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Investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed here a week ago, in the steel parts that connect girders, raising safety concerns for other bridges around the country, federal officials said on Wednesday.
The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges of any design when sending construction crews to work on them. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge here when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River and killing at least five people.
According to Pearl Jam's website, portions of the band's Sunday night set at Lollapalooza were missing from the AT&T Blue Room live webcast. Fans alerted the band to the missing material after the show. Reportedly absent from the webcast were segments of the band's performance of "Daughter," including the sung lines "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home."
At the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the view from the wooden Giant Dipper roller coaster is sea and sand. More than 50 million people have ridden the coaster since it opened in 1924. Along with the 1911 Looff Carousel, the Giant Dipper is one of two National Historic Landmarks at the Beach Boardwalk, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this summer—a significant milestone, since the Boardwalk is one of the few remaining seaside amusement parks in the United States.
Several old oceanfront parks have closed in recent years, including the Miracle Strip Amusement Park in Panama City Beach, Fla., which closed three years ago, and South Carolina's Myrtle Beach Pavilion, which was shuttered in 2006. Coney Island's Astroland amusement park was sold to developers last year, and its fate is uncertain. And in Ocean City, Md., the Trimper family has said that this summer may be the last for Trimper's Rides, the boardwalk amusement park that opened in 1890 and is one of the oldest operating amusement parks in the world.
The yellowed, poured-concrete 1,614-seat theater--with its sharp, asymmetric angles, hidden walkways, and in-your-face functionalism--was for decades Baltimore's only professional theater and is credited with reigniting Baltimore's cultural scene in the late 1960s and early '70s. But the theater has been empty now for three years, since the Hippodrome Theatre became home to Baltimore's touring Broadway productions. A few ground-level shops and offices and a subway entrance are all that remain of what once was a cornerstone of Baltimore's downtown revival. On the outside of the theater, facing Charles Street, hangs a large banner announcing the advent of a new developer: David S. Brown Enterprises Ltd.
David S. Brown doesn't have definite plans for the structure. But when it became clear that the developer was considering converting the Mechanic into a "big box" store with a 10-story residential project, the city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) recommended the theater for historical landmark status. On Aug. 14, the commission holds a public hearing at the city Department of Planning. If the recommendation is approved by the commission, and later by the Planning Board and City Council, the Mechanic will be granted landmark status. After that, any developer who wants to change the building structurally will have to adhere to the guidelines of that landmark designation, which mandates that changes respect the Mechanic's architectural integrity.
The Prefab Fad - Prefabrication is everywhere in American home-building. But that doesn't mean your next house is going to be a stylish, Modernist box. (Slate)
Architects have been fascinated by prefabrication for a long time. I once saw a school in Costa Rica that had been designed by Gustave Eiffel in the late 19th century. The two-story metal building had been entirely fabricated in France, shipped to San Jose, and assembled in place. The cast-iron and pressed-metal structure was Classical in style, with decorative pilasters—and hundreds of bolt heads. (The Eiffel company still makes prefab buildings, bridges, and offshore drilling rigs.) The first house I ever designed, a summer cottage for my parents in Vermont, was a prefab, made out of interlocking tongue-and-groove cedar logs. The Pan-Abode Company precut the logs and, together with all the lumber for the floor and roof, shipped them from British Columbia in a boxcar. It took a friend and me two weeks to put it all together. It was like playing with oversized Lincoln Logs. Solid western red cedar is a durable material, as evidenced by this current photo, taken almost 35 years after the house was built.t
The design of Re-Reads Bookstore was donated by Alpine Tx. architect Tom Greenwood. Linked are his comments on the project.
our future: earthships
diddy wah
rip nellie lutcher
tucson bachelor pad house
tramp talk
opa locka
(cummon, everybody) "Nobody Owns Katonah"
Dr. Strangelove Finds Home In Cold War Relic
Burrowed 50 feet into a mountain near Washington, D.C., a once secret, nuclear-blast-proof bunker has been transformed into the Library of Congress’s new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The facility, seen here during construction, opened today (top). A team of designers and engineers from BAR Architects and SmithGroup added a three-story window all along the bunker’s main elevation to help infuse interior spaces with daylight (middle). Public spaces, including the building’s lobby, are located closest to the window wall (above). Openings cut into the former bunker’s concrete, blast-proof walls allow daylight to penetrate deeper into the building (right).
The nonprofit Packard Humanities Institute purchased the decommissioned bank bunker at Mount Pony in Culpeper, Va., for $5.6 million in 1998 and then funded its $155 million transformation, donating the facility to Congress last week—the largest gift ever made to the legislative branch. The 415,000-square-foot complex now provides space for preserving 6 million items from the library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. These items were previously scattered throughout seven locations nationwide.
BAR’s Earl Wilson says that one of the key design challenges was ensuring that librarians and conservationists have access to daylight. Although 80 percent of the structure is below grade, the designers located “people spaces” near a curving, three-story-tall window along the building’s rear elevation, opposite the main entry. Openings punched into the 16- to 18-inch-thick concrete, blast-proof interior walls help channel natural light into the inner rooms.
drinking ditch water
Niemeyer emerged, from obscurity and a lazy education, as one of the most original and talented of all Modern movement architects, with a highly informed and almost intuitive understanding of the possibilities of reinforced concrete construction. In his native Brazil, steel was far too rare and expensive for use in the majority of buildings, while concrete was not only cheap, but it could be stretched to unimagined limits while being poured and moulded by relatively unskilled labour. In concrete construction, Niemeyer could see a way of shaping an architecture that would not only be modern, but would also echo the Brazilian landscape he loved, and which he drew, increasingly, in the guise of curved female forms.
His chance to shine came in 1936 when Gustavo Capanema, the idealistic Brazilian minister for education, commissioned Lucio Costa to design the country's first Modern building, a headquarters for the health and education ministries in central Rio. Costa and Capanema decided to seek the advice of Le Corbusier, the greatest of all Modern architects. The famous Swiss-French visionary and architect flew to Rio. "In the Graf Zeppelin," says Niemeyer, referring to the magnificent 237-metre German airship that, between 1928 and 1937, made 143 impeccable transatlantic flights. "I went to meet him," he adds.
Le Corbusier descended from the air, "a mighty god visiting his pygmy worshippers," says Niemeyer. Or so it seemed. The result of Corbu's trip proved to be unexpected. He made two designs for Capanema's ministry: one idealistic, for an unobtainable site by the ocean, the other a low-rise building that somehow failed to capture the idea of the new Brazil and the new Brazilian. "We wanted to do something very special," says Niemeyer, "perhaps to show that we were something more than primitive Indians dancing colourfully for visiting Europeans and Northern Americans."
Working for nothing, and reliant on his family - his father was a graphic artist, his grandfather a Supreme Court judge - Niemeyer transformed the Corbusier scheme into the serene high-rise building that adorns central Rio today. A National Monument, it has since been renamed Capanema Palace. Le Corbusier had been deeply impressed by Niemeyer's burgeoning talent. Although rigid by Niemeyer's later standards, the palace abounds with curves inside; its exteriors are decorated with romantic wall tiles, depicting scallops and sea horses, and shaded by deep sun-louvres. Immensely photogenic and a superb fusion of art, engineering, landscaping and architecture, this confident new building was ecstatically received in 1943.
SIESTA KEY - Joe King could not restore his beloved Twitchell house to the way Sarasota School Architects designed it, nor could he keep the home in the same spot.
So he did the next best thing.
He documented that the historic house stood steps from Big Pass on Siesta Key. He photographed it inside and out, created detailed drawings of the building that is among the first in the Sarasota School of Architecture and the first by architectural great Paul Rudolph.
King and a work crew carefully took it apart, sorting through different crowbars for the ones that would not crack the cypress, salvaging Ocala block that had not cracked under 66 years of weathering.
Then he shipped what could be salvaged to Bradenton.
old lismore hosiery building (on ludlow) host to new para building tumor (click through comment link for earlier post w/ original store front images). bye bye LES
If you want to enjoy the unmistakable ambience of a real New York diner, head to Wyoming. The Moondance Diner, whose iconic, crescent-shaped sign has long beckoned hungry pedestrians on the western edge of SoHo, is heading to the small town of La Barge, Wyo.
The objective: re-create a 1967 Camaro SS entirely from the catalogues and crates of Dynacorn Classic Bodies Inc.
chop cut rebuild on the speed network
venice beach container house project