THE WIDER VIEW: Taking shape, the new bridge at the Hoover Dam
Creeping closer inch by inch, 900 feet above the mighty Colorado River, the two sides of a $160 million bridge at the Hoover Dam slowly take shape.
The bridge will carry a new section of US Route 93 past the bottleneck of the old road which can be seen twisting and winding around and across the dam itself.
When complete, it will provide a new link between the states of Nevada and Arizona . In an incredible feat of engineering, the road will be supported on the two massive concrete arches which jut out of the rock face.
The arches are made up of 53 individual sections each 24 feet long which have been cast on-site and are being lifted into place using an improvised high-wire crane strung between temporary steel pylons.
The arches will eventually measure more than 1,000 feet across. At the moment, the structure looks like a traditional suspension bridge. But once the arches are complete, the suspending cables on each side will be removed. Extra vertical columns will then be installed on the arches to carry the road.
The bridge has become known as the Hoover Dam bypass, although it is officially called the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, after a former governor of Nevada and an American Football player from Arizona who joined the US Army and was killed in Afghanistan.
Work on the bridge started in 2005 and should finish next year. An estimated 17,000 cars and trucks will cross it every day.
The dam was started in 1931 and used enough concrete to build a road from New York to San Francisco. The stretch of water it created, Lake Mead, is 110 miles long and took six years to fill. The original road was opened at the same time as the famous dam in 1936.
An extra note: The top of the white band of rock in Lake Mead is the old waterline prior to the drought and development in the Las Vegas area. It is over 100 feet above the current water level.
Look up ... off the ground ... or else you might miss something spetacular! This Tiffany mosaic stained glass dome forms the interiors of Chicago's first Public Library ... built in 1897. However as the city grew there was need for a bigger library ... Now this place is renamed as "Chicago Cultural Center" and has offices for the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Surprizingly, despite this being in the heart of downtown Chicago, I know of many Chicagoans who have never been to this place. The building has another dome, which is the largest Tiffany dome in the world.
1887: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known to the world as Le Corbusier, is born in the Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds. He will change his name and take French citizenship in his 30s. More importantly, he will help pioneer the International Style of architecture and is one of the most influential proponents of the machine aesthetic.
Jeanneret-Gris’ interest in design and architecture came early in life. He attended the local art school, where he studied under architect Rene Chapallaz, who became a major influence. After moving to Paris in 1907, he toiled for Auguste Perret, an architect renowned for his work in reinforced concrete construction. A few years later he continued on to Berlin, where he became fluent in German and schooled under Peter Behrens, another architect with bohemian predilections esteemed for his industrial designs.
By the time he returned to Switzerland, where he spent the World War I years, Jeanneret-Gris’ guiding aesthetic was well formed.
Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France. Built 1950-1954.
Le Corbusier’s later work, while still in machine-age reinforced concrete, assumed more sculptural forms, as in this hilltop chapel.
Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France. Built 1928.
In adopting the single-name pseudonym Le Corbusier, when he returned to Paris shortly after the war, Jeanneret was following a popular bohemian practice of the time. He took the name, in fact, during a brief period where he abandoned architecture for painting and sculpture. Like his artistic brethren, Le Corbusier was making a symbolic statement that anyone was capable of reinventing himself.
But his estrangement from the drafting table didn’t last long. By 1922, he was back at it, picking up where he had left off, this time in partnership with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret.
That meant continuing the theoretical development of the style that would come to define not only his own work but an entire school of architecture. If his early years were spent as a provincial architect, his aesthetic was anything but. His formative work, which included a number of private homes and villas, reflected his reverence for the machine aesthetic.
Le Corbusier admired the design of well-built automobiles and the great trans-Atlantic steamships of interbellum Europe. His attitude can be summed up by his most famous quote: “A house is a machine for living in.” (The man was born and raised in a town known for its watchmaking. How Swiss is that?)
Heidi Weber Museum (Centre Le Corbusier), Zurich, Switzerland. Built 1967.
This colorful, even playful, building is Le Corbusier’s last, completed two years after he died.
Sainte Marie de La Tourette, near Lyon, France. Built 1957.
The concrete monastery is appropriately severe, though still redolent of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye three decades earlier. This design was a precursor to concrete work by others around the world in a style dubbed the New Brutalism.
His signature buildings, for example the Villa Savoye outside of Paris (built in the late ’20s), embody this architectural style, which he referred to generally as Purism, after the art form that was itself a rejection of Cubism. The lines are clean and sharp (in contrast to the full and curvaceous lines of Streamline Moderne, then very popular), and the interior functions are precise and laid out in a modular way. Villa Savoye is also built on reinforced concrete stilts, another Le Corbusier trademark and one of his “five points of architecture.”
But Le Corbusier didn’t limit himself to the design of single structures. He’s also remembered for his theories on urban planning and renewal, which, again, reflected his rejection of traditional models. Never one to make modest proposals, Le Corbusier tried to interest Parisian officials in bulldozing the Marais and replacing the district with a forest of egalitarian skyscrapers surrounded by tracts of open space. For Le Corbusier, this radical plan represented a complete break with the past, something he continually advocated as necessary for society to advance.
Fortunately for Paris, if not the betterment of society, his idea was rejected.
Frustrated in his dream of becoming the latter-day Baron Haussmann, Le Corbusier looked elsewhere for opportunities to implement his Radiant City urban plan. Eventually, a number of these unités were built around Europe, the first (and most famous) of these in Marseilles. If they bear more than a passing resemblance to Soviet-style architecture, it’s worth noting that Le Corbusier was influenced by his study of an earlier communal project, the Narkomfin Building in Moscow.
Secretariat Building, Chandigarh, India. Built 1953.
This state-government building combines the formalism of Le Corbusier’s earlier Purist designs with a generous hint of the muscular, sculptural forms that appeared later.
Church of Saint-Pierre
Church of Saint-Pierre, interior
Like a lot of so-called visionaries, Le Corbusier was an active self-promoter. He authored numerous books on architecture and design and openly courted protégés. Like modern-day Apple devotees slobbering at the feet of Steve Jobs, Le Corbusier’s acolytes worshiped him with blind, near-religious fervor.
His critics, however, were less sanguine. The harshest of them argued that his urban designs, especially, were cold and sterile, and worse, the product of technical incompetence.
Nevertheless, by the time he died in 1965, Le Corbusier’s enormous influence on 20th-century architectural sensibilities was indisputable. He ranks in a select pantheon alongside such worthies as Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Cavo Tagoo is a unique luxury hotel near Chora of the famous greek island “Mykonos”, built into an impressive natural cliffside. Hotel interior design stimulates and satisfies guest expectations of service, quality, and comfort; as such, it represents the realization of hospitality design.
Hotel interior design is a profession that involves artistically decorating and furnishing the spaces inside a hotel. Featuring suites with private pools, a Spa Center, indoor heated pool, fitness center, stunning lounge and poolside bars, we excel at offering the complete island indulgence package. Relax, gaze across our breathtaking panoramic view and enjoy the jet-setting vibes of Mykonos. These are lasting memories in the making.
