Good afternoon and welcome back to what is, for most of our U.S. readers, a wet day as the powerful storm system that walloped the West Coast races across the country while the Northeast braces for its first nor’easter of the season. It’s already shaping up to be an eventful week, with plenty to dive into both here on AN and around the rest of the web.
Here’s what you need to know:
LAA Office enlivens 6th Street in Columbus, Indiana
Starting next week on November 3, visitors to downtown Columbus, Indiana, will find a totally transformed 6th Street. Local firm LAA Office has unveiled a colorful overhaul of “ 6th Street Arts Alley” realized in partnership with the Columbus Area Arts Council. The firm has splashed the street with a geometric mural that bounces back and forth from one side to the other, and added modular seating to entice passersby. For the second phase of the project, LAA Office will add lighting and custom shade canopies.
The AIA sends a delegation of architects to the UN Climate Change Conference
COP26, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference, is about to kick off on October 31 in Glasgow, Scotland, and for the first time ever the American Institute of Architects (AIA) will be sending its own delegation. The AIA, a non-governmental organization (NGO) and official U.N. observer, will be in attendance to build connections with policymakers and to share resources to help inform about how the built environment both influences and reacts to climate change.
At Hudson Yards, the Edge unveils the world’s tallest outdoor building climb
The death-defying Edge, which hangs more than 1,000 feet over Hudson Yards, has unveiled its newest attraction: City Climb, an exterior climb that lets visitors ascend to the peak of 30 Hudson Yards at more than 1,200 feet in the air. When the attraction opens to the public on November 9, it will become the tallest external building climb in the world (but guests will thankfully be strapped to harnesses and led up the steep steps to the top by a guide). Admission won’t be cheap either, with tickets being advertised at $185.
H/t to 6sqft
Steel pricing surges as supply dwindles, causing even more construction headaches
Steel is following timber and rising in price as shortages hit the construction world. Developers who are going ahead with projects are attempting to renegotiate their steel prices, while others are putting projects on hold and crossing their fingers that rising vaccination rates will soon bring plants back online and increase capacity. ENR breaks down how other supply lines such as insulation, are also being negatively impacted by the ongoing supply chain tangles.
H/t to Engineering News-Record
OMA completes its interior expansion of Gio Ponti’s Denver Art Museum
Work at the Denver Art Museum is wrapping up and the complex is reopening to the public, and that means renovations and additions both in and outside of Gio Ponti’s castle-like, 1971 Martin Building (see here for our review of the new Sie Welcome Center). While Fentress Architects and Machado Silvetti were adding a glass appendage to the ground level, OMA was at work inside on 11,500 square feet of gallery renovations and additions.
That collection of overhauled and new space is now open to the public and includes the 7,750-square-foot Design Gallery, which features an open “piazza” space surrounded by smaller satellite galleries, and the 1,900-square-foot Mezzanine Gallery, where platforms are raised to differing heights to create alternating layers of perspective.
The University of Idaho will research how to upcycle construction waste into 3D printing material
The University of Idaho has won a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to further its research into using recycled construction materials in 3D-printed structures. The funding runs through 2025, and in that time the school will look at repurposing waste wood into panelized building segments.
H/t to Construction Dive
