More Focus – Page 159
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FeaturesTop 150 Contractors and Housebuilders 2012
Who’s thriving and who’s merely surviving this year? Our interactive tables reveal all …
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FeaturesThe 12 key moments that made the Olympics
As the gaze of the world fixes on London for tonight’s opening ceremony, Building looks back over the major events, turning points and chance encounters that helped to create the most extraordinary construction project the capital has ever seen
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FeaturesGardens by the Bay, Singapore
How Wilkinson Eyre found a sustainable way of cooling two vast glass conservatories in one of the hottest climates on Earth
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FeaturesInvesting in infrastructure: Safe bet
Questions remain over how the government’s £40bn infrastructure initiative will work - and whether it will unlock the pension funds’ billions
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FeaturesMarket forecast: Further to fall
With the economic outlook worsening, construction activity is expected to keep slowing until the end of 2013, with prices rising slightly
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FeaturesBIM: The inside story one year on
Building caught up with the team on the Manchester library refurb project to see if BIM was everything they hoped it would be
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FeaturesSteve Hindley: Mr Happy
The chair of contractor Midas and the CBI’s Construction Council has a smile on his face. What does he know that we don’t?
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FeaturesShould we work all hours?
Ray O’Rourke has said a 35-hour week would make the industry more attractive to recruits. How realistic is a shorter working week is - and does anyone really want it?
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FeaturesExperimental flooring: 62 Buckingham Gate
Pell Frischmann’s experimental approach resulted in this unique post-tensioned floor slab system
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FeaturesCost model: Out-of-town retail
As the needs of shoppers change, so too do those of retail developers. Paul Zuccherelli, Ben Agyekum and Marco Ielpi of Davis Langdon, an Aecom Company, consider the kinds of shopping centre that we will need in a click-and-collect world
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FeaturesKisho Kurokawa's Maggie's Centre
Before he died in 2007, the legendary Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa sketched out a swirling, ‘dragon-tailed’ cancer care centre in Swansea. Now the UK’s 13th Maggie’s Centre has been completed in titanium-studded concrete by Garbers & James
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FeaturesSolving the panel puzzle
The Maggie’s Centre certainly provided a stern test of the capabilities of precast concrete supplier Thorp Precast. The job involved creating 56 precast panels, and although many of these were similar, very few were identical.
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FeaturesThe ‘cosmic whirlpool’ and other Maggie’s Centres
When writer and garden designer Maggie Keswick Jencks was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993, together with her husband, the architectural writer Charles Jencks, she set about her creating a charity project to provide cancer sufferers with expert support within a more sympathetic built environment.
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FeaturesThe tracker: One direction
Construction activity has been in continuous decline for 18 months now, and the dearth of residential orders offers little hope of respite any time soon. Experian Economics reports
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FeaturesTurn on the water work
Will the UK’s water woes lead to a torrent of work for construction companies?
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FeaturesOlympic marketing rights: Time’s running out
Is it too late for UK construction to benefit from the Olympics?
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FeaturesBuilding intelligence Q1 2012
A 28% quarterly rise in commercial orders can’t disguise the general downward trend, with output falling in most sectors - even in the safe haven of infrastructure. Experian Economics reports
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FeaturesWuxi Grand Theatre: Wings of desire
Chinese symbolism and glacial Finnish design work in glorious harmony at PES Architects’ butterfly-roofed opera house in China
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FeaturesHyder power: Graham Reid
Graham Reid, Hyder’s UK managing director, explains how the firm has found itself with 500 vacancies to fill
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FeaturesEverybody’s talking…
… and unfortunately the government can’t hear a word they’re saying. It has never been more important for the industry to speak with one voice. Now the chairman of the CPA has a new plan