Email #60 - Structure Exhibited

The upper horizontal photo shows the configuration of temporary structure as they prepare to build the east wall of the new exhibition space. A rebar cage was recently added around the historic steel column on the right. The same column is seen in the lower three vertical photos.

The old wall here had been demolished, but the large horizontal beam was left behind, temporarily, so that the upper wall could be properly braced until the new structure is completed. Note the midget rebar cage for a small column at lower left.

HDR Photography

This photo is one of the first I've taken with the new High Dynamic Range (HDR) software in Photoshop CS2. I am very impressed with HDR for simultaneously handling the very bright and very dark parts of the same picture. However, it does not solve the problem of lens flare, which is causing most of the smudge marks on the big beam.

The left and middle vertical photos were taken Jan. 3, the day they started installing formwork around the column. The bottom right photo was taken a few days earlier on Dec. 28.

The First Exhibit?

I've heard that some of the 1909 structural steel in the building will be exposed when finished. So when I saw the formwork with holes cut out for the steel rivets (bottom middle photo), I immediately assumed that the exposed rivets seen here would also be seen in the finished space. Cool. And here they are framed as if in exhibit! Indeed it is the first exhibit.

After I took lots of pictures, I learned that I was wrong. The finished 'columns' will have 2 or 3 sides cladded in brick. The historic steel column will be totally encased in concrete.

The "framing" holes seen here around the west rivets is a constructability solution to applying flat formwork over small mountain ranges of plates and rivets. Later concrete wilI fill the formwork, and then the brick finish will be applied. I don't completely understand the process details, but the bottom line is that grout will fix the area bumped out by the Rivet Mountains.

While we're waiting for that to happen, I'll go back inside Architecture Hall and see if I can find some correct examples of where the steel will be exposed at finish.

John Stamets
Jan 6, 2007

See also #61 and #75