Pei has had an affinity for wood for 20 of his 44 years. “It’s a natural material that is close to art and architecture,” says the associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
Veteran structural engineer Don Davies often confesses that by his own calculations, his annual personal carbon footprint is a whopping 10 times the world average and 3½ times the U.S. average.
If not for the Great Recession and Sean Beatty, construction of the curvaceous reinforced concrete sea-creature tanks in the 50,000-sq-ft Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion would have been even more arduous.
Now set to augment transportation construction projects underway across New York and New Jersey, officials are fast developing programs to expand infrastructure to meet climate change, resilience and sustainability needs, fueled by billions in more recent federal funding.
Punch-listing and testing acoustics and movable parts at the World Trade Center venue, with three flexible halls that have more than 60 configurations, was like fine-tuning a Swiss watch.