Even with many sealed lips about project fates, evidence of the credit crunch can be vividly seen in stilled excavations and incomplete, mothballed commercial and residential structures from New York City to San Francisco. Developers in New York City alone have stopped construction on at least 30 sites, says the buildings department, while the local Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA) reports nearly $5 billion of delayed or stalled projects. Slide Show Tempe work stopped in 2008. Photo: The Firm PR. Work on Vegas twin-tower resort-casino halted. Construction also is slow on the West Coast. In California, the dollar value of
What do you get when you cross a farm commune with a traditional neighborhood, a suburban subdivision and a golf community? If T. Wall Properties has its way, you get the 717-acre Bishops Bay, a planned development for the rural towns of Westport and Middleton, Wis. The scheme, if approved, would contain a 240-acre neighborhood that integrates farming with housing. Slide Show Image: SWA Neighborhood planned near Madison, Wisc., would help preserve agriculture in the area. “This development can truly be a model to transform and improve the way communities are planned and the way people live,” says Andy Inman,
The National Building Information Model Standard project committee is in dire need of volunteers to help it develop open building-information-model standards to foster interoperability among products of different software vendors. The buildingSMART alliance of the National Institute of Building Sciences, which is organizing the effort, is intent on delivering NBIMS at no cost to users. Related Links: Software Firms See User Needs Driving New Development Forty Years of Grassroots Development That is not an easy thing to do. Much of the standard will be published in the form of information-delivery manuals. Progress in developing the manuals is based on the
One future vision for virtual design and construction tools is for a "highly automated and seamlessly integrated environment" across all phases and processes of a project’s life cycle. The vision belongs to the FIATECH Consortium, which is devoted to opening up digital standards production to the world by developing the tool to achieve interoperability for interoperability standards. Related Links: FirmStretchesWorksharing to BIM Modeling Pathfinders Impatient To Have A Much Fuller Digital Toolbox Digital Box FIATECH wants a digital world in which all data is available to "whomever needs it, whenever it’s needed and wherever it’s needed," says Ric Jackson, director
When it comes to collaborative virtual design and construction, designers and contractors agree that the fractured, adversarial traditions of the construction industry and limits on digital technology are the two monsters blocking a building information modeling utopia, or "cheruBIM," a world in which projects are built faster, better, for less money, with less strife and fewer claims. As far as technology, interoperability deficits stand out as the biggest obstacle to cheruBIM, preventing team member-users from sharing digital applications from different software vendors. Slide Show GRAPHIC: Fiatech The roadmap outlines technology-enabled information paths for the entire life cycle of a capital
Members of the International Code Council are all over the map about the revamped model code development process announced by the publisher of the widely adopted International Building Code and a dozen other model codes. Many greet the change with open arms, saying it will streamline the process. Others think the new process will stifle innovation, reduce the quality of the codes and allow special interests to more easily hijack the development process. The biggest change is that there will be one complete code development cycle every three years instead of two. A consequence of that is elimination of the
Canada’s $730-million Vancouver convention center expansion on the city’s waterfront sits on the best of sites. To the north are breathtaking views of Coal Harbor, Burrard Inlet and the North Shore Mountains. Across the street to the south is the city center. Directly to the west is the landmark Stanley Park. Slide Show Photo: VCCEP Team Related Links: Habitat Apron Cooked Up To Mitigate Impact on Marine Life Water Treatment and Reuse Reduces Use of Potable Water Photo: LMN Architects Building could not block street and park view corridors. But the 106,000-sq-meter project in seismic British Columbia also sits on
In seismic territory, something as simple as adding two floors to an existing building, even if it was designed to accept more load, can be complicated.
Samsung Engineering and Construction Corp.’s Kyung-Jun Kim, vice president and project director for the tallest building in the world—the 800-meter-plus Burj Dubai—cut his teeth on supertall skyscraper construction, building one of the twin, 452-meter Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.