When it comes to your health, ignorance is not bliss. Refusing to let your doctor perform routine tests and procedures because you’re afraid he’ll find you have a disease is a shortsighted, if not willfully blind, decision. So is avoiding…
As an architectural student in Istanbul and Europe, I had the opportunity to study some inspiring buildings. I was reminded of those buildings when I was assigned as the project manager of an exterior repair program RAND recently completed at…
Every architect remembers their first scaffold drop. I’ll remember mine for years to come. As luck would have it, my first voyage was not a warm-up on, say, a 10- or 15-story building, where I could get accustomed to carefully…
As mandated by New York City Building Code, the Department of Buildings requires buildings with unsafe exterior conditions to protect people from falling masonry and debris. That protection is typically a sidewalk shed. As previously discussed in RAND’s Better Buildings…
According to the Department of Buildings, there are more than 8,500 sidewalk sheds and scaffolds throughout New York City. If an article in Sunday’s New York Post is any indication, there are also at least that many gripes about them.…
The Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Northwest Historic District in Upper Manhattan has some beautiful buildings with amazing stonework, but also sadly a lot of decay. Fortunately one cooperative board in the neighborhood has been working hard to maintain its building’s architectural integrity…
As RAND’s Marketing Director, I rarely get my hands dirty visiting job sites as our hard-working engineers, architects, and project managers do hundreds of times a year. While they’re walking on hot tar roofs in the summer, braving stiff winds…
As a structural engineer working for Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA), a government agency that oversees building safety, I recently visited New York with a colleague, Jeremy Tan, to learn about the city’s Facade Inspection & Safety Program, otherwise…
One of the things I love about my job as a project associate is seeing interesting architectural details up close. While recently conducting a 7th Cycle Local Law 11/98 facade inspection at 56 East 87th Street on the Upper East…
Prewar buildings have charm, elegance, and gracious space, whereas new construction is sleek and sophisticated and features lots of amenities. So what can be said about those postwar white glazed-brick buildings with their distinctive wedding cake shape? Piotr Redlinski for…