Post #696253 by No No on Sun, Oct 13, 2013 8:34 PM

More thoughts....
On my first flight to Tahiti, I was accompanied by George Whisenand, Architect/Civil Engineer for the project. George was uniquely qualified to solve the challenges presented by this project. In the 10 hours we sat side by side, I learned more about Tahara'a than I could have ever hoped to have learned in any other setting. The foundation for my work had been laid....thank you George.
The site for Tahara'a was a difficult one....remote, steep, unforgiving and full of surprises. Added to the physical limitations, were the local building code requirements. The goal was to construct a 12 story, 200 room hotel, the likes of which had never been seen before. The building code required that no building could be any taller than 2/3 the height of the tallest palm tree on the island!! What?? We needed to circumvent this requirement. So George reasoned that if each floor of the hotel was an entity unto itself, both structurally and architecturally, the design would comply with the code. He flipped the hotel upside down, staggered the floors to make them separate structures and cascaded them down the cliff. Floor 12 instantly became floor 1 and the design problem was solved. Compaction testing of the slope confirmed that the weight bearing capacity of the soil would not have held up such a tall building anyway. Many other construction difficulties were overcome including the weight of the concrete and the concrete blocks manufactured on site. Originally, they were way too heavy. We finally found some light volcanic gravels to use....all turned out well.
The next adventure is the saga of the hammer head crane.

[ Edited by: no no 2013-10-14 13:59 ]