Life Without Buildings: an architecture blog

14 August 2007

Bay Bridge Repairs, Labor Day Weekend



Bay area residents may have noticed signs everywhere kindly informing us that the entire Bay Bridge will be closed on labor day weekend. "What's going on?" you might be wondering. "Didn't they do this last year?" Well yes, yes they did do it last year, and it was such a success that they're decided to go for a repeat. Only this time the stakes are higher; in an impressive display of engineering prowess, a football-field sized portion of the bridge will be demolished, then replaced with the help of a computer-controlled hydraulic system. All in the span (pun fully intended) of just three days.

To help you understand the scope of the work, this helpful graphic has been prepared by Caltrans, the Bay Area Toll Authority, and the California Transportation Commission:



Pretty cool, eh?
More info on the Bay Bridge can, appropriately, be found at Baybridgeinfo.org

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Anonymous Jon said ... (1:51 PM) : 

Very, very... cool. Proof that no idea is so outrageous that it's presenter shouldn't be heard.

 

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25 July 2007

San Francisco from the Bay Bridge

Circa 1971:


click the image for a GINORMOUS version.

Did you see Zodiac? That movie does an incredible job of channeling 1970's San Francisco, and there's a particular scene that has to be one of the coolest uses of a building as set-piece in film (after Cremaster 3 and King Kong). In order to illustrate the passage of time and the prolonged duration of the Zodiac case, a camera pans over a sped-up, historically accurate, San Francisco until we see the extremely sped-up construction of the Transamerica Building. Awesome. Well, this image reminds me of that except that it's real, which is arguably cooler. The color, the era, the scene, everything.

via Telstar Logistics

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Life Without Books

  • BLOCK BY BLOCK: JANE JACOBS & THE FUTURE OF NEW YORK - Poignant and personal, these brief recounts and interpretations of Jane Jacobs ideas illustrate the widespread impact and influence of her ideas.

  • SPACE METS ART / ART MEETS SPACE - This sexy monograph published by Victionary presents a series of striking exhibition spaces that demonstrate the intersection of graphics, multimedia, structure and architecture.

  • VERB: NATURES - Nature meets technology in this, Actar's latest Verb Boogazine. Presenting some of the most striking projects to grace the pages of the series, the work presented in Natures attempts to give us a new way to understand of our environment.

  • BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2007 - Guest Editor Chris Ware assembles an absolutely fantastic collection of the year's best in comics and introduced me to several new cartoonists, including the breathtaking work of Anders Nilsen.

  • 2G BOOKS: LACATON VASSAL - I can't say enough good things about Lacaton Vassal and this catalog seems to be the only collection of their work. Great photos, great interviews, and some very beautiful, very original work

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