An inadvertent meeting of the minds during planning for a 484,000-sq-ft hospital in Dayton, Ohio, turned into an effort that has propelled multitrade prefabrication of hospital components to a new level. In the most ambitious U.S. implementation of the strategy, the construction manager estimates that prefabbing the 178 identical patient rooms and 120 overhead corridor utility racks sliced more than two months from construction and 1% to 2% off the cost of the $152-million building, which is 90% complete. The first effort is seen as just a beginning. “I want to change the design of hospitals with this process,” says
Wind energy, which accounted for 39% of all new U.S. electric generating capacity last year, could provide 20% of the nation’s electricity by 2030 if growth trends continue for wind power installations, according to a recent study. On the down side, siting, planning and cost allocation issues remain “key barriers” to transmission investment, the study says. Slide Show It may be possible to reach the U.S. government’s goal of producing 20% of the nation’s electricity from wind energy by 2030, but the production goal it is not a shoe-in, says a recent report. To reach the 20% goal, installations would
During a nine-course meal at a Chinese restaurant in New York City on July 10, Wang Da Sui, design master of China and part of a panel of experts approving the structural scheme for the 632-meter-tall Shanghai Tower, confirmed that the innovative architecture of the twisted and tapering skyscraper—sheathed in sheer glass like a Baccarat crystal—is a guinea pig for crafting China’s first supertall-building code. The code, for structures 300 m and taller with “serious irregularity,” requires performance-based design and extra-stiff frames and puts strict limits on building acceleration. Wang, who also heads the code committee, said the code will
Winning the “bridging” design-build contract for the University of California, San Francisco’s stem-cell research laboratory, a serpentine cliff-hanger in a high seismic zone, put the design-build team on a slippery slope. The steep hillside site for the 660 x 70-ft lab, set on an external, expressed and base-isolated space truss, was unstable, inaccessible and squeezed on one side by active hospitals on the university’s Parnassus campus. When bridging documents were released in January 2008, conceptual design by Rafael Vi�oly Architects was for a lab that would have cost at least $20 million more than the approximately $76-million target cost. And
The building energy-use reporting tool released this month by the American Institute of Architects may help firms get a handle on how their designs compare to others regarding predicted energy consumption, but it won’t help designers comply with myriad statewide energy codes. Not only are there different codes in different states for both commercial and residential construction but statewide energy codes are constantly evolving, making it tough for designers to keep up with changes, say code experts. Image Image State codes are generally based on model energy codes, which are “getting more rigorous,” said Dave Conover, senior technical adviser with
Licensed U.S. architects working globally, a group that is growing, need support from the American Institute of Architects in several ways, including promoting and endorsing a strategic plan that enables U.S. architects to gain professional practice licenses in foreign jurisdictions. AIA also should endorse the International Union of Architects’ (UIA) professional advisory standards, international education standards and international accreditation/validation standards. Image There is a growing need for U.S. architectural services in developing nations, the urban areas of which have few architects per capita. “The AIA should be advocating practices that enable its members to diversify their geographic, civic and cultural
The American Institute of Architects has released an Excel-based tool that generates a report on predicted energy use and project modeling. The tool, called the 2030 Commitment Annual Progress Reporting Tool, is part of the group's push to get its members to design carbon-neutral buildings and practice architecture in a more sustainable way. Although the tool was designed for architecture firms only, it is being tweaked for use by structural engineers. AIA released the tool at its 2010 convention in Miami. To date 105 architects have signed on to the AIA's voluntary 2030 commitment program, said Kelly Pickard, AIA's project
The U.S. Green Building Council is defending its decision to uphold the highest certification to be granted a public high school under its green-building rating system, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The engineers who filed the challenge to the LEED-New Construction Gold certification on behalf of a group of taxpayers in Eagle River, Wis., say the decision to uphold the certification damages the credibility of USGBC. The consulting engineers were pro bono technical experts for the five people who filed the 125-page appeal on Dec. 23, 2008, when Northland Pines High School was two years old. Consulting engineers
The nation’s first voluntary rating system for sustainable landscapes, called SITES, has selected 175 pilot projects to test its green-landscape design, construction and maintenance program. The goal is to apply “The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009” to real projects to see whether the four-star rating system needs tweaking. Feedback from the pilots will be used to revise the SITES’ final rating system and inform the technical reference manual, scheduled for release in 2013. The fledgling SITES, under development since 2005, is modeled after the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-building rating
A 70-story, folded, creased and curved stainless-steel curtain wall on an 867-ft-tall apartment building has been called "Gehry only on the outside," as if the building is a fake Frank. It's true that, when it opens next year, New York City's tallest residential tower won't be an internationally acclaimed cultural icon, as is the architect's now-12-year-old Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. The 76-story high-rise is not as colorful, whimsical and structurally innovative as the nearly decade-old Experience Music Project rock 'n' roll museum in Seattle. The new tower is not as description-defying inside and out as the six-year-old Walt Disney