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    "Loads" of Concrete

    Scott Kepford, AIA
    Oct 17, '08 4:16 AM EST
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    On Tuesday the first years went out on a site visit for our Building Construction course. We got a hard hat tour of a huge new ultra luxury condo tower in Century City, called “The Century” by Robert AM Stern with HKS Architects. No, we were not there to get design tips (yikes) – we were there as part of our unit on concrete structure. The tower is 40-something stories tall already, and we went all the way to the top to watch the concrete being poured. Pretty exciting stuff actually. We all bonded in fear of the rickety construction elevator, and climbing the last three stories on precarious painters ladders to the top, where construction workers snapped photos of us cowering in terror under huge steel structural members flying around hung from giant cranes. I guess it wasn’t as dramatic as all that, but it sounds more fun that way.

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    The ladders were only really scary when they were leaning over a several-story-deep hole in the slab...

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    Waiting to be smothered

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    Basically all steel

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    That concrete is being pumped up from 40 stories below at some absurd psi

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    I had no idea this amazing CONCRETE HOVERCRAFT existed. This guy was having lots of fun, and even gave us a thumbs up at one point. Clearly he got the best job of the whole project.

    And the view was pretty nice.

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    Admiring the views

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    View of Fox Studios next door - the Simpsons studio is down there somewhere

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    View to Downtown, where common people like me live, breathing that haze

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    View back towards UCLA

    I wish them luck in filling the building, with the whole collapsing of the global economy thing.

    As a side note, I'm going on another hard hat tour on Saturday; this one is given by the AIA and it's in the Police Administration Building that I've written about previously. Should be fun!



     
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