Content tagged with “construction”

“ A new way to hammer together roofing trusses completely changed how they were built, and by extension, how homes were designed. ”

“ Noise and space requirements make it very hard to build new airports, but we still manage to increase passenger capacity through bigger planes, faster turnarounds, and better air traffic control. ”

“This is another name for what we call ‘asphalt’ in the United States. It’s the very sticky component or petroleum. It occurs naturally. Most of it is used to construction and road-making, but it can be refined to form crude oil. The ‘oil sands’ of Alberta and North Dakota are naturally occuring…”

“This book was written by two board game experts, one of which is a professor at the NYU Game Center, which I didn’t even know was a thing. The book breaks down games into patterns – the ‘building blocks’ of the title. It groups them into categories: Game Structure Turn Order and Structure Actions…”

“Cement is the base aggregate. It’s limestone, silica, and some other things. It’s a very fine powder. Cement, when mixed with other things, makes concrete. You mix it with sand, rocks, and water. So, the sidewalk in front of your house is technically concrete , not cement. Cement is just one…”

“ In 2017, a California dam almost failed over the course of several harrowing weeks. ”

“A magisterial history of the Hoover Dam, all the way from the problems of the late 1800s that it was meant to solve, through the arguments during its planning, to the construction and beyond (in fact, they don’t even start building the dam until halfway through the book). The Hoover Dam was an…”

“ In 1930, an eight-story office building was rotated 90-degrees and moved about 50-meters over the course of four weeks, while it remained occupied and in use. ”

“ A large city is sinking, and the rate is surprising. One building is sinking – unevenly – at almost an inch-and-a-half each year. ”

“ A profile of a premier homebuilder in Manhattan and some of the projects he works on. ”

“ During the late stages of construction, a Vegas hotel was found to have an engineering defect that could not be repaired. It was a total loss, but could not be imploded. It had to be dismantled, floor by floor. ”

“ In 1978, a young architecture student found a design flaw in a one-year-old NYC skyscraper which meant the building could collapse in a specific wind. Thankfully, the architect who designed the building listened. ”

“ While they’re a very trendy subject, shipping containers actually make terrible construction materials, and using them will probably result in more effort and energy than just building normally. ”

“ A photo gallery of a San Diego shipyard as it builds a pair of massive freighters designed to bring freight to and from Hawaii. ”

“ A time-lapse of a Rammstein stadium show being set up over the course of a week. The logistics of this are just incredible. ”

“Honestly, I just didn’t get it. This book was described in near-mythical terms, but it seemed tedious to me. Maybe I’m just not used to hardware design, or I’m not an engineer anymore – I don’t know what, but the over-arching point of this was lost. There was some philosophy toward the end of…”

“ Ever wonder how those big construction cranes get so tall? They build themselves. The crane itself is used to deliver the segments to make the crane go higher, as shown in this short video. ”

“ PBS documentary that explores the seven-year construction project to ‘re-enclose’ the destroyed reactor at Chernobyl. The project was incomprehensibly ambitious, and a million things might have gone wrong, but none of them did. At the climax, I almost cheered. ”