Topic Title

Has anyone been following the progress of the Grand Canyon Skywalk? It seems like quite an engineering feat. It’s supposed to be completed soon. Is there a grand opening date set yet? I’ve been looking around on the Internet and can’t really find much more than this:

http://www.destinationgrandcanyon.com/skywalk.html

The Glass Bridge Construction of the Skywalk began March of 2004 and is estimated to be completed by early 2006.

Upon completion, the Glass Bridge will be suspended 4,000 feet above the Colorado River on the very edge of the Grand Canyon. On May 2005, the final test was conducted and the structure passed engineering requirements by 400 percent, enabling it to withstand the weight of 71 fully loaded Boeing 747 airplanes (more that 71 million pounds). The bridge will be able to sustain winds in excess of 100 miles per hour from 8 different directions, as well as an 8.0 magnitude earthquake within 50 miles. More than one million pounds of steel will go into the construction of the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

At first glance, I was totally impressed ... especially in looking at the picture that supposedly compares the scale of the bridge to the St. Louis arch, for example. Then when you see that the bridge rendering is shown at NOWHERE NEAR the same scale as the other examples ... and that the architect's web site states that it "juts about 70 feet into the canyon", I was no longer impressed. Gosh, the scale comparison pic shows it "jutting" out about twice the height of the arch ... about 300' tall scale people in the bridge rendering! How deceptive!!!

Here is the architect's site, and another with some numbers on the scale-comparison pic...

http://mrjarchitects.com/MRJArchitects%20canyon%202.htm

http://www.thegreenhead.com/watercooler ... kywalk.php

...Our engineer could have done that!

Still, pretty cool structure.
Count me in (so long as it's a reasonable price for admittance).



-Redd

Sure ... It's quite an interesting structure, and it would be cool to walk out on it to look around.

I guess it's just that the false representation of what is shown visually compared to the actual project kinda ticks me off. ...Just another example of B***S*** in advertising!

While the idea's "cute", the stated engineering specifications make no sense;

500 tons of structural steel? Where?, as the counterweight?
35,500 tons of load? How?, as in "foot-tons"? I loathe "weighs x-times that of a 747" comparisons since it a meaningless concept. Ask the man-on-the-street how much a 747 weighs...

From the illustrations it's either a true-structural cantilever from the rock-face; or a balance beam cantilever like a bascule drawbridge, which is 19th-century Victorian bridge engineering. And the glass floor's been done both in Los Vegas; and in the Toronto Tower at 1400-ft. above street-level.

Aesthetically, it would be greatly improved by slight-arching of the cantilever at the cliff-face. It wouod render the "arch in three-dimensions and add a bit of elegance to the lines. The doorway from the gift-shop straight to the platform makes it emotionally a-kin to a NYC high-rise balcony. If it were me, I would have an open-air platform first, so the visitor would first see the horizon 360-degr., then step-out into the canyon itself. To just open a door and step-out on a glass floor is a harsh transition, and a traffic bottle-neck. A rooftop-terrace would provide an anteroom and a gentler transition. Leave the gift-shop and the trickets "below". And after drawing the sketch, I would have preferred to also taper the lines of the arch horizonatally to provide a more organic-form, and lessen the harsh-angle at the arch's roof at the terrace. PLus a suble-taper would take the inner and outer archs' faces out-of-plane and stengthen them as a unit.

A quick re-sketch; http://tedbnnj.blogspot.com/2005/12/grand-canyon-lookout-critique.html

I agree that it needs some real re-design. Either the rendering is a slapstick job or the thing really lacks any elegance. As for 35,000 tons, that's the displacement of an average WW2 battleship.

Essentially just an extension of the rest of the kitsch of Las Vegas. Fortunately, there is an awful lot of Grand Canyon left over, for the moment, and one can remain well clear of this vandalous excrescence.