Next week I’m going to do a deep dive into the proposed solution and who is going to pay for it!
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The Millennium Tower opened in 2009 as the tallest residential building west of the Mississippi at 645 feet. Developers envisioned an instantly iconic addition to the skyline.
Instead, it's known as San Francisco’s TILTING skyscraper.
Here’s the background and an update:
Currently, it is unclear whether the friction piles and/or the dewatering is to blame for the sinking and tilting. As such, all of the lawsuits are ongoing.
In the mean time, engineers have devised a plan to hopefully prevent additional movement.
13/n
https://t.co/m1HSi2rOGx
My favorite example of how hard it is to complete infrastructure projects.
The Van Ness Bus Lane project in SF, which finished in April 2022, started the same year as Tesla was founded: 2003.
As tech is starting to be utilized in commerical construction. I can't visualize a future where a robot builds a one-off wastewater treatment facility.
50 rinse-and-repeat floors? Sure. A complex mechanic piping yard? No way.
Engineers stated that the tower would be stable for at least 200 more years and would allow visitors to continue to climb one of Italy's iconic attractions.
9/n
The last endeavor finally put engineers at ease. They removed soil under the raised end, used cables to pull it plumb, and drilled drainage wells.
This reduced the tilt by ~17 inches, but, most importantly, would halt future additional leaning.
8/n
Will the Leaning Tower of Pisa eventually fall over?
Last month I visited the iconic structure and learned some interesting details about it's construction, history, and future.
A thread :
1/n
As the tower gained international acclaim, there were multiple stabilization attempts: it had continued to slowly tilt more and more.
These included placing concrete and lead counterweights on the raised side. These methods did not fully stop the tilting.
7/n