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Leaning Towers & Buildings

uair01 said:
To relaunch the stabilization, Hamburger on Thursday proposed slashing the number of support piles beneath the tower from 52 to 18 to "minimize additional building settlement."
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So the answer is to drastically reduce the number of piles that help stabilize a building built on soft soil? Is he saying just leave the ones near the sinking corner?
 
uair01 said:
The engineer trying to stabilize the Millennium Tower, a luxury residential skyscraper in San Francisco that is sinking into the ground and now leaning over two feet off of center, said the building is now tilting three inches per year.
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This is about the only thing that makes me feel schadenfreude.
To me, it has always seemed like a monument to arrogance and greed.
 
brownmane said:
Obviously not as well constructed as the leaning tower of Pisa lol. Nor an historic monument.
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We have our very own Leaning Tower in Cheshire. The ground under St Chad's church in Wybunbury was unstable enough to make several buildings on the site, dating back to the Domesday Book, too unsafe to use. Eventually only the tower remained, leaning badly, and and was saved from demolition by a local pressure group.

What has this to do with Pisa? A lot.
The technique used in the 19th century to straighten and stabilise the Wybunbury tower was studied and copied in the 1990s to adjust the Pisa tilt, saving the tower for 2-300 years.

Here is that very tower. It's hard to photograph accurately; the tilt is confusing. :chuckle:

Cheshire leaning tower .jpeg
 
escargot said:
We have our very own Leaning Tower in Cheshire. The ground under St Chad's church in Wybunbury was unstable enough to make several buildings on the site, dating back to the Domesday Book, too unsafe to use. Eventually only the tower remained, leaning badly, and and was saved from demolition by a local pressure group.

What has this to do with Pisa? A lot.
The technique used in the 19th century to straighten and stabilise the Wybunbury tower was studied and copied in the 1990s to adjust the Pisa tilt, saving the tower for 2-300 years.

Here is that very tower. It's hard to photograph accurately; the tilt is confusing. :chuckle:

View attachment 50583
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We've got one of those in Bristol. Probably the same builders...

It's still there but this pic seems to be the best at showing the lean without resorting to tilting the camera.
 

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cycleboy2 said:
We've got one of those in Bristol. Probably the same builders...

It's still there but this pic seems to be the best at showing the lean without resorting to tilting the camera.
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That is truly bizarre. :)

Part of Bridgnorth Castle in Shropshire tilts like that. It was damaged during the Civil War.

We visited Bridgnorth a couple of years ago and were entranced by the place. :cool:
 
This is the leaning tower (a campanile, I think) on Burano, which is a picturesque island in the Venetian Lagoon with lots of nice colourfully-painted little houses clustered along canals. I visited the island around 20 years ago. I suppose the tower is still standing. All I can say is I don't think I would sleep too well at nights if I lived in its shadow!!

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uair01 said:
Leaning San Francisco skyscraper is tilting 3 inches per year as engineers rush to implement fix ...
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The Millennium Tower has now scored an instability trifecta ... Not only is it sinking (vertically) and tilting, it's now be acknowledged as sliding sideways (horizontally).
Millennium Tower Foundation Is Sliding as Building Sinks and Tilts

The Millennium Tower is not just sinking and tilting -- it’s also sliding, triggering a problem with one of its key systems, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned.

The engineer responsible for the ongoing retrofit of the troubled tower, Ron Hamburger, acknowledged last year what he called “horizontal movement” of the 10-foot-thick foundation mat, according to documents provided to the city and reviewed by NBC Bay Area.

In one analysis, engineers estimate the building had moved as much as half an inch, but Hamburger said in response to questions this week that the tower base has moved a full inch since construction. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investig...-sliding-as-building-sinks-and-tilts/2819762/
 
stu neville said:
Temple Church in Bristol (a few hundred yards from Temple Meads station) manages to lean in two different directions :). It's nearly next door to the pub in which the Poltergeist Pint IHTM happened.

I'll be going past it later: I'll try to get some better pics.
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It was built on marshland just outside the old city wall.
 
The pic below is of a round on 'Pointless' a couple of days ago. I think it was a repeat episode.

The contestants had to identify the country in which the leaning buildings were located. I didn't know any of the buildings featured, and only managed to answer A and C correctly. My guesses on B, D and E were all as out-of-true as the buildings themselves.

The answer to E was United Arab Emirates and it scored 1.

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The long-neglected Mole Tower (lighthouse) in Bremen is close to falling over, and authorities claim it will be removed in the coming days.

MoleTower-Lean-Bremen-2208.jpg
Leaning lighthouse tower of Bremen could collapse into sea

An iconic lighthouse at the northern German port of Bremen has tilted sideways and could soon topple over entirely ...

Public broadcaster Radio Bremen quoted the head of the water police, Uwe Old, as saying that nothing could be done to save the lighthouse. ...

Authorities have banned ships from entering the Geeste River at Bremerhaven because of the risk posed by the leaning lighthouse, which is located at the end of a stone jetty that has long required repair.

But port operator Bremenports said it planned to allow commercial ships entry again soon. If the lighthouse doesn’t topple by itself, the company said it would tear it down over the weekend with the aim of replacing it with an identical structure. ...
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FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/bremen-8a4db7e738186be8058209a2822e9a46
 
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