Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#2Does anyone here have any knowledge of how something like this gets resolved?
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#3Does anyone here have any knowledge of how something like this gets resolved?
Given all the bad press around things like the millennium tower, I think once you have an issue like this, the building is done. No one will want to live there. And given structural problems with load bearing beams, I would expect the building has to be demolished. But maybe they can demolish it top down partially and rebuild up from the compromised area if the city and engineers deem that safe.
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#4Does anyone here have any knowledge of how something like this gets resolved?
Tie every helicopter you can find to the roof, gas the bent bit off, haul it away and drop it somewhere?
They'll likely shore it up with hydraulic props - probably going through the floor and ceiling to floor slabs above and below - to stabilise it, and then start demolishing the building bit by bit.
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#5Does anyone here have any knowledge of how something like this gets resolved?
Given all the bad press around things like the millennium tower, I think once you have an issue like this, the building is done. No one will want to live there. And given structural problems with load bearing beams, I would expect the building has to be demolished. But maybe they can demolish it top down partially and rebuild up from the compromised area if the city and engineers deem that safe.
Knocking down a building like this will be a huge pain, extremely expensive, and very dangerous. I think you can assume the developers will try desperately to retrofit the building before demo. There’s good precedence for this even in New York City. Look into the Citicorp case study.
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#6Does anyone here have any knowledge of how something like this gets resolved?
Most likely the building gets stabilized and then anyone involved gets embroiled in lawsuits and it stays standing half finished for years. One Seaport is a famous recent example of an under construction skyscraper getting halted for structural issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/161_Maiden_Lane
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#7Does anyone here have any knowledge of how something like this gets resolved?
Yes, sometimes gravity resolves the problem for you.
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#8This is a little pedantic but the pictures seem to show failing support columns not beams.
Beams are horizontal and columns are vertical.
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#9I'm not an expert but those look like pretty wimpy columns? Kind of surprising, when I worked in a tower it had exposed concrete columns that were very thick in comparison
Re: Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams buckling at construction site
#10I'm not an expert but those look like pretty wimpy columns? Kind of surprising, when I worked in a tower it had exposed concrete columns that were very thick in comparison
I think the first picture is not showing structural columns: they're more a symptom (buckling as the building is moving) as opposed to the cause.