Archinect - News

42-story tower catches fire in Hong Kong

2023-03-04T08:00:00-05:00

A 42-story building under construction in Hong Kong caught fire late Thursday, showering a bustling shopping district with sparks and debris and lighting up the nighttime sky. Onlookers flocked to the waterfront neighborhood of Tsim Sha Tsui to take in the spectacle, as the flames made their way through the skyscraper and the scaffolding around it and explosions pierced the air.

The sight lasted for a period of 9 hours before emergency workers finally extinguished the blaze. Only two injuries were reported by Friday evening.

Scaffolding rises at Nakagin Capsule Tower demolition site

2022-04-26T13:43:00-04:00

On April 12, work on the demolition of the iconic Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo began after well over a decade of preservation efforts.

With its disassembly ongoing, an Instagram account dedicated to honoring the famed metabolist structure has posted updated images of scaffolding rising along the tower.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by 中銀カプセルタワービル (@nakagin_capsule_tower)

Stay tuned for further updates on the Nakagin Capsule Tower's demolition.

Previously on Archinect: The Nakagin Capsule Tower: The final goodbye or a chance at a second digital life?

New York City and its unloved sidewalk sheds

2020-01-02T15:00:00-05:00

Unloved and janky, scaffolding is New York City’s other architecture, its Tinker Toy exoskeleton. It has enraged and inspired its residents, while forever altering their behavior — there are those who cleave to its shelter during bad weather, or skittishly avoid it — as they continue to rail against its persistence and ubiquity, perhaps unaware of the history behind much of it.

Penelope Green on New York's much loathed yet ubiquitous sidewalk sheds — retelling the origins of the 1980 law that mandated them for buildings with decaying facades, how they could be vastly improved, when they've already been turned into destinations in themselves, and when lack of enforcement makes their mission tragically clear.

Notre Dame: crews begin to carefully cut away fused scaffolding

2019-12-30T20:05:00-05:00

The restoration of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, which was badly damaged by fire on 15 April, has entered a new and delicate phase. This involves removing a vast and heavy scaffolding structure at roof level that became fused by the intense heat. It had been erected before the fire in order to carry out restoration work on the 19th-century roof spire, whose dramatic collapse was seen on screens around the world.

For The Art Newspaper, architect Francesco Bandarin gives a detailed account of the crucial next step in the efforts to restore the fire-damaged cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

"The removal of the scaffolding requires three levels of steel beams to be positioned around its exterior to form a stabilising 'belt,'" Bandarin explains this next phase which is scheduled to take until April.

Should drones perform building inspections?

2019-07-17T16:25:00-04:00

Municipal laws in New York City are hampering the city's real estate developers and building owners as they look to embrace the use of drones to perform periodic building and facade inspections on their properties, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

In New York City, owners of buildings rising six stories or more are required to inspect their building facades every five years to assess building safety issues as part of the Facade Inspection and Safety Program (FISP). The process typically involves painstaking visual inspection as well as the erection of extensive temporary scaffolding. Typically, the inspections can cost thousands of dollars to perform while also cluttering sidewalks and overhead areas with the scaffolding elements.

“It’s long been our feeling that it would enable buildings to save a tremendous amount of money if inspection of facades could be done with drones with cameras,” Mary Ann Rothman, executive director of the New York City Council of Coopera...

Inspired by Bamboo scaffolding, ODA designs "Dragon Gate" at the Canal Street Triangle

2018-04-05T15:01:00-04:00

ODA New York—known for their distinctive residential projects like 420 Kent, 2222 Jackson, and 251 1st Street—has put forth a proposal that would reclaim an underutilized pedestrian island in Manhattan's Chinatown. The 'Dragon Gate' pavilion, a massive steel structure reminiscent of bamboo scaffolding, would offer a new gateway to the growing Chinatown neighborhood at the Canal Street Triangle.

Rendering: Labtop

The design, recognizing Chinatown as home to the largest Chinese population outside of Asia, deploys modern building materials while invoking Chinese Symbolism. Blending the two, the project manages to capture the neighborhood's unique characteristics and honors "the spirit of a place that feels at once timeless and original."

Diagram: ODA New York

Designed for the triangular traffic island at the intersection of Canal, Baxter, and Walker Streets, the pavilion mimics the triangular shape in order to take full advantage of its site. Rising 33 feet, the Drag...

Scaffolding around Grenfell Tower may be used as screen for art projections

2017-08-22T12:17:00-04:00

As workers prepare to remove the charred debris from Grenfell Tower, the specially erected scaffolding and netting around the building that will block the view of their work from the public may be used as a kind of projection screen for local children's painting and art. At least, that's what site and remediation manager Michael Lockwood has proposed, in part because the schoolchildren are apparently unhappy staring at the burned out husk of the previously-flammably-clad tower.

Residents take in the burned tower. Image: Catholic Church England via Flickr

According to The Art Newspaper, "Lockwood recently met primary school pupils in the area who said that looking up at the tower is upsetting. 'I asked them if they would like to come up with paintings of what they would like to see on the building,' he said. The works would be projected on to the scaffolding screen."

74 reported dead after construction scaffolding collapses in eastern China

2016-11-28T13:44:00-05:00

The cooling tower was being built in the city of Fengcheng in Jiangxi province when the scaffolding tumbled down [...] Chinese President Xi Jinping urged local governments to learn from the accident and hold those responsible accountable. [...] China has suffered several major work-safety accidents in recent years blamed on weak regulatory oversight, systemic corruption and pressure to boost production amid a slowing economy.

According to the Associated Press, the collapse is "the country's worst work-safety accident in over two years." The cause is currently under investigation.

Related on Archinect:

Zaha Hadid designs sculptural safety canopy over the High Line

2015-08-18T16:16:00-04:00

Whenever one of the millions of buildings under construction flanking the High Line hit a certain height, the developer is required to put up a shed over the park [...] except, it seems, when it's for a building by [...] Zaha Hadid. Then it's not just a shed protecting passersby, it's a 112-foot long sculptural installation—in this case entitled Allongé—designed by Hadid to give a sneak preview of the swooping forms of her building, which has just hit High Line level [...].

Photos of ZHA's Allongé scaffolding/canopy by Scott Lynch. Head over to Curbed NY to see more images.

The initial announcement of Hadid's High Line condo building on Archinect in 2013 was a topic not without much commentary.