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I was at the Devil's Slide Tunnel opening back in March, shooting for CENews. Unhappy with the daytime, road-level press photos that I took, I went back a few weeks later and took this long exposure from a higher perspective.
For more info about the Devil's Slide Tunnel, check out the CENews article here: www.cenews.com/magazine-article-cenews.com-6-2013-devil_s...
Minolta srT-101
MC W.Rokkor 28mm f/2.8
Ilford XP2 Super 400
... diverted water becomes architectural negative space, Shibuya.
Camera: Minolta XD7
Lens: Minolta MD f1.4/50mm
Film: Agfa Vista Plus 200 ASA
Scanner: Epson Perfection V330
Edit: Snapseed
This oblique view was taken on the Aqueduct's western side, in the Plaza de Azoguejo, looking southeast.
There was a time in my life when I lived and traveled on landscapes replete with ancient Roman works. But nothing ever quite produced the visceral impact on me that the Segovia Aqueduct did.
From a practical standpoint, it was just built to be the most reliable means of supplying water to one of the empire's smaller and most far-flung outposts. And yet it's one of the Mediteranean world's most staggering demonstrations of civil engineering.
And, in terms of the shudder of astonishment it provides anyone still capable of wonder, it's a masterpiece of artistic design as well. The American poet Walt Whitman wrote, "All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it." What I do to this miraculous bridge of stone is thank it for giving me a flush of pride in what our own murderous hominid species can actually do in a positive sense.
Of course most of the visual punch the Aqueduct delivers is due to its masonry. Giant ashlar blocks of Guadarrama Granite stand there, and have stood there for nineteen centuries, without any mortar holding them together.
The igneous intrusive rock on display here takes its name from the mountain range (Sierra de Quadarrama) that flanks Segovia to its east. The granite dates to the very late Carboniferous period (ca. 300 Ma), and comes from a mass of magma that was emplaced in the upper crust during the Variscan (Hercynian) Orogeny and the assembly of the supercontinent Pangaea.
I'll discuss the local bedrock geology and how the Roman engineers dealt with in photos to follow. But one last thing to note here: if you look closely, you'll see that many ashlar units have small but discernable circular holes in them. These indentations were where the massive blocks were held in pincerlike grips while they were hoisted into position by cranes. That's pretty fancy technology for a culture that had no electrical or steam power—just human and animal muscle aided by the clever use of rudimentary force-multiplying machines.
Oh. I lied. There's one more talking point, too. See the Seventies-era cars parked right along the foot of the Aqueduct's piers? That practice is no longer allowed—to preserve the structure from unnecessary traffic vibrations and from the direct effects of automotive exhaust.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this series, visit my Architectural Geology of Segovia album.
Scene captured during a day trip to the Waterloopbos in the Netherlands: close-up of the raw concrete shaping the Delta Works experimental setup in this open-air civil engineering laboratory.
The Bronx section of the Croton Aqueduct that is just north of Fordham Road makes a linear park that the locals simply call "The Ackie."
When water began flowing under this path on June 22, 1842, back when it was in use it took 22 hours for gravity to feed water 41 miles from the Croton Dam to Manhattan.
The Service Reservoirs (1871 and 1882) are located adjacent to the Windmill Tower on Wickham Terrace in Spring Hill, Brisbane. Constructed as purpose-designed water storage and distribution facilities to service Brisbane's rapidly growing population in the late 19th Century, the Service Reservoirs represent both a creative and technical achievement of the Colonial era. The reservoirs constitute two mostly subterranean tanks, constructed of brick arched walls, roofed in the early 1900s and once connected by a series of pipes to the Enoggera Dam. They were the first of their kind in the state.
Aboriginal occupation of what is now the Brisbane City area was located within a close distance of freshwater streams, at the main camps at "Barrambin" (York's Hollow, now Victoria Park) and "Me-An-Jin" (Gardens Point). When European settlement was established in the area, the proximity of a sufficient water supply had a significant impact on where it was to be situated. The Moreton Bay Penal Settlement was established at Redcliffe in 1824, under the instructions of John Oxley that a suitable location would be "easy of access, difficult to escape from, and hard to attack; furthermore, it should be near fresh water and contain three hundred acres for cultivation". Only one year after settlement, the inadequacy of Redcliffe's water supply became apparent and the settlement relocated to the current Brisbane City site. Adjacent to the river, the new site allowed the collection of water from the first substantial water supply within 15miles (24.14km) of the mouth of the Brisbane River, a freshwater creek and a chain of water holes near the present Roma Street Station.
In 1826, Captain Logan arrived as Commandant and established a works program; key buildings were replaced with substantial structures made of stone and brick. Further development was encouraged by the construction of King's Wharf (1827) which allowed goods to be transferred from incoming ships. Due to this expansion of the penal settlement, by 1829 the quantity and quality of the water supply had dramatically decreased. In response, Captain Logan under the guidance of engineer and Clerk of Works, Andrew Petrie, ordered the excavation of an earthen dam across a creek near present-day Tank Street that was intended to hold up to a year's supply of water. From this dam, water was reticulated through a series of hollow ironbark logs with convict-powered pumps to a small number of buildings within Brisbane, including the prisoners' and military barracks, and the Commandant's quarters.
Brisbane experienced rapid growth after its opening for free settlement in 1842 and the population quickly rose to 812 by 1845. Water carriers charged exorbitant prices for their services and water was frequently required to be transported from Breakfast Creek at times of drought when the earthen reservoir dried up. By the 1850s the supply of freshwater became polluted from bathing, washing, and watering animals. The walls of the dam deteriorated and leaked, and in 1858 it collapsed.
The Municipalities Act 1858 tasked local councils with the obligation to control their town's water supply Brisbane's Municipal Council (formed in 1859, the same year as Queensland's separation from New South Wales) only made short-term repairs to the dam due to other priorities such as constructing roads, Municipal Headquarters, and improving drainage and sanitary conditions. The Council constructed a temporary tank on the edge of the reservoir in Tank Street and licensed water carriers to serve the people Brisbane, whose population had increased by 54% between 1856 and 1861 to 5900 people. It soon became clear that Brisbane required a much larger water supply. Tensions emerged between the Municipal Council and the Queensland Government over who was accountable for funding future systems.
Despite the strenuous debate amongst alderman regarding the best solution, and continual conflict between the Council and Queensland Government over control, the Brisbane Municipal Council made the decision in 1863 to adopt a long term solution from a report by Civil Hydraulic Engineer, Thomas Oldham. This proposal involved a gravity reticulation system to the city fed from a dam constructed at a higher elevation on Enoggera Creek. A service reservoir would be constructed near the top of Windmill Hill on Wickham Terrace, the highest suitable site near town to store water before distribution. Oldham's scheme was designed to provide a 12month water supply to 200 000 people; five times Brisbane's population at the time. The Brisbane Waterworks Act 1863 enabled the Municipal Council to construct reservoirs, supply water to the town and to charge for services but allowed the Queensland Government to influence decisions with the establishment of a Board of Waterworks.
Joseph Brady was appointed as Engineer to the Board of Waterworks and oversaw the construction of Enoggera Dam which began on the 18th of August 1864. The dam was completed by March 1866, with alterations made to reduce expenditure; pipework sizes were minimised and plans for the Wickham Terrace Service Reservoir were scrapped. By legislation, responsibility transferred to the Brisbane Board of Waterworks in August 1866, and later that month 94 chains (1.89km) of water mains reticulating to Queen, George, and Edward Streets were turned on. By 1869 reticulation to the southern side of the river was achieved. The system was the first reticulated gravity supply and the first municipal engineering undertaking in Queensland. Being the first of their kind in the colony, the Service Reservoirs at Spring Hill set a precedent for subsequent water supply schemes throughout Queensland, including places such as Ipswich, Toowoomba, Maryborough, and Rockhampton.
After complaints from Brisbane residents about mains not servicing higher areas of town and of a poor supply during peak hours, the Board of Waterworks decided to proceed with the construction of a Service Reservoir near the observatory on Wickham Terrace. Tenders were called in 1870 for the construction of a reservoir in either concrete or brick. Henry Holmes' tender was accepted specifying the use of concrete, but after preliminary excavations and the identification of cracks in concrete samples, Holmes requested to change the walls to brick and subsequently offered to withdraw his contract. The Board of Waterworks made the decision to complete the contract under its own Clerk of Works; immediately letting a contract for bricklaying and purchasing 69 000 locally produced bricks.
The first Reservoir at Wickham Terrace was completed in 1871 and was filled for the first time on the 24th of February 1871. The Reservoir was a 60ft x 30ft (18m x 9m) open-air structure, with 480mm (3 bricks) thick outer walls and arched brick internal cross-walls that divided the reservoirs into 15ft (4.5m) squares. It held 126 000 gallons (570 000 L) of water which came to a depth of 13ft 6in (4.15m). For 10hours every night, the mains were turned off and the reservoir was filled to keep up with demand for the following day. The Service Reservoir had a major effect on both the cost and the standard of living in Brisbane with the average cost of delivered water dropping from the 1866 price of 20shillings/1000gallons to just 1shilling/1000 gallons. In 1872 a tender for £36 from H Wakefield to raise the walls by 2ft (60.96cm) and increase the Reservoir's capacity was accepted and in 1876 an additional main from Enoggera Dam was laid to allow water to be reticulated to higher parts of town. Further complaints, together with a surge in Brisbane's population in the late 1870s, due to immigration, port activities, and the construction of the railway, prompted suggestions that the Reservoir had become inadequate and that a second, much larger reservoir was required to support increasing demand.
In 1882, plans were drawn for a second reservoir to be completed by the end of the year by W Innes and Son for £2797-10-0. An additional main was laid across Victoria Bridge to service the higher parts of Kangaroo Point and South Brisbane. The second Reservoir was constructed with 510mm (4 bricks) thick brick walls. The interior was divided into 15 spaces by arched brick walls; the spaces being a square shape in the central section and rectangular on the eastern and western sides. In 1889, the Board of Waterworks considered roofing both reservoirs; these additions did not take place at this time due to the leaking condition of the reservoirs, the declining reliance on them and the introduction of other water supply systems.
Only a few years after the second reservoir was constructed, other improvements were made in Brisbane's water supply system to cope with the population boom of the 1880s. This included the building of the Gold Creek Dam in 1885 - 1886, and the Highgate Hill Service Reservoir, which was of mass concrete rather than arched brick walls, in 1889. The commissioning of Mount Crosby Pumping Station in 1893 marked the decline of gravity water supply. The service reservoirs continued to only supply water to the lower parts of the city. Although the larger reservoir retained water in case of emergency, both reservoirs were removed from use between 1898 and 1906.
In 1904 - 1905 the reservoirs were recommended for reconditioning to bring them back to a usable standard. These works comprised: the reconnection with the original Enoggera main; the provision of roofs to prevent the growth of algae and to stop animals falling or being thrown in; and the installation of a spray inlet, a floating outlet, and a relief valve for the Mount Crosby supply. In July 1905 tenders were called for further works on the small reservoir, including the cement rendering of internal walls. Contractors, Maskrey and Kitchen, were approved to re-roof the reservoir for £226-6-8 including extras. After 1906, little work was completed on the Service Reservoirs apart from routine maintenance.
Along with the reservoirs, several other structures were constructed; over time these were demolished or removed. A cottage was constructed by JP Hardy in 1871 for £125 and was built to house the Inspector who was responsible for overseeing the reservoirs running day and night. The Inspector's cottage was removed from site before 1959. A second cottage was constructed in 1894 as a caretakers' house. This became the turncock's residence between 1958 and 1959, was occupied until 1976 and was vacant until destroyed by fire in 1977. A third residence was erected for the Senior Inspector in 1909 for £315-12-0. At different periods until 1958, the third residence also housed the Superintendent of Mains and Services and the turncock. The residence was considered uneconomical to repair in 1958 and was moved off the site by early 1959.
The Wickham Terrace Service Reservoirs remained an integral part of the Brisbane water supply system until the 3rd of September 1962 when the water main from Enoggera Dam collapsed and was shut down, unable to serve an increasingly high-rise inner city due to their comparatively small capacity and low elevation. Redevelopment proposals for the reservoirs during the 1980s included converting the area into an art gallery, bus exchange, restaurant, and theatre in the round.
In 2014, after two years of negotiations with the Brisbane City Council, the Brisbane based Underground Opera Company completed a $150 000 temporary fit-out to allow the staging of a series of opera performances within the space. The service reservoirs continue to serve as a visual reminder of the vital importance of a reliable, accessible, and clean water supply, as well as the technical advancements in the early development of Brisbane and Queensland.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Poids en ordre de marche : 46 500 - 48 900kg
Travaux de création d'une zone verte entre le projet de la Cité du Soleil et l'autoroute A3 à Bettembourg.
Pays : Luxembourg 🇱🇺
Ville : Bettembourg (L-3452)
Adresse : route de Mondorf
Construction : 2024 → 2025
Still on the eastern side of the Aqueduct, and in this case facing southwestward.
From this perspective, the structure appears much less massive than in the first two images of the series. Indeed, it seems open, airy, and almost fragile enough to be tipped over in a strong wind. This is largely due to the fact that the arches of the lower arcade are borne on very high and relatively narrow piers. "Delicacy" is not a word that usually springs to mind when one looks at Roman civil engineering, but it's almost applicable here.
Still, the big blocks of Late Carboniferous Guadarrama Granite have rested in their proper places, without the benefit of mortar, for nineteen centuries. And this section of the bridge, its tallest and heaviest, stands on Segovia's trickiest type of bedrock, Upper Cretaceous sandstone much softer than the gneiss and granite underlying the Aqueduct farther to the southeast. Obviously, the Romans laid their footings here most skillfully.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this series, visit my Architectural Geology of Segovia album.
Poids en ordre de marche : 20 711 kg
Travaux de terrassement de la tranche 3 de ZAC Europôle 2 de la Communauté d'Agglomération Sarreguemines visant à créer 3 plateformes pour un total de 234  915 m².
Pays : France 🇫🇷
Région : Grand Est (Lorraine)
Département : Moselle (57)
Ville : Hambach (57910)
Adresse : ZAC Europôle 2
Construction : Avril 2025 → Novembre 2025
Construction d'un site de maintenance et de remisage dédié à la ligne Nancy - Mirecourt - Vittel - Contrexéville à Mirecourt.
P R É S E N T A T I O N
Construction : 2025 → 2027
Architecte : JFS architectes
Fonction : Transport
Permis de construire : PC 88 304 24 M0012
▻ Délivré le 02/05/2025
A R C H I T E C T U R E
Hauteur : 12,25 m
Surface de plancher : 2 146 m²
Superficie du terrain : 25 253 m²
L O C A L I S A T I O N
Pays : France 🇫🇷
Région : Grand Est (Lorraine)
Département : Vosges (88)
Ville : Mirecourt (88500)
Adresse : 108, avenue Chavanne
My amazing girlfriend graduating with First Class Honours in Civil Engineering from Queens University Belfast.
Construction works in the new tunnel of Munich's city highway system. This is a tunnel crossing below another tunnel in a curve, making it a particular tricky task of civil engineering.
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Creator: Francis Bedford (1816 - 1894)
Date: c. 1880
Format: Albumen print
Collection: National Media Museum Collection
Inventory no: 1990-5037_B1_1428
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For obtaining reproductions of selected images, please visit the Science and Society picture library, which represents the visual collections of the National Media Museum, the Science Museum and the National Railway Museum.
The King (left) and Barry Madlener (right) visited my project today, that does not happen every day!
One of the East Leeds Link Road set.
Construction of this monster viaduct continues apace. Most people in Leeds don't seem to know that this is going on. Some roads are being closed off at the w/ends to allow the girders to be lifted into place.
Very early in the morning is a good time to go down, I saw at least one other snapper there.
One of the largest civil engineering projects in Leeds in recent years, yet it seems to be largely unnoticed.
The curves on this thing are insane.
Taken from the high viewing perch on the eastern side of the Aqueduct. Facing south.
In this image we're looking upstream, so to speak, and toward the water's distant source. The high ground in the back, accessed by the broad set of steps, is the Plaza de Dia Sanz. There a single-arcade Aqueduct makes a 45-degree turn into a swale where it becomes a much more impressive, double arcade structure.
Up there on the hill the Roman architects had the firm bedrock footing of Variscan (Late Palezoic) aplitic granite the same age as the Guadrarrama Granite they used for the Aqueduct itself. But in the low area, where the bridge piers and arches they carry weigh the most, they had to deal with softer, Upper Cretaceous sandstone instead.
As I noted in a previous description of this series, the foundation engineers who tackled that problem clearly knew what they were doing. There they carefully excavated socketlike pits into the substrate to give the piers more secure anchorage.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this series, visit my Architectural Geology of Segovia album.
Scene captured during a day trip to the Waterloopbos in the Netherlands: a look at the Delta Works experimental setup in this open-air civil engineering laboratory now turned into a work of art.
Persistent URL: floridamemory.com/items/show/335104
Local call number: MSC5525
Title: Construction of a hydraulic lock near Lake Okeechobee
Date: ca. 1930
Physical descrip: 1 photoprint - b&w - 6 x 8 in.
Series Title: Manuscript Collection
Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida
500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL, 32399-0250 USA, Contact: 850.245.6700, Archives@dos.myflorida.com
Poids en ordre de marche CE : 5 160 kg
Largeur de travail : 2 500 mm
Profondeur de travail : 500 mm
Construction de l'ensemble immobilier Les Rivages composé de 4 bâtiments pour 98 logements en accession à la propriété et d’une résidence services seniors de 115 logements.
Le projet se situe sur l'ancien site des Entreprises Jules Kronberg (négociant en charbon). Quelques éléments seront conservés comme la cheminée d'une hauteur de 38 mètres ainsi qu’un bâtiment situé sur le bord du boulevard Lobau.
Pays : France 🇫🇷
Région : Grand Est (Lorraine)
Département : Meurthe-et-Moselle (54)
Ville : Nancy (54000)
Quartier : Nancy Sud
Adresse : 45, boulevard Lobau
Fonction : Logements
Construction : 2021 → 2022
► Architecte : Malot & Associés
â–º Gros Å“uvre : WIG France
► PC n° 54 395 19 R0067 délivré le 11/10/2019
Niveaux : R+6
Hauteur : 25.00 m
Surface de plancher : 12 989 m²
Superficie du terrain : 5 610 m²
Sneaky bridge sneaking out from behind the parking deck
Rolling the Second Ave. Bridge into Place
Detroit, MI
This certainly isn't the prettiest photo I or anyone else has ever taken of this building's stunning interior. But it does at least remind me that my visit half a century ago took place at a time when some sort of restoration effort was underway. Hence the scaffolding in the foreground.
Though it was constructed well over a millennnium after the nearby Hagia Sophia, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque owes some of its main design features to it—or at least to Byzantine-church architecture in general. Of course, over the centuries this sort of artistic and engineering cross-fertilization between cultures and religions has proved to be a very heavily traveled two-way street.
One can easily rattle off the correspondences between those two great imperial-city structures. Here, for example, architect Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, a pupil of the great Sinan, utilized pendentives and half-domes supported by massive piers that transmit the weight of the main dome and all else down to the foundation and bedrock below.
Pendentives are curved, triangular sections of a sphere. One is is visible in this shot between two half-domes, at top. Lurking behind the scenes, in the walls and piers, are the main structural materials, brick and locally quarried, Miocene-epoch Bakırköy Limestone.
And speaking of stone: the one stout, upper-level column visible behind the scaffoling looks very much like Proconnesian Marble, quarried on Marmara Island in the sea of the same name since Roman times. The Mosque's mihrab is carved from that stone, and I assume it is also the ornamental rock type used in some of the columns. It may even be the marble of the ribbed sections of the famous elephant-foot piers. But so far I lack documentation for that.
The other geologically derived material on display is the ceramic Ä°znik Tile. More on that in the images that follow!
To see the other photos and descriptions in this series, visit my Architectural Geology of Ottoman Istanbul album.