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16 July 2007 Monday 7 pm (HK/SIN/MAL) |
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What does it take to construct a building which will cover an entire city block?
Try 13,000 tons of steel, 36,000 cubic yards of concrete, enough wire and cables
to stretch from New York City to Boston, hundreds of professionals; from city planners
to pipe fitters, ironworkers to glaziers and two years of blood sweat and swearing.
Welcome to skyscraper 101. A truly comprehensive course in mega-construction. Class
objective? Construct a giant building. Along the way, we’ll see how the invention
of elevators, air conditioning, curtain walls and concrete helped shape the world’s
skyscrapers. For two years we’ve been following the construction of the new California
Department of Transportation headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a massive
700,000 square foot office building. Although it rises a relatively modest 13 stories,
constructing it will present the same architectural, structural and mechanical challenges
that larger buildings do. We’re going to use this building as a specific example
to illustrate construction problems of mega-skyscrapers from the Empire State Building
to the Sears Tower to the TAIPEI 101. In the first hour we’ll see how architects
design a building and watch a model printer take a 3D computer file and a heap of
plaster powder and create a physical model. We’ll jump into the cab of a giant excavator
which is removing 210,000 cubic yards of earth from the pit and we’re there when
the site paleontologist uncovers a 3 million-year-old great white shark tooth. Once
excavation is complete we’ll watch the real men of steel in action; connectors,
hook-on men and bolter uppers fashion tons of steel into the skeleton of a building.
We’ll also learn about the legendary Mohawk ironworkers who gained a reputation
for being fearless of heights. We’ll meet the structural engineer whose “behind-the-scenes”
work ensures a building can stand up, won’t blow over in a hurricane or fall down
during an earthquake. We’ll learn about the structural systems in today’s tallest
buildings and visit the TAIPEI 101, currently the tallest building in the world.
To add to the structural engineering challenges, the TAIPEI 101 is built in an area
regularly pounded by major typhoons and rocked by devastating earthquakes. Finally
we’ll celebrate the big “topping out” ceremony with the diverse group of professionals
that got this building off the ground.
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