Jenga on Buildings
Wow, that’s way cool - demolishing a building from the lowest level first:
How do they do it? First they replace the support pillars at ground level with computer-controlled metal columns. Then, a crew carefully demolishes the entire floor by hand, leaving the structure resting on the mechanical pillars, which then go down slowly until the next floor is at ground level. They replace the support pillars again with the mechanical ones, destroy that floor, and repeat the operation until they get rid of all the floors. This makes it look as if the building is shrinking in front of you, or being swallowed by the street.
According to the company, this method greatly reduces the environmental impact of the demolition, as well as the time. Kajima says that it speeds up the task by 20%, while making it easier to separate materials for recycling, as well as reducing the amount of products released into the air.
I suppose a method like this would also work very well in a congested urbanscape like Tokyo. The marvels of engineering!
[via Gizmodo]
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Pretty cool idea! I wonder how difficult it is to replace the lower columns with hydraulic versions. They show them already installed.
Yeah I wish they showed it in the video too! I’m guessing they swap them out one by one - as the hydraulic jacks probably has to line up (vertically) with the existing columns.
I agree that they have to align with the columns, but they also retract into the foundation so they have to cut a deep hole to accommodate the “throw” of each jack - I can’t imagine this being done easily, but I guess once they have the jacks in place, the operation should work well.
А чё, неплохо.