The California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) moved in December 2007 to allow the reclassification of potentially hundreds of seismically questionable hospitals in the state to avoid possible closure due to code noncompliance. The decision will likely ripple through the large market for health-care design and construction that developed following Southern California’s Northridge earthquake in 1994, which left many hospitals still standing, but structurally unsound. “This is giving hospitals more time to do what’s right,” says Chris Poland, a structural engineer and the president and C.E.O. of San Francisco–based Degenkolb Engineers. After the 1994 earthquake, Poland served on an advisory board
Crimped and folded like the tectonic plates of the nearby Papago and Camelback Mountains, the roof that tops the Tempe Center for the Arts provides the facility with its signature element. Made of concrete over metal deck and supported by exposed tubular trusses, the iconic roof shelters the collection of programmatic elements that compose the $67.6 million center, including a 600-seat proscenium theater, a 200-seat studio theater, and a 3,500-square-foot gallery.
Structural base isolation—effectively “floating” a building on rubber pads to safely ride out an earthquake—is nothing new in California. But the isolators installed for the structural and architectural renovation of Pasadena’s 1927 City Hall, designed by Bakewell and Brown, represent an innovative approach for addressing historic structures.
After languishing for years outside the mainstream, "switchable glazing" is poised to become a viable alternative and could soon have a significant impact on facade design.
After languishing for years outside the mainstream, "switchable glazing" is poised to become a viable alternative and could soon have a significant impact on facade design.
After languishing for years outside the mainstream, "switchable glazing" is poised to become a viable alternative and could soon have a significant impact on facade design. Two other types of switchable glazing are called liquid crystal device windows and suspended particle device windows (SPD). Liquid crystal technology has been used for some time in wristwatches and is gaining popularity as privacy glazing. A thin layer of liquid crystals is sandwiched between two transparent electrical conductors on thin plastic films, and the entire device is laminated between two layers of glass. When power is off, the liquid crystals are in a
Perhaps the most famous cantilever in America is one of the shortest: Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1935 design for the exterior concrete terraces at Fallingwater, the longest of which extends a mere 15 feet to hover over the rush of Pennsylvania’s Bear Run stream. Much has been made of the ongoing structural repairs the cantilevers have needed since they were built, but there has never been a question about preserving them.
Where the Michigan project is more of a conventional structural cantilever, the new K Clinic in the Japanese city of Nara, just outside of Osaka, takes a minimalist approach to integrate the architecture fully into the structure. The Tokyo architect and engineer Akira Yoneda, whose firm, Architecton, was chosen for record’s 2004 Vanguard, had less program space to incorporate for his client, a dermatologist who had briefly studied architecture while in college. The doctor asked Yoneda to design a building that would make a statement along the city’s main street. The clinic is located in a ground-level structure, while the
Chuck Hoberman has a vision of Buckminster Fuller. As the New York–based artist, mechanical engineer, and product designer expands his projects to large-scale architecture, he is integrating his mechanized elements to develop a new strain of sustainable and flexible structures that conceptually relate to what the late Fuller had imagined, but never realized, decades before. Often starting with the simplest of ideas, such as the mechanism of a scissors, Hoberman amplifies operability and motion by connecting a series of hinged units to playfully form what he calls the Hoberman Sphere. In 2002, he increased the scale of the sphere
Earlier this fall, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) released performance data for the green roof planted on its Washington, D.C., headquarters. The findings demonstrate a number of environmental benefits, including a significant reduction in storm-water runoff, retaining 27,500 gallons of water, or nearly 75 percent of precipitation, during a 10-month monitoring period. Photography: Courtesy ASLA The installation includes planted “waves” that hide rooftop mechanical units. The results suggest that widespread implementation of green roofs and other sustainable site development practices could be a viable storm-water-management option, particularly in cities with older, and overburdened, combined sanitary and wastewater transportation
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