Tag Archives: construction

Building McMansions in Minecraft

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Check out this recently constructed McMansion in Minecraft. Here is a description of the structure:

Finally, it’s here! I have built an amazing McMansion!

This grandiose house features:

• A large entrance and foyer,
• a large living room with a high ceiling (and a balcony of the second floor hallway),
• multiple smaller rooms that could be sitting rooms, a dining room, a kitchen, etc.,
• a back porch, and
• 10 bedrooms! Gee whiz!

I have built two other McMansions before (both on the Iciclecraft server), but this is by far the best one.
Feel free to paste it into your own Minecraft world. However, if you use it in multiplayer, please credit me as the builder.

Sounds like McMansion features. The only thing missing here is a full neighborhood of mass-produced McMansions. And the tags for the post reinforce the McMansion idea:

Tags:Mcmansion, Mansion, Manor, House, Grand, Large, Big, Grandiose, Land Structure

I suppose the quick answer for why someone would build a McMansion in Minecraft is because they can. Perhaps they like building houses. But, to intentionally design a kind of home that is generally viewed negatively begs for a better reason. If you could build anything, why a McMansion?

Destroying city buildings with no debris

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The New York Times highlights new techniques for “stealth demolition” so that large urban buildings can be demolished with little mess:

At times the techniques seem to defy gravity, or at least common sense, for although the buildings appear intact, they slowly shrink. The methods, which make for a cleaner and quieter work site, may eventually find favor in New York and other cities as aging skyscrapers become obsolete and the best solution is to take them down and rebuild.

The latest Tokyo high-rise to get the stealth treatment is the Akasaka Prince Hotel, a 40-story tower with a distinctive saw-toothed facade overlooking one of the city’s bustling commercial districts. Since last fall, its steel and concrete innards have been torn apart, floor by floor, starting near the top, by hydraulic shears and other heavy equipment. The building has been shrinking by about two floors every 10 days; this month it will be gone, to be replaced by two new towers…

The cap helps keep noise and dust down compared with more conventional methods of demolishing tall buildings, which involve erecting a scaffold all the way up and around the structure but leaving the top exposed. “All the work is inside the covered area,” Mr. Ichihara said. “The noise level is 20 decibels lower than the conventional way, and there’s 90 percent less dust leaving the area.”…

It is unclear whether demolition contractors in the United States will adopt any of the Japanese methods; even in Tokyo many buildings are demolished in more conventional ways. (With the new techniques, setting up the project can be more expensive, but the demolition often takes less time than with conventional methods.)

We put a lot of effort into thinking about how buildings are constructed but less effort in thinking about how to effectively repurpose them or tear them down. Perhaps the owners of many new buildings aren’t terribly concerned with the long-term prospects of a building but the buildings aren’t just about the initial occupants and become part of a community.

Just a quick thought: with the relatively slow pace of demolition, how many people who see these large buildings day-to-day notice the demolition? I suspect for some that the building will disappear and they won’t notice until the end.

Chicago area housing starts up 37%; still one-fifth of “normal”

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The good news: Chicago area housing starts are up. The bad news: housing starts had slowed so much in recent years that this is nowhere near “normal.”

Housing starts in the first quarter in the Chicago area rose 37 percent, which puts the local housing market on track to build 4,000 homes this year, the best performance in three years, according to Metrostudy, a housing research and consulting firm.

Still, a normal number for new-home starts in the Chicago area is 18,000 to 20,000. “We’re one-fifth of that. We’re a long way from being normal,” said Chris Huecksteadt, director of Metrostudy’s Midwest markets…

A lack of quality inventory and bidding wars among resale homes have caused some consumers to change their focus and consider buying newly constructed homes. Several local builders report that they’ve started homes as spec or model homes and the properties have gone under contract before the drywall is up…

Because of that kind of demand, as well as a recent spike in lumber prices, some local firms are raising prices by $5,000 to $20,000 per home to help offset the cost of materials and to maintain or improve their profit margins. No one is getting too aggressive with price hikes, though, because it might lead to problems with appraisals and mortgage financing.

This may be the new normal for quite a while. As the end of the article notes, it may be difficult to generate consistent demand until there are more jobs.

When I see figures like this, I always think about the existing housing stock. Does this automatically mean that the available number of houses is really low? Or, is there a growing interest in recent years among buyers to forgo the problems existing houses may have and instead pay a little more to get a spot-free home? If some of the existing housing stock is going unpurchased, what then happens to those homes? Some people may not be able to move while other houses, particularly those in more disrepair and neglect, could become a drag on some neighborhoods.

What’s the life expectancy of a Chinese skyscraper with too much sea sand in the concrete?

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I think most people assume skyscrapers will last a long time. But, a number of newer skyscrapers in China are endangered because of too much sea sand in the concrete:

A sand scandal is brewing in China, with concerns that low-quality concrete has been used in the construction of many of the country’s largest buildings — putting them at risk of collapse.

The recipe to make concrete is pretty simple — cement, aggregate and water — but the strength of the final batch can vary wildly depending on the kinds of aggregate and cement used and the proportions they’re mixed in. Commonly the aggregate used in many modern building projects consists of crushed gravel or other rock, including sand, and that’s the cause of so much distress in the Chinese construction industry at the moment. Inspections by state officials have found raw, unprocessed sea sand in at least 15 buildings under construction in Shenzhen, including a building which, when finished, was set to become China’s tallest…

It can take only a few decades for a building to become dangerously unsafe if untreated sea sand is used in its concrete — including the possibility of collapse. While this scandal has been confined only to Shenzhen thus far, the possibility of it spreading to other Chinese cities is cause for concern. The country currently has nine of the 20 tallest buildings in the world under construction, while there were reportedly so many skyscrapers under construction in 2011 that it worked out as a new one being topped out every five days right through into 2014.

This raises an interesting question about the life expectancy of major buildings. Just how long will the skyscrapers in the major skylines in the world last? How soon do they need to be replaced? What plans are in place to destroy or gut the buildings before they fall down? I have never heard such a discussion but I hope cities are prepared.

This particular concrete problem wouldn’t arise if only they had built the skyscrapers out of wood…

Elgin-O’Hare highway project to take 12 years to complete

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I saw the news that the Elgin-O’Hare highway extension just received the final approval from the federal government. But, one piece of information in the story stunned me:

The action, which was expected, allows the Illinois Tollway to proceed with the $3.6 billion project, which will take an estimated 12 years to complete.

Twelve years? Chicagoans are used to a lot of construction but this seems like a really long time. Here is a brief schedule according to the Elgin O’Hare West Bypass FAQ page:

Construction of the Elgin O’Hare West Bypass project could be initiated by the Illinois Tollway as soon as 2013, and would extend through 2025. While the staging plan will be refined as the Tollway advances project design, the general sequencing described in the Tollway’s Move Illinois Program includes: widening of the existing Elgin-O’Hare expressway and upgrading the I-90/Elmhurst interchange to full access, followed by the extension of the Elgin O’Hare Expressway. When the Elgin O’Hare construction is complete construction would begin on the south leg of the west bypass, with the final piece being the north leg of the west bypass. The phasing of the improvements is intended to provide the most benefit to the public as early as possible while complementing other Tollway improvements on adjacent facilities such as I-90 and I-294.

In fact, this might be the best argument I have heard for constructing highways earlier rather than latter. In addition to costs which continue to grow over time, it can often be quicker to build when there is less development.

90 days to the world’s tallest building

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Having the world’s tallest building is a status symbol in itself but here is another aspect of this race: how quickly can the tallest building be constructed? One Chinese company says it has it done to a 90 day process:

Broad Sustainable Building Corporation will lay the foundation for their “Sky City” project this month. The company, famous for building tall buildings in ridiculously short time spans, plans to construct a 220-story skyscraper in 90 days, with construction starting in January and finishing in March. Sky City, if successful, will be 10 meters higher than the current tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

How do they plan on doing it? BSB eschews architectural beauty for simplicity. Their building are tall and block-y. They essentially make buildings out of lego blocks, but in real life. The National Post has a nice graph explaining how they plan on achieving their 90 day goal. “Traditional construction is chaotic,” BSB chairman Zhang Yue recently told Wired magazine. “We took construction and moved it into the factory.” BSB prepares the pieces offsite and then brings everything together so it slides in easily when construction begins, exactly like Lego blocks. By breaking everything down into simple blocks piled on top of one another, it allows them to build at an amazing pace — their goal for Sky City is 5 stories a day.

The quick process may be more impressive than the height of the building. Constructing a skyscraper requires a large amount of workers and resources and this company has streamlined the process. I don’t know if this exactly applies to this situation but it sounds like skyscraper by assembly line.

I wonder if there are any downsides to quick construction. Less time for quality control? More work is done off-site which has a negative impact elsewhere? Based on the description above, perhaps the architecture and design suffers the most: only certain kinds of modules, shaped like “Lego blocks,” can be put together quickly.

Scarier than McMansions: half-completed McMansions

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In the middle of a slideshow about the “World’s Eeriest Abandoned Places” is an image of a South Florida neighborhood of half-completed McMansions. The description of Lehigh Acres (picture 7 of 8):

There’s something bluntly creepy about the abandoned exurbs of Florida. Forsaken construction sites, like the ones in the middle-class development of Lehigh Acres in Florida’s southwest, are filled with half-built McMansions, unkempt yards overtaken by alligators and snakes, and derelict cul de sacs that lead to nothing. Florida’s population is diminishing for the first time ever, and nowhere is the exodus felt stronger than here.

Before Halloween, I wrote about the trend of horror films using McMansions as scary settings. Perhaps abandoned sites are more in the genre of post-apocalyptic films…

Overall, I’m not sure why abandoned buildings are viewed as being so creepy. I wonder if this fear has increased with the prosperity of the Western world in recent decades. With so much money out there, it strikes us as very odd that a building would just be left behind and unused. Is there something horribly wrong with the building? Why wouldn’t someone want to preserve and reuse it? But, I assume this has happened plenty throughout human history. Think about the ruins of empires; what happened with all the structures the Romans built when their empire slowly collapsed over the centuries? Or what exactly happened to those Mayan cities in the jungle? I remember as a kid learning about the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke but this certainly happened with other explorer settlements like the Vikings in Greenland. Until recent history, abandoned buildings and settlements were probably more common and “normal.”

Los Angeles survives Carmageddon II

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The Los Angeles area has now survived Carmageddon and Carmageddon II, which just took place this past weekend. And it also ended a few hours ahead of schedule:

The reopening of the busiest and most congested freeway in the U.S. came hours earlier than predicted. Crews working on dismantling the Mulholland Drive Bridge had a 5 a.m. Monday deadline, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a Sunday evening press conference that there would not be an early opening.

Starting around midnight Saturday when that stretch of the I-405 was fully shut down, crews had 53 hours to complete their work. Had they overshot their Monday morning deadline, a late penalty of about $360,000 would have been charged to them every hour…

The demolition is part of the $1-billion Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project, which adds a 10-mile northbound carpool lane. On Sunday, crews also paved the freeway between the Skirball Center Drive and Mulholland Drive bridges…

As for the benefits of Carmageddon, officials said if this year is anything like the last, a lot of people will be breathing a little easier when the weekend is over. According to a study at the University of California, Los Angeles, the air quality in the area of the 405 closure improved more than 80 percent during the 2011 Carmageddon event.

If you live by the highway, you can also die by the highway (closures). See some photos of the work here.

Apparently, the site of an empty highway in Los Angeles is a strange one:

Like Villaraigosa, some drivers couldn’t resist comparing the scenario to a movie.”It’s like that movie `Vanilla Sky,’ … where Times Square is empty,” Sterling Gates told KABC-TV. “It’s kind of like that. We’re known for our traffic, and it’s just nothing.”…

The rare sight of a carless freeway attracted many onlookers, including seven people who were cited for sneaking onto the roadway, the California Highway Patrol said.

Last year, three people slipped onto the freeway at the crack of dawn and snapped photos of themselves enjoying a gourmet meal on an eerily empty freeway.

It is a post-apocalyptic scene…for two days.

Worst year ever for sales of new homes

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Here is another indicator that the American housing market has a long way to go before it is fully turned around: 2011 was the worst year for new home sales with records dating back to 1963.

About 302,000 new homes were sold last year. That’s less than the 323,000 sold in 2010, making last year’s sales the worst on records dating back to 1963. And it coincides with a report last week that said 2011 was the weakest year for single-family home construction on record…

Economists caution that housing is a long way from fully recovering. Builders have stopped working on many projects because it’s been hard for them to get financing or to compete with cheaper resale homes. For many Americans, buying a home remains too big a risk more than four years after the housing bubble burst.

Though new-home sales represent less than 10 percent of the housing market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in tax revenue, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

A key reason for the dismal 2011 sales is that builders must compete with foreclosures and short sales — when lenders accept less for a house than what is owed on the mortgage.

While several experts are quoted in this story suggesting this likely means the housing market has bottomed out, I am interested in whether this will become the “new normal.” In other words, perhaps we won’t ever get back to the level of new homes sales that we have seen in the past. This could take place for several reasons:

1. These foreclosures clogging up the housing market will continue to take years to clear.

2. There is less demand for new homes from consumers who decide to do other things with their money.

3. Policy makers turn their attention away from new homes and instead promote renting or rehabbing older homes.

4. Population growth is relatively small, driving down demand throughout the housing market.

The assumption I’ve seen from a number of commentators is that the housing market will bounce back at some point. Is this such an inevitable event?

The weekend of “Carmageddon” in Los Angeles

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Local highway construction doesn’t typically garner national attention. But there has been plenty of news for weeks about a key highway closing in Los Angeles:

Interstate 405, a freeway normally so clogged that locals like to joke that its name is shorthand for “traffic that moves no faster than 4 or 5 miles an hour,” is closing for 53 hours for a major construction project.

As crews worked feverishly to get the freeway open in time for Monday morning’s rush-hour, residents have been making plans for weeks to stay off local roads, lest they trigger what officials dubbed “Carmageddon.”

Such an event could back up vehicles from the 405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of the city.

With warnings having been broadcast through television, radio, social media and flashing freeway signs as far away as San Francisco, much of the city’s nearly 4 million residents appear ready to stay off the roads.

As I have seen multiple stories about this, several thoughts came to mind:

1. It is a 53 hour closure, not the end of the world. This has been overhyped. People will survive.

2. Shouldn’t planners be lauded more for doing the work over a summer weekend? The preparation for the whole project actually sounds pretty good.

3. People don’t often think about roads until they are a problem. This is a good example of that.

4. Even though it may have been overhyped, this is still a legitimate social problem, particularly for emergency vehicles and other important highway users. This seems to be more common with highway construction: a long, well-publicized campaign to make sure that residents are made aware of what is to come. If people know what is coming, they are usually pretty good at making other plans. Like with many other social issues, public officials need to walk a fine line between overhyping this, like using the term “Carmageddon,” while also making sure that people are aware of the severity of the problem.

5. This would be a good opportunity to think about new transportation options in the Los Angeles region. As the map accompany the AP story shows, there are only a few routes across the Santa Monica mountains. The answer is simply not to construct additional highway lanes and more drivers will then use the highway.

6. This reminds me of some examples of cities that have eliminated highways, like the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, and traffic has adapted. Closing the highway for a short time is a nuisance but if the highway was closed longer, I bet people would adapt.