Site Visit 6: Westfield Gelong

Made using reinforced concrete the internal spaces can be large without many supports.

Because of the reinforced concrete span between the poles that hold the loads the shop front become versitile, as they are not limited by any load baring structure.
Hanging ceilings alow for all the services to be hiden in the ceiling and the lights to be bult into the ceiling also.

Site Visit 5: The Sheraton

this 'I' beam is not holding much structural purpose apart from that of the sail.

in the balconies i noticed the give away of the method of construction. the edges of the pre cast concrete panels can be seen:
you can see the joints between the pre cast concrete slabs

Site Visit 4: The Carousel located on the waterfront of Geelong

This structure shows the flexibility of steel and its ability to creat open spaces in construction.

the roof of te structure is supported by six steel poles.
this picture shows the intricate joint to the steel pole. The rods btween the roof and the steel poles act under compression to support the roof and in this case also act to give stubility to the joint.

With the steel structure enabling large spans pains of glass are used to enable people inside the building to see the view.

Site Visit 3:

New Shopping complex on Pakington st. Geelong

On this site visit I was fortunate enough to get a tour by the site manager. it was on a monday which is a regestered day off, so luckerly the site manager was in his office and had time to show me around and also talk about construction management in general.

The building is constructed using tilt up panels for walls. "Simon" the construction manager said they had put up 30 reinforced tilt up panels in one day. this was a good day he said but t shows how quickly this allows the construction to take place. it is a clear advantage over brick where the labour costs and the time taken to construct the same area of wall are far higher.

the panels in this construction were load baring members which the beams holding up the roof then bolted strait into.

here you can see the supports for the reinforced tilt up concrete panels that are neccissary to hold them in place before they are fixed and the building is braced.There are two methods used on this site for anchoring the supports for the tilt panels to the ground. one is to pour a 'dummy footing' that has no purpose but to hold the supports in the construction phase of the building. the other is a more convenient option and that is the screws. they go 1.5 meters into the ground and are put in place with an excavator and can be removed when they are not needed and reused unlike the 'dummy footing'.

Pre cast reinforced concrete tilt up panels are diverse and can come in shapes to suit any purpose. above you con see some basic whole for windows.

crane
joint

Steel joint to panel

post on pad footing

Site Visit 2: Extention to Westfield Shopping Centre Geelong

Walkway over Yarra Street:

Through visiting this site I was given the oppertunity to observe reinforced concrete construction that had been cast on site, and its relationship to the structural components of the walking bridge which is prodominately constructed out of steel. The concrete construction seemed to me as beeing very repeditive in this case and used for the mainfloor spaces. while the steel was used for spaning over Yarra Street. this is possibly to do with the tensile properties of steel compared to concrete.

Disadvantage of Concrete Construction:In both of the above photographs you can see clear examples of how providing ventilation throughout the building has been somewhat difficult in the new Westfield complex. Unlike other forms of constrution such as Timber the services can not run through cirtain elements of the structure and is generally run undernieth. This creates the problem of creating the room for the services. The Solution is generally to highten the space btetween levels and hide them behined a hung cieling.The Drawing above shows: The joints in the steel components and the use of the steel as the supporting structure of a suspended concrete slab.

Steel workFire Profing:

Concrete is sprayed onto the Steel to give it a better fire rating. i found it interesting observing the emphisis on the fire proofing of the walkway.

Construction Site Visit 1:

This building is the new council offices for Geelong. Located directly across from Deakin's Waterfront campus.This is a great demonstration of concrete construction both on and off site.
In this first photo you can see the suspended slabs of the first and second level and the third and fourth levels still under construction. You can see the large amount of suport needed to hold up the bonddeck before the concrete sets and gains it's strength.

In this image you can see the concrete cloubms have been poured into a stainless steel mold that then stays as part of the structure. You can also see one of the disadvantages of using suspended slabs in this photo and that is the need to run all the services undernieth the slabs. Here we can see some of the initial electrical wiring and fire protection.
Here you can see the use of pre-cast concrete slabs on the western side of the building. Using pre-cast concrete slabs means there is much less time spent on site. Therefor making them very cost affective. Not to mention there long term durability when compared to bricks and different types of cladding.

Using pre-cast concrete construction there will always be the need of a crane to move.

Literally at this stage of construction the whole building is made out of concrete. This demonstrates the trend of commercial construction today and the diversity of this material that is becoming more and more availiable.

Week 6:

This Detail shows the properties of a two story office developement using

brick walls and a suspended slab.