Engineering Passion

Recent Floods in Pakistan On September 2, 2021, life in Karachi was brought to a standstill by heavy rainfall and urban flooding. Before that, two people in Islamabad lost their lives to urban floods on July 28th. Urban floods, especially during the monsoon season have become somewhat of a regular phenomenon in Pakistan for several years now and the situation is getting worse by the day. Getty Images/AFP/R. Tabassum Causes of Urban Flooding in Pakistan While discussing the causes of urban flooding, the most obvious that comes to mind is climate change. One can hear things like excessive rainfall with a high intensity almost immediately after the floods start unraveling the cities' infrastructure, often from those responsible for the administration of the cities hit by these floods. The issue to be discussed is whether climate change and change in rainfall patterns are the only things responsible for these floods or are there some deeper structural issues in our governance model tha...

One Angel Square One Angel Square is an office building in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is the UK’s first building with BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Impact Assessment) outstanding rating. Construction work on the building began in 2010 and ended in 2013. The total construction cost of the building amounted to £105 million ($156 million). Image by 3DReid Design One Angel Square is a triangular shaped building albeit, one with gently curved walls. The building is specially designed to reduce the carbon footprint as well as the energy consumption. It consists of two underground floors and 14 floors above the ground. Its roof is made by severing the walls beyond the tenth floor to provide a series of stepped terraces in the upper 4 floors. Natural light enters into the building through the glazed windows of the upper terraced floors. This natural light then spreads throughout the building by flooding the full height atrium. This building has a double skinned ...

  Image by: Richard MacLennan (Pinterest) Challenges and Solutions 1.   The Island Construction Burj Al-Arab was to be built on an artificial island over 6ft water, about 280 meter off the coast of Dubai. Building a 9000 tons structure over an artificial island in the sea presented an unprecedented challenge, especially in the harsh weather conditions of Dubai. To make matters worse, the architect wanted the island to be low rising above the sea level to make it look like the building is rising directly from water like a boat. This would expose the structure to the damaging forces of sea waves. Initially, a rock Island was proposed but a rock island had to rise to a considerable height above the sea level to ensure the structure won’t be damaged by the sea waves. Thus, the engineer Mike McNicholas suggested that they use hollow hexagonal concrete blocks on the sides of the island to dissipate the energy of the waves. The problem with that solution was that it had nev...

Burj Al-Arab   Image: Maddie Braswell (Pinterest) With the oil wealth of Dubai fast depleting, The City's ruler, Sheikh Muhammad bin-Rasheed Al-Maktoum envisioned a project to put Dubai on the map of the world as a tourist destination. For this to happen, Dubai needed an iconic hotel that was meant to be a symbol of beauty and luxury. At 321 meters this building is the tallest and arguably the most luxurious hotel in the world.  The Design The Sheikh wanted something so iconic that would make Dubai and essential tourist stop. For that purpose he hired a team of young, inexperienced but known for their unique designs, architects under the leadership of Tom Wright. This team did not disappoint the Sheikh by designing a building so simple and so elegant that it became the center piece of  Dubai's tourism industry. While explaining the design process, Tom Wright said: "If you could draw a building simply, with a few strokes of the pen and it was instantly recognizable as not ...

The Three Gorges Dam The Three Gorges dam is the world's biggest gravity dam, spanning over the Yangtze River in central China. The body of the dam was completed in 2006 while the power plant of the dam was made functional in July 2012. The total installed capacity of the Three Gorges Dam Power Plant is 22500 MW. It holds the world record of producing 112 TWh electricity in a year. By Source file: Le Grand PortageDerivative work: Rehman - File:Three_Gorges_Dam,_Yangtze_River,_China.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11425004 Burj Khalifa Burj Khalifa is a Skyscrapper in Dubai with a total height of 829.8m (2717 ft). Construction work on this megastructure started in 2004 and the exterior was completed by late 2009. The building was opened to the Public in 2010. Initially, the building was named Burj Dubai but was later renamed Burj Khalifa to honor the ruler of UAE, Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. By Donaldytong - commons:File: Burj Khalifa.jpg, originally...