What: Cornell's nanotechnology research and teaching facility
Where: Engineering Quad
Cost: $58.5 million
Completion: Summer 2004
Number of floors: 3
Area: 150,930 square feet
With the completion of the first-floor elevated deck on March 21 came the emergence of 57 columns that will support the building's
three floors and roof. Also completed is the backfill gravel surrounding the finished walls on the southern side of the building. Just
about complete is the forming system metal frames supporting aluminum beams and topped with a plywood deck that will support half
of the concrete for the building's second-floor slab.
The slab is the first-floor elevated deck that covers the basement. The 30-inch deck was poured in two sections on March 16 and 21.
This area, called slab-on-grade, is where the support of the first-floor concrete slab comes from the compacted earth, instead of from
walls and columns. Last week, workers finished burying mechanical pipes and completed pouring the six-inch concrete slab. This will allow
for the forming of the level-two elevated deck continuing to the southern end of the new Duffield Hall.
The building is supported on the slab-on-grade end by reinforced-concrete columns that stand on caissons (holes drilled 14 feet into
the bedrock and filled with concrete). Columns supporting the building on the northern half the section with a basement stand directly
on the bedrock one story below.
An aerial view of the construction site, taken April 7.
Jon Reis Photography/Photolink
