Sphere Casting Light on a Smart Solution

Early collaboration and integrating casting expertise into the design process from the start ensures that components align with architectural and structural goals. Having all key stakeholders from Sphere’s design-construct team, structural engineer Severud Associates, architect Populous, steel fabricator W&W | AFCO Steel, casting manufacturer Cast Connex, and erection engineer SDL, was instrumental in guaranteeing success.

Sphere awarded 2025 Ideas2 Presidential Award for Engineering Design and Construction from AISC

THE LARGEST SPHERICAL STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD is a display of groundbreaking steel innovation that has helped redefine the immersive entertainment experience. Sphere, the next-generation music and performing arts venue just east of the Strip in Las Vegas, is a 516-ft-diameter semi-spherical building rising 366 ft above ground. It encloses a bowl-shaped theater for 17,600 guests seated beneath a domed roof and a suspended media plane.

Penn2 Redevelopment awarded 2025 Ideas2 Excellence in Engineering from AISC

A MIDTOWN MANHATTAN OFFICE BUILDING needed a boost from its original 1960s form, and its steel frame lent itself to adaptation and longevity despite its age.

New steel elements incorporated at PENN 2 created a 75-ft by 450-ft addition called the Bustle that hovers 50 ft above the sidewalk on 14 dramatically sloped columns configured around an existing trainshed. Creative connections ensured the existing structure an addition do not transfer significant lateral load to each other.

CFG Bank Arena Renovation

The 60-year old CFG Bank Arena underwent a $200 million renovation that transformed the aged facility into a state-of-the-art music, sports, and entertainment venue. Originally opened in 1962, the downtown arena has been host to many events, including music, boxing, wrestling, and other sports, and is currently hosting the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) men’s and women’s basketball tournaments through 2025.

TSX – Magic on Broadway

Times Square in New York is known for many things, including its Broadway Theaters, luxurious hotels, trendy retail, great entertainment venues, and flashy billboards. In the case of TSX Broadway (1568 Broadway), the project contains all these items in one building. What makes TSX Broadway truly special is not just that it contains all the elements of Times Square in one location. How existing elements were shifted, assembled, and juxtaposed with new elements makes this Entertainment complex and hotel tower a unique structural engineering feat.

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Inside the 6 most fascinating, innovative reconstruction projects in NYC

The rat’s nest of regs that is city zoning may stymie construction, redevelopment and conversion projects — but in the hands of the right visionary architects and engineers, zoning can also produce truly innovative outcomes.  Here’s a look at some of NYC’s most fascinating extreme makeovers making their debuts right now.

DDC Journal, Fall 2023 Issue

Page 66 PANYNJ / JFK REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT

In coordination with a tremendous team of financiers, airlines, designers and contractors, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) is making headway on a $19 billion investment program to modernize and expand New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK).  Click image to read more…

Page 86 CFG BANK ARENA

Despite being the largest city in Maryland, Baltimore was without a large, high-end venue or sports concerts and other live entertainment for many years.  The existing City-owned Baltimore Area was often passed over by major tours due to structural limitations.  Click image to read more…

Louis Armstrong Center

More than fifteen years in the making, the Louis Armstrong Center is the final piece of the campus of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in the neighborhood of Corona, Queens, where jazz great Louis Armstrong lived for nearly thirty years. Caples Jefferson Architects answered a few questions about their design of the recently inaugurated Louis Armstrong Center.

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The Garnet, 1620 Fulton Street, Brooklyn

Named after the jewel-toned accent color punctuating its façade and lobby, the Garnet is a new mixed-income multi-family building located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. The 15,000 square foot project site was formed through the combination of vacant city-owned property with privately-owned small lots, which when unified allowed for 103 affordable apartments to be added to this thriving neighborhood. An ample lobby and large storefront windows along the entire length of the building’s base activate the lively and eclectic commercial corridor, Fulton Street, with retail spaces that enliven the streetscape. In addition to providing high quality housing and retail space, the Garnet is designed to promote the well-being of its residents as is reflected with a fitness center, playroom, and landscaped roof terrace.

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Sphere at The Venetian

This photo was taken at the completion/topping out of the dome for the Madison Square Garden Sphere at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The roof structure measures 440 ft in diameter and 90 ft tall. According to the submitter, the triangulated grid-shell dome is comprised of 5,000 tons of structural steel and 32 pie segments.

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