When you begin a development project, you never know what you will encounter along the way. You think you have spotted a property, and you think you have determined a profitable use for that piece of land or building. However, the unknown lies ahead.
This is the fourth article in the series on U.S. infrastructure, following our bridges article, “A Bridge to Everywhere." The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the United States’ DAMS infrastructure a grade of “D” on their 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
As discussed in the prior infrastructure article, the average age of a bridge in the United States is now 44 years. The average dam is an older sibling to the typical bridge, at 52 years old. Dams and bridges in the United States share many things in common. Being generous and assuming an average life span in parallel with human years, both these national systems are in the midst of a mid-life crisis.
Sound control and your construction project: how to use space, mass, and dampening to solve noise issues during the building of a hotel.
The recent news that Best Buy would be closing 50 stores renewed concerns about how this kind of large, empty space could be reused and sparked discussion about the fate of big box retail in general.
What strikes fear in the hearts of those concerned by urban sprawl more than the ubiquitous big box store? Quite possibly, those same big boxes standing empty (case in point: the exhibit “Dark Stores” by photographer Brian Ulrich). "Dark Stores" is the final piece of Ulrich’s three-part series Copia, an extensive study of American consumerism that was shown recently at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and it portrays a haunting array of now-empty retail venues.
Noise control concerns influence the construction of a hotel – learn how to handle sound transmission on a challenging job site.
We have all performed the recommended winter car maintenance to ensure proper operation and have put our summer clothes away for the year. But have we readied our home for the winter as well? Preparing your home for cold winter weather not only contributes to your general comfort, but it can also contribute to keeping money in your pocket.
Architectural firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent (LAS) recently created an innovative, collaborative environment for aluminum rolling and recycling company Novelis’ top engineers, scientists, and customers.
Electric vehicles provide a welcome alternative to gasoline-powered cars ... welcome, that is, as long as we are still able to fuel up as we travel. Take a look at current options available in the United States for charging while on the go.
When Eddy Grant came up with the lyrics to his 1982 hit “Electric Avenue” he likely wasn’t expecting people to actually be rocking down an electric highway just 30 years later. That's what people will be doing later this year on the West Coast Electric Highway (WCEH), a tri-state initiative that will form the longest electric vehicle (EV) charging network in the country, stretching along Interstate 5 from the Canadian to the Mexican border.
The project was a seismic retrofit of a 15-story, 750,000 sq. ft. office building constructed in 1991. The steel portion of the project consisted of systematically strengthening the moment connections throughout the building and installing over 200 dampers without interrupting the operation of the tenants. The contract dictated that the work would start in the basement, progress through the ground floor and the parking garage (floors 2-5), and then continue through the occupied office floors (6-15). The contractor could only occupy three half-floors at any one time. Although my team was extremely experienced, with over 20 years of seismic experience and over 50 years of steel work experience, this project provided us with some significant lessons to take with us to our next project.
It’s no fun to spend money on something you can’t see. Therefore, some green homebuilders are giving you a peek inside their homes’ walls via full-scale "deconstructed" models in order to showcase their energy-saving features.
Homebuilders are finding that green homes, which save owners money in addition to helping the environment, are a powerful differentiator in today’s real estate market. However, buyers may be more motivated to invest in goods that they can actually see. Companies such as Central New York builder Miller Homes and Utah’s Garbett Homes are using deconstructed models to show prospective buyers – as well as building industry professionals and members of the general public – actual sustainable products located inside their buildings’ walls. Miller Homes was awarded a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to implement high-performance building practices, with a focus on tightening the building envelope, and then partnered with Dow Building Solutions and CDH Energy to build an educational, deconstructed duplex. Garbett Homes has built several deconstructed models to reach out to their target market, first-time home buyers. Referring to a Garbett deconstructed model, Rene Oehlerking, director of marketing at Garbett Homes, says, “Nothing is mocked up. We built the home and we stripped the walls, basically taking parts of the home and peeling them back so people can see the actual application. Everything in our deconstruct is a standard feature.”
BRB Architects’ design for a new campus center at Molloy College is representative of a larger trend in campus planning: the shift from a commuter-only campus to a 24/7 community.
A commuter college is a college in which most students do not live in dormitories but commute from homes nearby. Community colleges are a common type of commuter college, but many private and smaller colleges and universities also fall into this category. In the past, students of commuter colleges have been present on campus only briefly as they attended classes; they would go elsewhere else to eat, lounge, study, and socialize. Now the atmosphere of many commuter colleges mirrors that of a more traditional college or university environment, where students do not just go to college to attend class but may meet with other students on campus for collaborative projects or simply for recreational purposes. As students begin to spend more time on campus and academic and social lives become increasingly integrated, the need for structural changes on many campuses has become more apparent.
Information on low-flow plumbing fixtures abounds, and low-flow and waterless urinals are now in widespread use. Flush volume for toilets has evolved to 1.6 gallons per flush, or less than half of the 1980s' standard of 3.5 gallons. The fact that low-flow fixtures can save money in utility costs is clear and easy to calculate with a review of a water bill and an estimate of each fixture’s cycles per month. An enticing payback period for a new fixture purchase can be calculated based on water use alone. However, some facility managers argue that the utility savings offered by these plumbing fixtures are not matched by the unforeseen maintenance and repair costs that they generate. The question of whether low-flow plumbing fixtures offer a good return on investment (ROI) arises.
