Friday, August 03, 2007

Balancing Act


The Daily Mail have an article about a 15-story office block in London that is being demolished. Nothing unusual there, but this one is being demolished from the bottom up.

Apparently all the floors are hung off a supporting beam at the top so it makes sense to work from the bottom up and then remove the beam and the central core. This doesn't sound like a usual construction method, there are only 4 buildings like this in London and we don't exactly have a lot of sky scrapers in Dublin, but it does make for a wonderful photograph. It is a shame the photographer isn't credited on the web site. Click the photo to go to the original story in The Daily Mail.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw this story on Gizmodo today. The old building as it stands in that photo reminds of the school across from the five lamps.

cork-host said...

isn't that exactly how the Central Bank in Temple Bar was build?

sliabh said...

Yeah, the Central Bank building was done the same way. Each floor is hung from the roof. Ah, I remember exam questions in UCD Mechanical Engineering where you had to estimate the weight of the building based on tone produced when the supporting cables are struck with a hammer.

I would be lucky to be able to measure the length of the cables with a ruler these days.