"Saving the Ivory Tower," by Tom Nicholson, Constructor magazine, March/April 2010
The construction manager on the renovation of a historic dome at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., has been awarded a 2010 Aon Build America Award for outstanding work on the complicated, deadline-driven job.
The team drew on its combined 80 years of dome-restoration and limestone-masonry experience to tackle the problem. Before the renovation, SGH had worked with MIT for 10 years to address ongoing leakage in the dome and other issues, says Emily Hopps, a building technology specialist at SGH.
"Our biggest consideration in the repair design was the selection of a waterproofing system" and how to integrate modern materials with the structure, Hopps says. "The project work space was limited and occupied, and the construction schedule was accelerated to meet MIT's requirements, so every material and detail down to installation sequencing had to be considered in advance."