Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station  in england::

Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames in Battersea, an inner-city district of Southwest London. It comprises two individual power stations which were built in two stages in the form of a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built in the 1930s, and Battersea B Power Station, to its east, was built in the 1950s. The two stations were built with an identical design, providing the well-known four chimney layout. The station ceased generating electricity in 1983, but over the past 50 years it has become one of the best known landmarks in London and is Grade II* listed. The station owes much of its celebrity to numerous cultural appearances, which include a shot in The Beatles' 1965 movie Help! and the cover art of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals.

The station is the largest brick building in Europe and is notable for its original, lavish Art Deco interior fittings and decor. However, the building's condition has been described as "very bad" by English Heritage.

Centro Financiero Confinanzas

 Centro Financiero Confinanzas::

To those unaware of its history, the Centro Financiero Confinanzas looks like any other unfinished skyscraper. It is the eighth tallest building in americka  at 45 stories, and is located in the financial district of Venezuela's capital, Caracas. Its glass façade glimmers in the sun, a projection of wealth and economic prowess that was intended to house national and international businesses. Inside, however, hides a rather different reality. That's because, while the "Torre David," named after its main investor David Brillembourg, may look like the newest high rise addition to the Caracas skyline, it is actually home to over 700 families, a "vertical slum" that is a truly fascinating example of reappropriation of space in an urban environment.

Construction started on the tower in 1990, yet the death of Brillembourg in 1993, as well as the Venezuelan banking crisis one year later, meant that construction ground to a halt. It lay unoccupied and unfinished, an ironic symbol of financial failure that was intended to represent the unstoppable march of Venezuela's petro-fueled booming economy. To this day it is a shell, a skeletal construction whose bare structural bones became, in October of 2007, a remarkable opportunity for an intrepid group of squatters, families whose economic and social situation led them to seek a new life.

Hashima Island

Hashima Island 

(Japan)

If you've seen the new James Bond film Skyfall, then you were probably impressed by Javier Bardem's portrayal of the villain, Raoul Silva. He's a bad dude, and his evil island lair seems a fitting place for him — a rotting heap of buildings sitting out in the middle of the ocean, populated with derelict buildings.

 The island is real. The island is known as Hashima, or alternatively as Gunkanjima (“Battleship”) Island, and it sits about nine miles off the Japanese coast in the East China Sea. Schools, bath houses, temples, restaurants, markets, and even a graveyard were built, all on a space the size of a football field.

Once they reached 5,000 people or more out there, it was recognized as the most densely populated place on earth, ever. However, in 1974 the coal ran out and the Mistubishi Company told the people that they would have some work for them on the mainland, provided on a first come, first served basis. That's why people left so quickly. They left coffee cups on the tables and bicycles leaning against the walls. 

A few years ago, actor Daniel Craig, who plays Bond, "discovered" the island and suggested it as a location for his next 007 movie. Skyfall only features external shots of Hashima. 

Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal::

Taj Mahal, the pinnacle of Mughal architecture, was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1628-1658), grandson of Akbar the great, in the memory of his queen Arjumand Bano Begum, entitled ‘Mumtaz Mahal’. Mumtaz Mahal was a niece of empress Nur Jahan and granddaughter of Mirza Ghias Beg I’timad-ud-Daula, wazir of emperor Jehangir. She was born in 1593 and died in 1631, during the birth of her fourteenth child at Burhanpur. Her mortal remains were temporarily buried in the Zainabad garden. Six months later, her body was transferred to Agra to be finally enshrined in the crypt of the main tomb of the Taj Mahal.

According to TripAdvisor's 2013 Travellers Choice Attractions Awards, Taj Mahal was ranked third in the list of Top 25 landmarks. 

Taj Mahal, listed among the new seven wonders of the world, is renowned the world over for its architecture and aesthetic beauty. 

In 1983, it became a Unesco World Heritage Site. The Taj Mahal attracts 2-4 million visitors annually, with more than 200,000 from overseas. 

In all, the Taj Mahal covers an area of 60 bighas, as the terrain gradually sloped from south to north, towards the river, in the form of descending terraces.

Caisson Foundation

Caisson Foundation

WHAT IS CAISSONS?

• It’s a prefabricated hollow box or cylinder

• It is sunk into the ground to some desired depth and then filled with concrete thus forming a foundation.

• Most often used in the construction of bridge piers & other structures that require foundation beneath rivers & other bodies of water

• This is because caissons can be floated to the job site and sunk into place

• Basically it is similar in form to pile  foundation but installed using different way

• used when soil of adequate bearing strength is found below surface layers of weak materials such as fill or peat

• It’s a form of deep foundation which are

• constructed above ground level, then sunk to  the required level by excavating or dredging material from within the caisson

TYPES OF CAISSONS

• Box Caissons

• Excavated Caissons

• Floating Caissons

• Open Caissons

• Pneumatic Caissons

ADVANTAGES

• Economics

• Minimizes pile cap needs

• Slightly less noise and reduced vibrations

• Easily adaptable to varying site conditions

DISADVANTAGES

• Extremely sensitive to construction procedures

• Not good for contaminated sites

THE PROCESS: BUILDING A CAISSON

• After some initial form work and concrete pours, the cutting edge is floated to the breakwater by towboat and fastened to the caisson guide. Concrete is placed (poured) into steel forms built up along the perimeter of the box. With every concrete placement, the box becomes heavier and sinks into the water along the caisson guide.

• Forms are also built inside the box around the air domes and concrete is placed in between. The resulting open tubes above the air domes are called dredge wells

• When the caisson finally touches the river bottom, the air domes are removed and earth is excavated through the long dredge well tubes, as shown in the animation below. The caisson sinks into the river bottom. Excavation continues until the caisson sinks to its predetermined depth

• As a final step, concrete is placed (poured) into the bottom 30 feet of the hollow dredge wells and the tops are sealed.

Risk That Could Derail Projects

Identifying Risk Connections That Could Derail Projects  

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Global Risk Report includes graphical representations of how the critical risks facing the world are interconnected. Some of the risks identified by the WEF report—prolonged infrastructure neglect, major systemic financial failure and pervasive entrenched corruption—raise red flags for any business involved in major infrastructure projects around the world.

Most project managers track costs and schedules, but risk is the all-important third dimension and can be hard to identify, record and analyze. Unlike the WEF, which includes business leaders, politicians and academics, construction companies don’t have the luxury of calling on a panel of global experts to identify risks. But, they are well-equipped with their own staff, partners and suppliers closest to the real risks and the opportunities affecting the business. The difficulty has been to develop a corporate culture in which staff call out the risks faced and can use a simple mechanism to easily record them. Now that technology is available to aid the recording process, management can drive the cultural change needed. 

Most important for a project with a fixed deadline, having the overall picture meant risks could be mitigated at the most appropriate and cost-effective point. Without such an approach, management would not know to support the decisions and promises being made, and different project team members might duplicate mitigation efforts, leading to unnecessary cost overruns. 

The other benefit of a single risk repository is management can visualize how risks are interconnected. The latest analysis tools can produce representations of the “risk universe” faced by the project or enterprise and show the associated “risk constellations” that are forming. As a result, management can see the cumulative effect of risks that might have been deemed as relatively unimportant at the individual project level. 

For example, every project might identify the lack of skilled resources as a risk. Bringing in temporary staff is a reasonable mitigation action if the risk only happens on a single project, but enough skilled people may not be available if it hits several projects simultaneously. 

NEW Trends in Concrete Mix Design

NEW Trends in Concrete Mix Design

• The concrete industry may change slowly, but it does change when manufacturers, designers, and contractors develop and recognize new and better ways to solve longstanding problems. It also can change in response to changes in the culture at large, such as the increasing knowledge and concern about sustainability and safety. This article examines some new products and approaches that are beginning to affect concrete mix designs and will likely grow in influence soon.
•  
• There is a wide variety of equipment for processing concrete—from hand tools to heavy industrial machinery. Whichever equipment builders use however, the objective is to produce the desired building material—ingredients must be properly mixed, placed, shaped, and retained within time constraints. Once the mix is where it should be, the curing process must be controlled to ensure the concrete attains desired attributes. During concrete preparation, various technical details may affect the quality and nature of the product
•  
• “We’re getting away from the idea that a particular quantity of cement or a particular water-cement ratio is the key to high-quality concrete,” says MacDonald. “Adding portland cement to a mix design often ends up to be the easiest and fastest way to achieve desired results, but it’s not the most sustainable. The trend now is to find other methods that are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.”
•  
•  One such method is the replacement of some portland cement with fly ash, blast furnace slag, metakaolin, and other pozzolans. As byproducts of other industrial processes, these supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) impart strength and other desirable properties to the concrete with less energy demand and carbon emissions than would be involved in manufacturing an all-portland mix.
•   

‘GREEN’ BUILDINGS:

‘GREEN’ BUILDINGS:

Are ‘green’ buildings working from the building users’

perspective? This paper presents initial findings from 45

Australian buildings  with a view to highlighting lessons

towards developing successful green buildings.

By ‘green’ we mean buildings that have been created with

explicit intent to include environmentally sustainable design

(ESD) features and principles. Although the objective may

be to create buildings with less environmental impact, they

may not necessarily achieve this in reality. While the relative

performance of buildings can be measured in terms of

aspects such as water and energy efficiency, it is vital to

understand the experience of the buildings from the users’

point of view. Not only can a poorly performing building affect

users’ well being and productivity, in addition, subsequent

measures needed to alleviate users’ discomfort can result

in great expense and in the building failing to achieve its

efficiency targets. Our discussion here deals with end-user

responses. A more complete picture would require study

of both technical performance, including detailed energy

assessment using measured data over a period of time, in

conjunction with occupant surveys. This is not attempted

within the present study, which is limited to building users’

experiences and feedback.

Why do occupants appear more tolerant
of green buildings?
Indoor environment research on thermal comfort  show that users are
more often tolerant of conditions where they have more control, sometimes
irrespective of whether conditions are actually physically better. Users appear
to be happier if they understand how the building is supposed to work either
because the design intent is made clear and/or because the controls are easy
to understand and work well.

SEE MORE UPDATES CHECK THIS BLOG DAILY................................

new construction techo.

In general, there are four types of construction:

1. Residential Building construction
2. Industrial construction
3. Commercial Building construction
4. Heavy Civil construction   

   Design and build

   Main article: 

   

   

   Construction of the Phase-1
   This approach has become more common in recent years and involves the client contracting a single entity to both provide a design and to build that design. In some cases, the Design and Build (D & B) package can also include finding the site, arranging funding and applying for all necessary statutory consents.
   The owner produces a list of requirements for a project, giving an overall view of the project's goals. Several D&B contractors present different ideas about how to accomplish these goals. The owner selects the ideas he or she likes best and hires the appropriate contractor. Often, it is not just one contractor, but a consortium of several contractors working together. Once a contractor (or a consortium/consortia) has been hired, they begin building the first phase of the project. As they build phase 1, they design phase 2. This is in contrast to a design-bid-build contract, where the project is completely designed by the owner, then bid on, then completed.