One WTC Timelapse ~ EarthCam's 11yr Build-vid

After all these years I finally watched the One World Trade Center build video, a timelapse by EarthCam...

Golden Gate ~ Building This Epic Infrastructure!

Arguably the most amazing piece of civil engineering infrastructure -- or certainly a Top 10 together with Roman aqueducts, the Suez & Panama Canals, various Chunnels, transcontinental railroads, the Hoover Dam, and more -- is surely building the Golden Gate Bridge as documented here... And look at those dimensions! Huge!

Prelude Progress ~ Shell's FLNG Project Update!

gCaptain spots Shell's latest construction porn -- a progress video on the Prelude FLNG and related facilities!

"The 600,000 tonnes Prelude FLNG facility, the largest offshore facility ever constructed, is nearing completion at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) shipyard in Geoje, South Korea. Once completed, the floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility will be moored off Western Australia for a period of 20 to 25 years where it will be used to chill natural gas produced at the Prelude field to –162°C (-260°F), shrinking its volume by 600 times so it can be exported to customers in Asia. Once operational, the Prelude FLNG facility will produce at least 5.3 million tonnes (mtpa) per annum of liquids: 3.6 mtpa of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate (equivalent to 35,000 bbl/d) and 0.4 mtpa of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)."

Timelapse Shipbuild ~ Mitsubishi Fabs AIDAprima

Check out this timelapse shipbuild video by Max Moos from MK Timelapse GmbH of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries assembling the AIDAprima cruise liner!

Motion Compensation ~ MacG Heavy Ship Crane

gCaptain's Rob Almeida spotlights MacGregor's 3-Axis Motion Compensated Crane Aboard the Siem Moxie. This is like Bose's "noise compensating" headphones or "bump canceling" active car shocks but for a heavy-lift crane on a ship moving in 3 meter waves!

Cat House ~ Custom Walkways, Tunnels, Plus...

MissC spots Peter Cohen's House for Cats and their people! See more photos on the Houzz site!

Prelude Progress ~ Epic Ship Construction Porn!

gCaptain spotlights my favorite current gigaproject, the Shell Prelude! Here's earlier intro to Prelude FLNG.

Mega-Block Shipbuilding ~ Meyer Werft Yards...

Thanks to gCaptain's Mike Schuler for spotting Mega-Block Construction at Meyer Werft using innovative shipbuilding techniques as seen in this Royal Caribbean semi-timelapse video...

Feline Fun House ~ Asperger's Cat Hobby!

MissC spots Greg Krueger's Feline Fun House...

The Top ~ Urban Luxury Lifestyle Constructions...

More NL Junctions ~ Showing Before + After...

Mark Wagenbuur at BicycleDutch does a very nice before + after view of a busy intersection in Utrecht which has just been reconstructed and modernized. This is arguably the latest in Dutch cycling infrastructure and this video builds on his earlier illustrations of Dutch Junction and Safe Intersection design...

"There is a whole range of solutions for safer intersections, but for an urban area like this one -- with relatively narrow streets and a lot of traffic -- this design -- with protected cycleways all around the intersection -- is really best."

1 World ~ Lower Manhattan Rebuild Timelapse!

io9's Lauren Davis spots Benjamin Rosamond's 1 World timelapse...

Howtoons ~ Tools of Mass Construction 2014!

The ultimate Tools of Mass Construction are shipping!

"The Howtoons book is out in comic books stores! This 360 page book celebrates our 10th anniversary with over 70 projects!"

Shell’s Prelude FLNG ~ Construction Progress!

gCaptain's Mike Schuler spots latest Shell’s Prelude FLNG construction progress video...

ECO Cycle ~ Culture Above, Function Below!

Japanese construction design and equipment maker GIKEN created the ECO Cycle robotic underground bike storage system. I've spotlit this before, but it's such a great solution that it's worth viewing their extended promo video...

Gotthard Base Tunnel ~ 57km Under Swiss Alps!

Some more construction porn, again thanks to pointer from MIT colleague Jonas, this time the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT), an epic railway endeavor burrowing under 57km of Swiss Alps to connect north and south in most efficient manner!

"Its main purpose is to increase total transport capacity across the Alps, especially for freight, notably between Germany and Italy, and more particularly to shift freight volumes from road to rail to reduce environmental damage caused by ever-increasing numbers of heavy lorries."

Epic Swiss Build ~ Pumped-Storage Gigaproject

My MIT colleague Jonas Brunschwig spotted this really epic Swiss engineering project Linthal 2015!

"A new underground pumped-storage power plant will be used to pump water from Lake Limmern back up to Lake Mutt, which is 630 m higher. When needed, it can then be used to generate electricity again. The new facility will boast pump and turbine capacities of 1,000 MW each. This will boost the output of Kraftwerke Linth-Limmern AG (KLL) from the current 480 MW or so to 1,480 MW. In terms of performance, this will put it on a par with the Leibstadt nuclear power plant or the Cleuson Dixence hydroelectric power plant. This will serve to safeguard the future security of electricity supply for northeastern and central Switzerland. Construction is expected to take about five years, and the plant should go into operation in 2015/2016."

Check out build video (in German, but spectacular graphics!-)

Ant Architects ~ Cool Properties & Capabilities...

Ants are collective creators of remarkable homes and temporary structures. To explore this further, check out when a fire ant colony is filled with molten aluminum and the cast is dug up and cleansed... See more lovely example casts at Anthill Art! Fire ant groups also demonstrate remarkable hydrophobic properties... This means they can self-configure into massive rafts... Curiously enough, as a collective they also behave like a fluid... A different species creates a giant ant hill which is here filled with concrete and excavated... To get a better sense of how ants live and organize, here's the investigative BBC show, Planet Ant ~ Life Inside The Colony of Central American leafcutter ants... Maybe that whets your appetite for the BBC's Ant Attack! And NatGeo's City of Ants too...

Beneath Cities ~ Decaying Infrastructure & Death

In NYTimes, Patrick McGeehan, Russ Buettner, and David Chen share scandal: Beneath Cities, a Decaying Tangle of Gas Pipes...

"It is a danger hidden beneath the streets of New York City, unseen and rarely noticed: 6,302 miles of pipes transporting natural gas. [...] The perilous state of New York City’s underground network, one of the oldest in the country [is] a glaring example of America’s crumbling infrastructure. [...] Communities across the country have been struggling to replace thousands of miles of these old, metal pipes with pipes made of plastic or specially coated steel that are less prone to leakage. Few, however, face as daunting a challenge as New York City. To replace all of the old mains in its network right now would cost as much as $10 billion, Con Edison estimates. Much of that expense would fall on the residents and businesses that use the gas for heating and cooking. [...] “Some of this aging infrastructure has reached the end of its useful life” [...] “It’s a major ordeal in a city like New York to just start digging things up.”

Yikes, surely there's a better way to design, build, and maintain cities?! Here's the mess below as visualized by Larry Buchanan's infographic and Robert Stolarik's photos...

Daredevil Photos ~ Skyscraper Climber Vistas...

Inhabitat spotlights daredevil Russian duo Raskalov Vitaliy and Vadim Makhorov and their photos of the under construction Shanghai Tower, the world's second tallest skyscraper...