Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

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davem said:
I hope the new tower spans some redevelopment of the garage across Franklin St. So ugly.
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I work in the office building cantelievered above that garage. The contrast between the garage and 33 Arch is jarring let alone the ugliness of the garage.

The least they can do is put lipstick on the pig and put up a new facade on the garage. I'm curious about that building's structural soundness though. How bad does it have to be when you need to add bracing to reinforce the spans? There appear to be bars on some/most of the floors and I'm not quite sure what they're there for.

What I'd really like to see in the future is to have that garage demolished and another building put up in its place that plays well with 33 Arch. 33 Arch appears to be fully structurally independent of the garage, so the garage can really go away into the black hole it came from. (We have an NSTAR substation in our basement and the ramp for the garage as well as more parking take up floors 1-7.)
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
I work in the office building cantelievered above that garage. The contrast between the garage and 33 Arch is jarring let alone the ugliness of the garage.

The least they can do is put lipstick on the pig and put up a new facade on the garage. I'm curious about that building's structural soundness though. How bad does it have to be when you need to add bracing to reinforce the spans? There appear to be bars on some/most of the floors and I'm not quite sure what they're there for.

What I'd really like to see in the future is to have that garage demolished and another building put up in its place that plays well with 33 Arch. 33 Arch appears to be fully structurally independent of the garage, so the garage can really go away into the black hole it came from. (We have an NSTAR substation in our basement and the ramp for the garage as well as more parking take up floors 1-7.)
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The garage is perfectly sound. 33 Arch's structure is tied into the garage. We discussed this quite a bit a little while ago in this thread (IIRC). Weidlinger Associates did the structural engineering and provides info on their website:

Twenty of the office levels cantilever as much as 50 feet over an adjacent parking and retail structure. Four levels of external bracing transfer the enormous loads of the high building to the small base. Weidlinger worked closely with the steel fabricators and detailers to develop the small connections required by the architectural design. The bracing continues through the parking levels to the foundation; perimeter and internal moment frames act as the lateral system above the braced levels.

See more at: http://www.wai.com/project.aspx?id=1323&type=100#sthash.SLvwaNYu.dpuf
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datadyne007 said:
The garage is perfectly sound. 33 Arch's structure is tied into the garage. We discussed this quite a bit a little while ago in this thread (IIRC). Weidlinger Associates did the structural engineering and provides info on their website:
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Actually data, if you go to that website they talk about how the garage predated 33 Arch. They demolished part of the garage and then created the foundation and previously mentioned support structure for 33 Arch in the demolished section, with those newly built levels of support structure also being parking. Ergo, you could probably tear down and rebuild the area of the garage that isn't foundation for the tower separately because it was once a freestanding structure.

The 6-story post-tensioned adjacent garage, which topped three levels of retail space, was accessible via a circular concrete drum. The drum and what was above it were demolished to accommodate the new building. Weidlinger provided engineering for the partial demolition and temporary shoring. Seismic analysis and design of the remaining portion of the garage were performed to meet current building code requirements. - See more at: http://www.wai.com/project.aspx?id=1323&type=100#sthash.SLvwaNYu.8ExelJ32.dpuf
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Back to the Millennium Tower, I find it curious that unlike most other recent projects, the core is not sprouting up ahead of the rest of the floors. It is now completely even to where they are just starting the second level. Is that because the work on the podium floors is more complex and once those floors are done, the core will rise quickly as will the tower floors? I was fortunate to have a front row seat for the Ritz Towers' construction and at their peak work levels they were banging out a floor per week.
 
BosDevelop said:
Back to the Millennium Tower, I find it curious that unlike most other recent projects, the core is not sprouting up ahead of the rest of the floors. It is now completely even to where they are just starting the second level. Is that because the work on the podium floors is more complex and once those floors are done, the core will rise quickly as will the tower floors? I was fortunate to have a front row seat for the Ritz Towers' construction and at their peak work levels they were banging out a floor per week.
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The Ritz towers were before my time in Boston. Out of curiosity, were those a steel construction or a CIP concrete? Were they done simultaneously or in phases? Thanks!
 
jdrinboston said:
The Ritz towers were before my time in Boston. Out of curiosity, were those a steel construction or a CIP concrete? Were they done simultaneously or in phases? Thanks!
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Cast in place concrete. They were built at the same time. There were many days were those guys were on site at 6am and worked until 8-9pm. I have some great photos (as in the take your film to be developed photos) of the Ritz construction. One of these days I will get around to scanning them.
 
BosDevelop said:
Back to the Millennium Tower, I find it curious that unlike most other recent projects, the core is not sprouting up ahead of the rest of the floors. It is now completely even to where they are just starting the second level. Is that because the work on the podium floors is more complex and once those floors are done, the core will rise quickly as will the tower floors? I was fortunate to have a front row seat for the Ritz Towers' construction and at their peak work levels they were banging out a floor per week.
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I am not in the industry but I see the 20 Somerset building every day. It appears that with the CIP the core only rises once the floor directly under it is poured. There is a "jack-up" rig that holds the forms for the core while the floor is poured. Then the columns and elevator banks.cores are formed and poured. Then another floor and so on. Very interesting stuff and easy to watch from the corner of Ashburton and Somerset.
 
I think the Clarendon thread will show how the core will rise only a little bit ahead of the floors.

Funny how it was only a year or two ago folks were questioning the "new" approach of building the entire core basically before any steel, and now that's the norm.

Nice that we have so many buildings and different approaches to watch right now.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
I think the Clarendon thread will show how the core will rise only a little bit ahead of the floors.

Funny how it was only a year or two ago folks were questioning the "new" approach of building the entire core basically before any steel, and now that's the norm.

Nice that we have so many buildings and different approaches to watch right now.
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I still find it kind of freaky to see just a core standing there before any steel goes up. It feels kind of post-Armageddon (just the raw concrete core left).
 
I'm not sure if it's an actual limitation, or just the contractor's preference, but from what I have seen of CIP construction around the country and world, cores typically do not go too far ahead of floors.

The first example that comes to my mind is 432 Park Avenue in New York, which is a CIP building with a core maybe 2-3 floors ahead of the rest of the structure.

I have to admit, I personally prefer the method favored in Boston as of late- cores built quickly and left standing as the steel inches its way up around them. There is something interestingly monolithic and nicely proportioned about them.
 
havas.jpg


:(
 
Yeah, I know nobody really cares about this but me, but I'm still sad.
 
This all depends on the structural engineer. Advancing the core only helps push your schedule. Its much faster.
Some structural engineers dont allow this because of the shear wall/slab interface (developing splice lengths of rebar into the shear walls). Dowel bar subs (couplers) can be cast into the core at slab locations and dowel bar inserts screwed into the dbs once the slab formwork is up, but sometimes you get an engineer that rejects this method.
Most likely if you see a core not advancing on a CIP job, its because the design team rejected it, or there is too much time in the schedule!!


Downburst said:
I'm not sure if it's an actual limitation, or just the contractor's preference, but from what I have seen of CIP construction around the country and world, cores typically do not go too far ahead of floors.

The first example that comes to my mind is 432 Park Avenue in New York, which is a CIP building with a core maybe 2-3 floors ahead of the rest of the structure.

I have to admit, I personally prefer the method favored in Boston as of late- cores built quickly and left standing as the steel inches its way up around them. There is something interestingly monolithic and nicely proportioned about them.
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JeffDowntown said:
So all the talk about Arnold moving into the Burnham building, and the clock sign gets the parent company name?

Interesting... but not very local friendly.
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You would think that they would advertise the retail store in that space and not the offices next to it.
 
datadyne007 said:
Right? Who gives a crap if Arnold/Havas has offices in there?
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Arnold/Havas? Which is why they paid more for the signage than Roche Bros. or Primark?

Primark will have their own sign anyway in their own style, although for a new-to-the-US store it might have been a good PR move to preserve this one and use the Filene's font.
 
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