineral material, which resists corrosion and has twice the tensile strength of steel, is not yet accredited for structural use in the U.K. In addition to testing the basalt-fiber-reinforced polymer (BFRP), the project is a demonstration of compressive membrane analysis in deck design, says Susan Taylor, a senior structural-engineering lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast, which secured a $160,000 grant from the U.K. Dept. for Transport for the