Researchers have enlisted the resources of one of the world’s leading X-ray facilities at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. to help discover what lies inside German-born artist Wolf Vostell’s “Concrete Book #83.” The results of the X-ray scans, which will be published in an unnamed journal, hope to uncover a short book by…
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Students at Ransom Everglades School (Coconut Grove, Fla.) and Longwood University (Farmville, Va.) returned to award-winning precast/prestressed concrete buildings this school year: a STEM center and residence halls, respectively. Both projects were recognized in the 2022 Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute Design Awards program. PCI-certified precast concrete producer and specialty engineer Gate Precast of Kissimmee, Fla., was behind the lightweight but formidable…
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A development team recently rebranded the MacMillan Bloedel building in Vancouver, B.C. as a namesake for design architect Arthur Erickson (1925-2009), who executed the Modernist work for a client that was once Canada’s largest forestry products company. At 27 stories, the “MacBlo” building was the city’s tallest upon its 1968 completion. It became a national heritage landmark due to its…
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Lafarge Canada has teamed with BGC Ottawa (formerly the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa) to build the new Taggart Parkes Family Clubhouse, donating upward of 500 cubic meters of ECOPact low-carbon ready mixed concrete for the 15,000-square-foot facility. The recent grand opening ceremony marked a special milestone for the thousands of children and youth in underserved neighborhoods in the…
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New York luxury real estate developer SHVO recently announced a $250 million renovation of San Francisco’s iconic Transamerica Pyramid Center, its 850-ft. namesake structure one of the world’s premier architectural precast concrete installations. Over a 1971-1972 window, Western Art Stone staged production about 10 miles from the site, delivering 3,920 exposed white quartz aggregate elements spanning 360,000 sq. ft. of…
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St. Louis general contractor/construction manager Tarlton Corp., in partnership with Morton, Ill. concrete and masonry contractor Otto Baum Company Inc., recently completed a cast-in-place proton therapy vault for an OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center clinic in Peoria, Ill. With wall sections up to 25-ft. thick, the $5.5 million structure is Tarlton Concrete Division’s second such mass feat in the…
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A 165-room Hilton Tapestry Collection property opening this month in Connecticut, Hotel Marcel New Haven, reimagines architect Marcel Breuer’s Armstrong Rubber Company headquarters. Opened in 1970, the Brutalist style building combines architectural precast with cast-in-place concrete and structural steel. Precast elements exhibiting intricate geometry and texture, including more than 500 recessed window pieces, exemplify quality associated with Mo-Sai Institute licensees.…
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Florida concrete masonry producers revisited a March 2021 promotion to continually spotlight the potential of gray and architectural block in single-family residential building. Their March Masonry Matchup kicked off with a bracket of 16 homes posted at the portal of their Block Strong campaign. Weekly voting tallies at www.BlockStrong.com determined which homes advanced to brackets of eight, four and two,…
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Design-build specialist Keystone Construction Company has received the St. Louis Concrete Council’s 2021 Quality Concrete Award for work at The Factory entertainment venue in Chesterfield, Mo. The 52,000-sq.-ft., tilt-up building is the first performance venue to be built from the ground up in the region in over 20 years. The venue was constructed using more than 50,000 square feet of…
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A Petaluma, Calif. specialty precaster’s latest innovation sets a new threshold for making wine in concrete tanks. With a capacity of just over 1,000 gallons or 3,800 liters, the Sonoma Cast Stone SuperEgg is more than twice the size of any other such vessel, including the producer’s own top gun, the 476-gal. Egg. The SuperEgg will allow users to produce…
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