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1) Dancing House
Here’s a building that should really get your attention when walking pass it. The Dancing House is considered as one of the more real controversial buildings in Prague. The Dancing House was actually designed by a great architect from California, which only proves that he had done some type of hallucinogen while designing it.
The salient Features of North Sea Protection Works (Netherlands) are :-
1) Unique in the world, this vast and complex system of dams, floodgates, storm surge barriers and other engineered works literally allows the Netherlands to exist.
2) The North Sea Protection Works consists of two monumental steps the Dutch took to win their struggle to hold back the sea. Step One — a 19-mile-long enclosure dam built between 1927 and 1932.
3) The immense dike, 100 yards thick at the waterline, collars the neck of the estuary once known as the Zuiderzee. Step Two was the Delta Project to control the treacherous area where the mouths of the Meuse and Rhine Rivers break into a delta.
4) The crowning touch was the Eastern Schelde Barrier, a two-mile barrier of tell gates slung between massive concrete piers. The gates fall only when storm-waters threaten. The North Sea Protection Works exemplifies humanity’s ability to exist side-by-side with the forces of nature.
The World Trade Center had two 110-story buildings, known as the “Twin Towers” and five smaller buildings. Salient Features were –
1) Tower One was 1,368 feet (414 meters) tall
2) Tower Two was 1,362 feet (412 meters) tall
3) The Twin Towers were the tallest until the Sears Tower surpassed them.
4) Architects: Minoru Yamaski & Associates and Emery, Roth & Sons.
5) Built of aluminum and steel.
6) The foundation of each tower extended more than 70 feet below ground, resting on solid bedrock.
7) Constructed on six acres of landfill.
8 ) The towers were the best known examples of “tube buildings,” which are strenghtened by closely spaced columns and beams in the outer walls.
9) Each tower consisted of 104 passenger elevators and 21,800 windows.
10) About 50,000 people worked in the complex, which housed the offices of more than 430 businesses from 26 countries.
11) Completed in 1970.
12) Automatic window-washing machines cleaned 600,000 square feet of glass.
The structure is the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel (MMMBT), a 4.6-mile long combination bridge-tunnel system
The MMMBT opened in April 1992 after seven years of construction and a total cost of about $400 million.
Salient features of the bridge are:-
1. It is 4,800 feet long from portal to portal.
2. Built by the immersed sunken tube method
3. The traffic lanes in the tunnel are 13 feet wide, with 2.5-foot-wide ledges on either side of the roadway, and with 16.5 feet of vertical clearance from the roadway to the ceiling.
4. Traffic flow is monitored from a traffic management center where employees keep an eye on operations through 33 closed-circuit television cameras.
5. Seventy-two sensors in the pavement of the tunnel and approach bridges automatically check every 20 seconds for interruptions in traffic flow. In the event of an incident, motorists are advised of alternate routes via 32 electronic message signs activated immediately from the traffic management center.
6. While traveling through the Monitor Merrimac, motorists do not lose their favorite local radio station while in the tunnel. A communications system rebroadcasts all local AM and FM radio stations. In the event of an emergency, tunnel staff can override these broadcasts with emergency information motorists receive through their vehicle’s radio without changing stations.
1) At 1,250 ft. the Empire State Building was by far the tallest building in the world for more than 40 years.
2) The building’s most astonishing feat however, was the speed in which it rose into the New York City skyline.
3) Construction was completed in only one year and 45 days, without requiring overtime.
4) Ironworkers set a torrid pace, riveting the 58,000-ton frame together in 23 weeks.
5) While just below them, masons finished the exterior in eight months, and plumbers laid 51 miles of pipe and electricians installed 17 million ft. of telephone wire.
6) The building was so well-engineered that is was easily repaired after a bomber crashed into it in 1945.
1) The Golden Gate Bridge remains the world’s tallest suspension bridge after more than 60 years of its completion
2) It is hanging from two 746-ft-high towers with the help of yard thick cables.
3) In fact, the Golden Gate Bridge contains enough cable to encircle the earth three times.
4) To leap across the mouth of an ocean harbor, something never before accomplished, civil engineers planted one pier in the open sea, 1,000 ft. from the shore.
5) The Construction was completed in a record time of 4 year’s
6) It survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and weather has shut it to traffic only three times in 60 years.
7) Currently the span is undergoing a seismic retrofit to withstand a 90-second earthquake that measures 8.3on the Richter scale.
8 ) This bridge is a perfect combination of engineering and beauty and thus Golden Gate Bridge remains one of the world’s most photographed bridges.
1) The Panama Canal is one of civil engineering’s greatest triumphs in which more than 42,000 workers played there role.
2) They moved enough earth and rubble to bury the island of Manhattan to a depth of 12 ft. — or enough to open a 16-ft.-wide tunnel to the center of the Earth.
3) The canal was finished on time and within budget. But after completion, a challenge remained: how to tame the flood waters of Chagres River. Civil engineers erected a dam that formed the world’s then-largest man-made lake.
4) Today the Canal operates much as it did in 1914. In each transit, 52 million gallons of fresh water is lost, but it is quickly replaced by Panama’s heavy rainfall. The canal remains a marvelous wonder constructed with the combined skills of structural, geotechnical, hydraulic and sanitary engineers.
1) One of the world’s tallest free-standing having height 1,815 ft.
2) It was erected at an amazing rate of 18 ft. per day. During construction, concrete flowed from the bottom of the tower as it ascended, while aircraft-type bombsights kept the tower plumb as it went up.
3) The CN Tower can withstand 260-mph gusts.
4) The Sky Pod, a seven-story structure 1,100 ft. high, was built around the base of the tower and jacked into place as one unit. A pair of 10-ton counterweights is attached to the mast to keep the tower from swaying too much.
5) A Sikorsky helicopter hoisted the crowning antenna, for which the tower was originally erected. FM radio signals are broadcast from the base of the antenna, while television signals are sent from the top. Presently, 16 of Toronto’s media signals are transmitted from the tower.
1) The Channel Tunnel linked the Britain and the rest of Europe
2) Three concrete tubes each 5 ft. thick, plunge into the earth at Coquelles, France and make passage through the English Channel.
3) The passengers can board the two trains running at a speed greater than 100mph through these tubes.
4) Passengers board not on foot, but in automobiles and buses.
5) The third tube is used basically for maintenance and emergency vehicles.
6) It is one of the intelligent structures built with immense precision. Huge pistons open and close ducts, relieving the pressure that builds ahead of the train’s noses. Some 300miles of cold water piping run alongside the rail tracks to drain off the heat raised by air friction.
Important Points regarding this Dam are:-
1) Itaipu Dam is a five miles wide dam which spans the Parana River at the Brazil/Paraguay border.
2) 50 million tons of earth and rock were removed in the construction process for digging a 1.3-mile bypass.
3) The main dam, as high as a 65-story building, is composed of hollow concrete segments, while the flanking wings are earth and rock fill.
4) Powerhouse of this dam is half a mile long, half underwater and containing 18 hydroelectric generators each 53 ft. across. Some 160 tons of water per second pour onto each turbine, generating 12,600 mega watts –enough to power most of California.
5) Itaipu currently supplies 28 percent of all the electric energy in Brazil’s south, southeast and central-west regions, and 72 percent of Paraguay’s total energy consumption.
6) The steel used in this is enough to make 300 Eiffel tower.
