đź”· Open Thread

Also - I like to think I'm a proponent of good design etc - but that does seem a little over-engineered for a relatively short pedestrian bridge?

... were the cable-stays meant to be essentially decorative? Or was the section above the canal somehow going to be cantilevered?
 
VIDEO: https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2018/....cnn/video/playlists/florida-bridge-collapse/

(Note that the central structure and stay cables were not present, but the bridge was not designed as a cable-stay bridge. The span was to be self-supporting, per the design docs (example in the link at bottom). The stays were for extra rigidity during cat 5 hurricanes.)

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/us/florida-bridge-cracks.html

THREAD: https://twitter.com/PatriciaMazzei/status/974803322497626114

BREAKING: Florida Department of Transportation says engineer from Figg team left voicemail on Tuesday warning of cracking in FIU bridge: “obviously the cracking is not good and something’s going to have to be, ya know, done to repair that.”

Voicemail was left Tuesday on FDOT employee’s landline. Employee was not in office and didn’t hear voicemail til Friday.

FDOT bolded this part of its statement. The agency has gone through some length to place the responsibility for the bridge on FIU

DYczFX6VQAA61M0.jpg




No one has said at this point why the bridge collapsed or whether the “cracking” might’ve been an issue.

In the voicemail, Figg’s engineer also noted the company did not thing there were safety concerns due to the cracking.

--

Imgur amateur analysis, with one of the design docs:
https://imgur.com/a/2G5Fk

Armchair engineer analysis (I agree with this analysis and he does a great job explaining it - it appears to be a post tension failure)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtiTm2dKLgU
 
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Ha!

We’re Ending Fixer Upper So We Can Explore Our New Passion for 1970s European Brutalism

See, Jo could only pretend to care about the special touches that make a house a home for so much longer. And I woke up one morning and said to myself, “Chip, you don’t give a hockey puck if these homeowners chose a reading nook in the playroom or a Juliet balcony off the master bath.” After some reflection and time with our pastor, we realized that what we really wanted to do was to cram a harsh, unwieldy post-war aesthetic down people’s throats.

So, no more shiplap. No more driving around in a pickup truck. No more lies.

Now we can say to the Smiths and the Prestons and all the other good families we’ve been blessed to work with: you are meaningless specks in the face of mechanization and the worker-state. Here is your concrete cube. We don’t care if you like it. It is functional enough for your purposes. Get over yourselves.
Click to expand...
 
^ Any resemblance to our own dear BB is purely coincidental, of course...
 
A question I saw on another forum: Why isn't it call Brutism?
 
Oh dear, NUMTOT is leaking again. I'll get the mop.
 
New Fire Stations in traditional town-center settings:

Would someone be willing to point me to some really good (or really bad) examples of new fire stations in traditional town-center locations? New England examples probably most relevant, but others would be helpful too.

Context is that my town (Essex MA) is considering building a new fire station in the very center of town, and I (and others) am concerned that its probably not possible (or at least its very difficult) to build a new fire station in 2018 that has a scale and character that would fit in a village context.

Everyone in town claims to want something with a traditional/contextual style and a scale consistent with the rest of the town center (not necessarily disney-eque caricature .. just something contextual) ..

...but my fear is that a fire station in 2018 is essentially a light industrial facility, and has to be built for frequent access by large trucks, + ample parking, hazmat capabilities, etc. And so should be built somewhere other than the walkable heart of town.

So - if you have any examples of new or recent contruction (or even unbuilt designs) that can help me to illustrate what's possible (and/or what we need to avoid), I'd appreciate it!
 
You understand why fire stations are traditionally placed in the center of towns, yes?
 
statler said:
You understand why fire stations are traditionally placed in the center of towns, yes?
Click to expand...

Yeah. Come on dude.

It's a small town. Downtown consists of about 7-10 buildings in each direction from the site they're proposing. Alternative site is 2,000 feet north, where open farmland (literally) starts.

It's a volunteer FD so 2,000 feet is not likely to make a material impact on response time (and of course that would be 2,000 feet closer to some portion of the properties in town). There are 3,400 residents and about 1,000 occupied structures. They get <200 fire and EMT calls of all types per year.

Alternative site, in the open farmland, is town owned already. Proposed site, in the heart of downtown, would be a $2.4M acquisition for about an acre of land.

Several other parcels are also in consideration, within a mile of the proposed downtown site. Also, note that the 'downtown' area is neither the actual geographic center of town, nor the 'weighted average' center of population density, nor the only major intersection of arterial roads.

But yes, I do get why fire stations are usually in the middle of town.
 
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