Test Run Bridge gaps Milwaukee Art Museum to O'Donnell Park Bridging a gap. That's something C.D. Smith Construction did well this year - well enough to win the Top 20 pick in the bridges category. The Fond du Lac firm erected a pedestrian bridge linking the O'Donnell Park complex with owner Milwaukee Art Museum. Go to Story
		Permission to come aboard? Absolutely. The $100 million Milwaukee Art Museum expansion - sans the brise soleil fins - is open to the public. All that's left on the job site is landscaping and the completion of a restaurant inside -- and, of course, the brise soleil fins that are part of an elaborate sunshade that will open and close over the museum depending on wind speeds. The delivery of the fins was delayed - they arrived last week via a Russian cargo plane -- because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but they are expected to in place in time for scheduled inaugural events Oct. 12 to 14. Go to Story
		Pedestrian bridge another link in chain Bridge gaps Milwaukee Art Museum to O'Donnell Park Bridging a gap. That's something C.D. Smith Construction did well this year - well enough to win the Top 20 pick in the bridges category. The Fond du Lac firm erected a pedestrian bridge linking the O'Donnell Park complex with owner Milwaukee Art Museum. Go to Story
		Where majesty meets math Museum's delicate beauty can only be realized with precise engineering To begin with, the wings won't blow away. That's usually one of the first concerns that John Kissinger addresses when people find out he's working on the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion. People naturally ask about it because the "wings," the name given to the louvered sunscreen formally known as the brise soleil, has received much of the media attention so far, said Kissinger, a vice president at Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates Inc., which is providing the structural and civil engineering on the project. Go to Story
		Concrete is Beautiful After you see this place, you'll never look at your garage floor the same way again. It looks like glop, but the stuff has soul. Most see a concrete mixer and think "new driveway." Mark Wolf, a project executive for C.G. Schmidt Inc.'s concrete division, envisions the graceful lines of fine architecture. And he says the Calatrava wouldn't have possible without the most common building material around. But the concrete being used to create the 125,000-square-foot addition, and the formwork it requires, is anything but mundane. Go to Story
		Uncharted waters The lakeside lines of The Calatrava had no written plan Like maps of old, where unknown parts of the world were left blank, the design of the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion contained at least one curved section that couldn't be put down on paper. That was at the east end or, as it is called, the "east nose" of the building, where the football-shaped concrete ring beam lies under the glass pavilion, said Jerry Kaminski, the project executive a C.G. Schmidt Inc. Go to Story
		Home-grown talent With so many willing contractors in Wisconsin, why wander? They could have searched the country for contractors to work on the Oz-like Milwaukee Art Museum expansion, but in the end, there was no place like home. With only two exceptions, all the work on the world-class project, likely to become a defining element of the city's skyline, is being done by Milwaukee -- and Wisconsin-based firms, said Chris Smocke, the owner's representative. Go to Story