Analysis of Articles

For my final blog, I will be conducting a rhetorical analysis of my previous few journal blogs using Swale's Genre Model as a reference. Here we go.

For the past few weeks, I have been reading academic articles from my major, courtesy of Civil Engineering, The Magazine for the American Society of Engineers, and have tried to convert the technical data of the article in to a form that my target audience (you fine readers) can comprehend and appreciate.

In the first paragraph of my blogs, I would establish a territory and make some topic generalizations. I would usually put in what or where the building was or where it was located, and then continue to give some background information and imagry to get my readers familiar with the building before proceeding to the meat of the article. Since the buildings were typically large scale construction projects, I would typically provide dimentsions or illustrations to compare the buildings size to similar or regocnizable structures instead of dwelving on how many meters talll or thousands of cubic yards of concrete were in the building, because that is not a unit of measure the average citizen is familiar with. I always included the monetary value of the building or the project, so that the reader would understand and visualize how vast a project it was due to its price tag.

The second paragraph or so would be comprised of establishing a niche, or simply continue to portray the development of the building project in the article in a more in depth and technical detail since hopefully the reader was getting more and more exposure to the project. Major design features of a slightly more technical nature were discussed and portratyed, as well as possible design flaws that were incorporated into the design of the building.

I would then continue for the rest of the article to occuy this niche, and either build upon the technical data I had discussed in the previous few paragraphs, or continue onwards with new points and build upon them as I went. I tried to focus on the purpose of my article, which was to discuss design and construction methods used on the project without getting too involved in the technical details. I tened to cover many topics that are in the popular media, such as sustainable energy and effiecent or innovative building design to keep the audience intrigued and give them a slight base on which they could use to comprehend the reading. I felt this to be a more effective method of discussion than to simply list the different types of varous new widgets and how they are being made, being that the audience would not have a clue or reference point as to what I was talking about.

Overall, I feel that I was able to clearly, and effectively discuss technical building details and methods with my intended audience as was my goal with this blogging assignment, and hope that they took a little information away from this that perhaps can help them in the future.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Out with the Old, In with the New...who knew that this old catch phrase could be utalized in the design of a historic art and music showroom in Turkey. The building designers wanted to keep the classic stone facade and perimeter steel support, while entirely gutting the interior of the building.

  

 Doing this ment designing an interior support structure that both held together the outside and provided suppor to the new floors. The designers, GAD Architecture, utalized hollow steel tubes filled with concrete to provide the sole support for the building and overhead floors.

 The tubes are all angled at varying angles to provide a more aesthetic appeal and increased earthquake protection since the building is located in an area that is prone to severe siesmic activity. The angle of the tubes provides a substantial increase in horizontal and vibaratory deformation, that typically causes buildings to collapse during earthquakes.

  

 These ingenuous columns serve as not only a structural milestone, but as an example of how to utalize structural design to enhance the artistic appeal and atmosphere of a client's building, which is typically the goal of any design team.

Onions to the Rescue!

Gills Onions, the largest onion processor in the US was the focus article of the October 2010 issue of Civil Engineering Magazine. They are the only facility in the world who use anarobic digestion to convert onion water into methane, which is then used to power fuel cells.

The company processes, cuts, and peels roughly one million pounds of onions per day, thus leaving mountains of waste material. The company decided to use the waste to fuel their new $9.5 million Advanced Energy Recovery System (AERS) to convert that waste into useable energy. They have determined that disposing of 200,000 lbs of waste a day was costing the company $400,000 per year and now they are being used to pay off the system in only six years.

The process starts by collecting the onion peels and waste and placing them in a tank to be juiced. Lime is added to increase juice yield and the waste material is ground into pulp and then run through strainers to extract the juice. The juicing process generates roughly 20,000 galons of onion juice per day that is then poured into large equilazation tanks which serves as a preliminary fermenter or acidifier to increase the bolatile fatty acids and decrease the pH of the juice.

 When the juice is acified, it yields a higher methane production. The juice is then allowed to ferment in a reactor which collects the escaping gas and transports it to bio-fuel cells that are used to provide power to the facility and reduce power costs.

All in all this is a prime example of how ingenuity can produce monetary results in a green, energy effiecent way.

Considered the largest privately funded construction in the United States, the CityCenter Development in Las Vegas, Nevada, was designed by some of the worlds most renowned architects and engineers. This new "city within a city" has also scored highly with environmental accreditation programs such as the LEED system.


Built in under 4 years, this project covered nearly 18 million square feet and cost roughly $8.5 billion dollars. The project was funded by MGM Resorts International. Located on a 67-acre site bordering the Bellagio, Monte Carlo, and Las Vegas Boulevard, it is the prime strip of real estate on the Vegas Strip and will provide nearly 12,000 new jobs for the city.

The main portion of LEED credentials were earned for this project due to the fact that when the existing building on the site, the Boardwalk Hotel and Casino was demolished, 80% of the materials from the earlier building were either recycled for the new project or sent elsewhere for reuse.

Another large factor in its environmental sustainability included an 8.5 MW natural gas power plant that was built on site to provide 10% of the required energy and 100% of the heated water for the building.

Overall, this building is a colossus of building construction and the utilization of environmentally friendly technologies on large scale construction projects. The CityCenter will continue to be an engineering and environmental master achievement.

Stairway to Heaven....Not Just a Great Song.

In an article featured in the March 2010 edition of Civil Engineering, The Magazine for the American Society of Engineers, they had a center piece on the structural design and details of one of worlds tallest skyscrapers, the Burj Khalifa located in Dubai. This tower is 2,717 ft high, which is nearly twice the height of the Empire State Building. It was built for mainly residential and office use, but it also contains several retail stores and a Giorgio Armani hotel.

The buildings architectural inspiration is based on an organic form with triaxial geometry and spiraling growth. It also draws heavily from traditional Islamic forms to enrich the towers design and to provide a reference to the cultural history of the surrounding region.

The building is unique in the sense that it was designed using a Y shaped building footprint, that causes the building to "spiral" the higher the building progresses. This spiraling motion as well as the Y shape has multiple advantages structurally as well as aesthetically.

The Y shape allows for additional structural security as well as support. Since the wind loads at such a height can be difficult to counter, this Y shape allows for additional wind deflection and adds an additional safety layer of reinforcement for the structure.

The building was designed and developed using nearly 73,500 different design models on the ETABS v. 8.4 design program which utilizes 3D models to consisting mostly of reinforced concrete walls as supports. The buildings foundation consists of a solid reinforced concrete pad that is 12.5 feet deep and utilizes nearly 12,500 cubic meters of concrete (more than 3 Death Valley's filled with concrete).

This project stands as a masterpiece of concrete construction in both size and innovation and is justifiably the centerpiece of a $20 billion dollar development effort.

Wiki Wizard

I apologize this is late but for some reason my original blog post I submitted last night did not make it to my blog when I checked it this morning. Not sure how it happened, but hopefully it finds its way through cyberspace back home. Until then, here is a replacement blog about what I was talking about last night. Sorry for the delay, but hope you enjoy.

 Last night, I was slightly bored, and after some blog reading, realized I had not posted a comment on the Keen-Wales debate. That gave me an excuse to burn an hour and watch the debate again to refresh on what had been previously discussed in class and after watching it, I got to thinking about the points that Andrew Keen made against sites such as Wikipedia that allow any user to post articles or just throw in their 2 cents.

Although I do agree with him slightly that there needs to be some disgression with simply allowing any Tom, Dick, or Harry to post or alter any article they please, I feel that people are smart enought to know what they are getting into and to check their sources if something they read on Wikipedia seems a little fishy.

 Even talkshow host Stephen Colbert poked fun at this point, when he encouraged his viewers to edit Wikipedia to claim that the African elephant population has tripled in the past six months.

On the whole, I feel Wikipedia is a good source of information that is fast and effiecent as calling a friend to ask them a question about a topic.....but it never hurts to check that your friend is telling you facts and not fibs.

On a lighter note, I found it slightly ironic that Andrew Keen has his own article on Wikipedia....as seen below.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Keen

......well done Mr. Wales.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November.

With the discussion of smart mobs, I find myself thinking about their presence in society today. From high gas prices to email/letter writing campaigns, smart mobs utilize technology to send mass communication to assemble and achieve their goals. Although they do not have a true leader, it only takes one person or action to stir the group into action and set the wheels rolling.

One of my favorite examples is in the movie V for Vendetta, where V, stirs the population of England into action a year in advance of their final mob assembly. Although he sets actions in motion, he truly does not control the group after that first initial push in the right direction.

 The citizens of London grow more and more agitated by the government and finally meet at the prearranged point a year later without any input from V himself. Although it is up for debate I think the assembly at the end of the movie is a prime example of a smart mob because people just start showing up, and then their friends catch on and their friends catch on, and before you know it, there is an enormous crowd all with white masks filling the screen.

Needless to say, they achieved their objective through forming ideas quickly, high connectivity, and mass communication and internal coordination without much if any input from the originator of the movement......

..........because he was busy blowing up parliment with a subway car.

Power to the people.