Civil Art

Can infrastructure be considered art? Here's a fanciful interpretation of stairs, overpasses, and other civil structures and how they interact with the public aesthetic. The large public sculpture is located outside the Lesseps metro station in Barcelona, Spain.

Expressed Structure

This modern three-story building in Aix-en-Provence perfectly illustrates the architectural concept of expressed structure. The sloping columns and braces provide both the gravity and lateral support for the structure. The structure is cast-in-place concrete. I found it interesting that they chose not to use spandrel beams at the building perimeter. It must have been a challenge to design the intersecting columns, braces and slab such that there was still enough room between rebars to properly cast the concrete.

Masonry Repair?

Note the 2x6 supporting masonry just to the lower left of the window. That can't meet code. I can imagine the conversation with the building inspector: "Well, it's been standing without the board for five centuries. We consider this our belt and suspenders approach to reinforcing." "Um, I don't see either."

Leaning Church of Caen

Talk about settlement issues. The leaning tower in Pisa is not the only structure to baffle geotechnical experts. This church in Caen, France was built on the soft soil of a former river bed. Legend has it that the King who commissioned the church did so reluctantly in order to attain the Pope's permission to divorce his wife. Eglise St. Jean

Batman's Chicago

Several of these buildings were prominently feature in the Dark Knight. Hotel 41, in the lower left, was dressed up as Bruce Wayne's swanky downtown bachelor pad. The IBM building, behind, was the site of most of the municipal shots, including the DA's office, the sheriff's office and the site of the pivital press conference. The final climactic scene in which Batman ambushed a series of terrorists while ferry passengers determined whether to annihalate each other, was filmed in the then unfinished Trump tower (tall center).

My first prescription glasses. Apparently, I've been walking around like the cyclops. The world is pretty cool in 3D.

Two cement trucks fill a pump truck sending concrete to the top of a mid-rise building.

Polo. Not just a sunday sport for the uber riche? My sister, Nancy, is on the Michigan State polo club. Over the Memorial day weekend, she spent about 10 hours working out her benefactor's horses. Her team benefits from the charity of some wealthy alumni. Apparentlty, that kind of generosity is engrained in the sport. Professionals are paid by "patrones" who pay for the right to play with the experts during matches. They usually stick around the back and flag down stray hits, though. Can you imagine the owner of a professional baseball team standing out in deep right field? A new meaning for pay to play.

Solid Void? Oxymoron or the creative brain-child of a structural engineer. An art installation by this name is currently on display at the Graham Foundation in Chicago (see
http://www.grahamfoundation.org/). The piece was envisioned by Cecil Balmond, a structural engineer with ARUP. Balmond is regarded as one of the most creative structural engineers in the world, and this is evidenced by his structures. Perhaps the most famous is the CCTV building being construction in Beijing (see http://www.cctv.com/newSiteProgram/en/project_info.htm). The curators of the Louisiana modern art museum in Denmark found his work so creative that in 2007 they commissioned an entire show exploring the creations of the structural engineer.

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Hey there Little Red Ridding Hood. This video shows how an engineer might view the famous story. As an added bonus, it looks like it was put together by some Scandinavians.

Love in an elevator, maybe not. It is pretty cool to see the structure in the shaft though. Today's site visit took me inside the elevator shaft of a 1920s building. To upgrade the elevators, some old brackets need to be removed while new steel beams must be added in other locations. The elevator consultants are also concerned about the ability of the pit to withstand the "crash" test required to certify the new elevator.

Since I'll soon be moving to France, I thought it would be good to start learning French. I may not be a francophone yet, but this doesn't look like the right application of the word "oui." You've got to love the creative use of transliteration.

30 West Oak Street a model design for a concrete residential building.  Even though the building was completed several years ago, we keep a roll of drawings in the office to refer to whenever designing a similar building.  One of the most experienced engineers in the office was responsible for the project and produced a masterpiece of simplicity in the drawings.  The complete set for the 20+ story building is only a handful of pages.  It has just the necessary information and no extra stuff to confuse the contractors.  Too often, engineers make things more complicated than they really are.

The Italian Village Restaurant is one of those anomalies in the city, an old 2-story building sandwiched between two high-rises. Local rumor has it that the owner refused to sell to the adjacent developer. In return, the developer sloped the roof on his building so that all of the rainwater would fall onto his resolute neighbor.

Where do you suppose this photo was taken? Anyone guess downtown Detroit? Last weekend I met a friend who's in Med school at Wayne State University. I was shocked to find pockets of such normal looking neighborhoods. What you can't see in this picture, however, is the boarded up building just out of the frame. My friend descibed much of the city as post-apocalyptic. Still there are some good neighborhoods and the rent is really cheap!

This triangular staircase is located in the Arthur Rubloff building on the Campus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. These are the main stairs down to the lower level where the sculpture workshops and dance dance hall is located. However, it's marked about as well as the broom closet. I've only been in the building a few times, but it has to be one of the most confusing to navigate. The whole experience of being in the building is quite surreal. The art students have clearly made it their home.

Why do the traffic reporters on the radio always refer to the highways by their local vanity names?  And they give the rundown so fast, that it's virtually impossible to understand.  Those listening, and stuck in traffic, have plenty of time to listen to a coherent traffic report.  Maybe if we understood what was being said, we wouldn't be stuck in traffic.  Who says driving is an expression of American freedom, I'll take the train any day.

All aboard!  Chicago is well known for the El.  This is a photo of a Brown line train taken at the State and Lake station.  Since moving to our new office, I've been taking the Red line, which runs below ground through downtown.  I liken it to the dungeon.  I much prefer riding the elevated tracks.  You get such a neat perspective of the city.

For the past three years, I've been teaching courses in structural engineering to prospective architects attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  The students pictured were in our first class and are now about to graduate.  Wearing shirt and tie are two of my colleagues from Thornton Tomasetti who have also been teaching with me from day one.  Today's lesson was about lateral wind resisting systems in supertall buildings.  The students were just realizing how much concrete and steel it takes to make a 100+ story building stand up.

Go Bulls! Go Sox! You'll probably recognize this building from sklyine shots of the city during playoff sports games. The building staff usually puts up large lighted signs to support the local teams in the diagonal roof face. Currently, it's called the Smurfit-Stone Building. It's one of the City's architectural icons, located right at the northwest corner of Millenium Park.