Engineering: The Latest Architecture and News

Today China inaugurated the world's highest bridge, opening the new crossing to traffic after the structure was completed in September, reports China Central Television (CCTV). Crossing the Nizhu river canyon at 565 meters above water level the Beipanjiang bridge spans 1,341 meters to connect the provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou in the Southwest of the country. The 4-lane bridge is part of a network of new highways around Yunnan and Guizhou that allow access across rugged terrain that was previously largely inaccessible.

Videos

It’s a project out of every architect’s childhood fantasy: a 100 foot (31 meter) long suspension bridge, constructed completely out of LEGO.

Envisioned as part of the ongoing Bridge Engineering exhibition at London’s Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE), the massive bridge utilized over 250,000 individual LEGO bricks in shattering the World Record for the longest LEGO suspension bridge. Stretching further than the length of three London City Buses end-to-end, the bridge weighs in at over 1,600 lbs (75 kg).

Once a niche topic, architectural geometry enjoys increasing interest from both academics as well as practitioners from the fields of architecture, engineering, computer science and mathematics. The Advances in Architectural Geometry (AAG) symposia series addresses this increasing interest through presentations and discussions of innovation in geometric and computational applications in architecture.

Buildings and cityscapes – or the lack thereof – change the way we hear significantly. Acousticians and acoustic engineers are often hired to solve problems with sound leakage, but few people consider the difference between a shout across a city block and the same shout down a closed hallway. In this video, the differences in sound quality in various environments are compared, as the “Wikisinger” performs the same song in 15 places.

Cycling between places like a cathedral, a field in front of oil naves, a concrete tunnel, an abandoned attic and a silence chamber, the acoustic differences between each space are made clear as the song reverberates or lands flatly against the walls surrounding it. Splicing and augmenting the different sounds of each place, the singer creates a kind of orchestra of architecture, inviting listeners to take a second to hear the buildings around them.

Nearly two hundred years after construction first began, and 150 years after being formally closed to the public, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Rotherhithe shaft in the Thames Tunnel is slated to become London's newest performance space.

Thanks to a cantilevered staircase by local firm Tate Harmer, members of the public will be granted access to one of London's best-kept pieces of engineering history.

Learn more about the project after the break.

This article originally appeared on Arup Connect as “Ask Arup: Silty Sand Solutions.”

Architect Juan Esteban Correa Elejalde’s client tasked him with designing an off-the-grid getaway for a rural site near Medellín, Colombia. After completing the initial design concept, Correa Elejalde ordered a soil study of the client’s land.

Unfortunately, the results showed the site to be “pretty much a pool,” he said; the high water table and thick layers of loose soil would provide little capacity to support heavy objects above.

After seeing Arup Connect’s call for engineering-related questions on ArchDaily, he reached out to see if we could offer any insight.

In 1989, California's central coast was rocked by a 6.9 magnitude earthquake, destroying infrastructure and buildings in San Francisco, Oakland, and a host of coastal cities. The Loma Prieta Earthquake caused an estimated $6 trillion in damage, prompting researchers to develop techniques for management of severe seismic activity in urban centres. Twenty five years later, a team of engineers at Stanford University have invented a cost-effective foundation for residential buildings capable of withstanding three times the magnitude of the catastrophic 1989 earthquake.

Find out more on Stanford's earthquake-resistant technology after the break 

Settled neatly in the quiet hum of London's Kensington Gardens rests Smiljan Radić's 2014 Serpentine Pavilion, an ethereal mass of carefully moulded fiberglass punctuated by precisely cut openings. Radić desired a structure that appears thin and brittle, yet was strong enough to support itself, and his affection for the rudimental layered qualities of papier-mâché - his maquette medium of choice - inspired the use of fiberglass by AECOM, who engineered Radić's wild ideas. In this article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Paper-Thin Walls," an AECOM engineer explains their solution. Read on after the break to find out more.