Just before the New York State PAUSE began, I visited our hospital-to-low-income-housing project in Queens. Honestly, I like being on construction sites, even if I have to wear a mask to do so. Engineers usually don’t get to build our designs, so seeing them during construction is as close as we get to the thrill of an idea on paper becoming reality. The middle of construction is when the building looks like our drawings, without architecture and mechanical systems and other stuff in the way.
The picture above shows a portion of the huddling core, where old elevator shafts are being reconfigured. There was no slab demolition here: rather the group of shafts has had its enclosing terra cotta partitions removed so that the new layout can be built by moving some of those concrete-encased steel beams.
Also, let me point out the well-built edge protection to keep the clumsy (me) and inattentive (unfortunately, sometimes also me) from falling down the shafts.
