Rise Up

Speaking of building buildings, watching them going up is pretty fascinating.

There's a 22-story residential building (BLŪ) going up directly out my office window on Folsom street. I've been able to sit at my desk and observe the whole process, from the first scraping of the original asphalt parking lot to the drilling and reinforcing of the ground, the digging of the basement parking to the placement of the rebar and concrete forms. They just poured the concrete on the 21st floor, the precast facade is mostly in place, and they've framed out the rooms in aluminum 2x4s about halfway up so far.

Naturally, taking in this whole process has brought up even more questions than it answered. The crane magically appeared, so I didn't get to see how they put it together or raise it up by adding new segments. The facade also magically appeared, so I have yet to witness how they hang it from the edge of the building; I'm hoping it will become clear when they start to hang the glass panels that will clad the rest of the building. I'm also not exactly sure what the rickety wooden supports are doing on the top four floors... from here, they seem to be made of two 2x4s or 4x4s that are clamped together side-by-side, and I can't really see how that could provide useful support for the concrete floors/ceilings because any significant compression it seems to me would slide one beam down through the clamps. But I see this at other similarly-constructed sites, so clearly they serve some purpose.

Anyway, watching the crane forever lifting and lowering forms, buckets, rebar columns, port-a-potties, etc., reminds me of my last office location where I also sat in a window looking out over a construction site. This was years ago (1998) as they built the W hotel tower next to the SFMOMA. I kept wondering what would happen if -- and therefore having the secret unspoken half-hope that I'd get to see -- something dropped from the crane. One morning, shortly after getting to work and settling in, as I was taking my first call of the day and idly looking out the window, it dawned on me that I hadn't seen the usual bustle of activity, and my eyes focused onto the crane cable hanging slack. As my eyes followed the cable down, I slowly stood, leaning forward with my forehead against the window. The cable disappeared into an enormous gaping hole like a cookie-cutter cut-out through the roof of the 2-story firehouse adjacent to the construction site. I dropped the phone received.

Turns out that a few hours earlier, the axle on the winch had broken and a 9-ton piece of pre-cast cladding fell nearly 30 stories, smashing through the firemen's living quarters, the engine garage, and into the basement. Purely coincidentally, the firehouse had been emptied of people and equipment the day before in preparation for a remodeling; no one was injured. I did not know this at the time and was immediately cured of my disaster witness craving, left wondering what the crash & boom must have sounded/felt like, but relieved I had not observed it.

Anyhoodle, I'm totally hooked on the Emporis website which has all sorts of useful info on buildings existing, under construction, and proposed, for cities all over the world. I also just learned of several architectural walking tours that I think will supplement my own wanderings and wonderings. Hooray!