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>> My name's Mike Natarus.
I'm the senior project manager for the University of Chicago.
>> So what, what we have here is the actual space
between the slurry wall foundation system and what we call the shaft wall.
The slurry wall is essentially our foundation system
that runs the whole perimeter of the project.
Slurry wall construction is a type of process that is used to excavate
and place concrete foundation walls without the use of sheeting
which is a traditional form of forming.
So basically, the earth itself becomes the foundation for the concrete.
So in the process of digging out for a slurry wall, we have a 30 inch bucket
that dug all the way around the perimeter and as we're digging out to prevent the earth
from caving in on the back side, we're pumping in a liquid bentonite material.
It's a slurry mix, and the slurry's made of a elasticity material that allows the hole
to be filled up without the caving in of that hole.
So as we dig all the way down, we reach the bottom of the hole, and we have panels
that are all the way around the perimeter.
We have 26 of these panels.
Each panel is 24 feet wide by 70 feet deep.
And you can kind of see one of the end panels right here where two panes are butting up.
The panels themselves are 3 inches thick and when we get to the bottom you have this whole 26
by 72 panel filled with the slurry material.
At that point we lower the cages of, of steel in place.
And at that point we start to bring up the concrete which, in turn, because of the density
and weight displaces the slurry material and that slurry material gets sucked
out as the concrete is rising up as it's being poured, and it gets recycled back
to our slurry wall plant to be reused again for the next panel.
Once the, the panels are installed, we put in these end stops to prevent water leakage.
And, so far they're working.
You can see how dry they, how dry it is.
A lot of people are asking how are we gonna keep back moisture.
Well a slurry wall is not a waterproof wall, however,
it is designed to keep the foundation system intact and relatively dry.
But in the event that we do have some seepage, we do have a trench drain down at the bottom
and that will carry the water to 350 gallon per minute sump pumps.
The next process in the slurry wall is, once we get the perimeter all set,
we start the excavation of the hole.
Now as we're digging the excavation, we get down to basically four levels.
We have four levels of what we call tie backs.
The purpose of these tie backs are basically to hold up the wall, and they're grouted in place
and post tension which is to ensure that the anchor will stay in place.
We have approximately 300 of these tie backs.
They are mounted on 45 degree angles.
They are about approximately between45 feet and 65 feet in length
and they all stretch all the way around the perimeter of the project.
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Here we are, and we're actually downstairs at the bottom of the hole and we're currently
in the process of installing the automatic [inaudible] system.
What you see here is we're actually installing the rack for the mini load.
The mini load is gonna be bins that'll have books inside them stacked
on end and they'll be bar coded.
We have two aisles set up here.
In the middle we'll have a rack aisle which will serve for oversized portfolios
such as map atlases and such and then we'll have another two more aisles of mini bin storage
which will again be the densely packed storage as I described earlier.
Each bin will fit within these spaces so it's 18 inches high and 2 by 4.
And then down here you can see the rail in which the crane will be run up and down
to pick the bins and deliver them through the, an opening in the floor
which is being constructed and then in turn be retrieved by the circulation desk attendant
and then in turn given to the patron who would like the book.
At the end of the day, this whole storage system will hold 3.5 million volumes.
To give that a little bit of perspective, Regenstein in its entirety has 4.5,
so we have almost equal to that of Regenstein in a very densely compact area.
To give you a little bit of an idea of how this is actually constructed,
it all comes out in pieces and it's essentially, if you, when you were a little kid,
an erector set and all the pieces and parts are laid out here on the floor
and they have an assembly line here.
And all the pieces and parts that you see here are, are come unassembled
and are all bolted together and we have one line all the way
up that gets erected in place at a time.
So it gets fastened at the bottom and it gets fastened at the top and raised
up by the small crane that we have here.
The crane actually takes these pieces again and sets them into place,
and then the iron workers come in and bolt them to the bottom and bolt them to the top.
But all of these pieces are assembled here on site and bolted.
Now you might be asking how am I gonna get this,
the crane out since I no longer have a hole in the floor.
Believe it or not, we have a opening up on the side over here
and we're gonna disassemble this piece of equipment to take it out.
Now all this equipment has to go out through this hole.
What we have here is one of the cranes that'll be moving up and down these aisle
and these cranes will be able to move up and down on a track and you can kinda get a sense
of how long and tall these racks are really gonna be.
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The first thing with the dome, in terms of construction, is we set the base plates
around the perimeter of the of the, what we call the ring beam
which is the actual elliptical shape around the perimeter.
We have anchor bolts already in place when we pour the concrete
and then the plates get set with the anchor bolts.
Once those plates are set, we begin the installation of the steel tubing which you see
in the background and we start from the, the bottom and work our way up towards the middle.
The tubing came in sections from Germany.
The iron workers spent almost three months assembling these pieces together,
and like the glass, each part is a unique piece and it had to go in its own unique place.
Once the dome structure, or the large steel structure was set, you would see on,
in between each intersection of those tubes are what we call the nodes, which are the supports
for what we call the space framing.
The space framing sits on top of those nodes.
That's what's supporting the glass on top.
You could see the black gaskets around the perimeter.
Those are also sitting on top of the nodes.
The glass sits inside these gaskets, and there are fasteners in on,
two on each side that will secure the glass in place.
>> The glass got manufactured in Germany, got shipped over to the states.
We have 700 unique glass panels so every glass panel has its place.
We can't swap them around.
They're all shaped in a different pattern.
We attach the glass to the vacuum sucker.
The crane then will lift the glass in place.
Our workers will basically know each panel goes in what spot
and they guide the crane into that direction.
So, then we have a crew sitting on the glass.
They are specially trained with a [inaudible] system to work on the glass surface itself
so that they are safe and secure up there.
They will basically guide the panel into place, land it on the gaskets which are attached
to the [inaudible] steel structure and then the glass will basically be placed in position,
will be aligned, will be secured with some point fixtures, and then we release the suction cups,
the vacuum cups and we send the crane away and pick the next glass panel.
>> We don't want to remove the scaffolding too soon so it has
to be completely loaded before the scaffolding comes out.
Much like the [inaudible] in Florence which is supported around the structure of the ring,
it's the same principle here structurally.
Once the dome is fully loaded, the ring beam can now support the structure.
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Now all the scaffold is taken out, the glass is installed and we're
in the process of doing the interior spaces.
The last thing we need to do is finish the,
the sealant on the glass so we're almost done with that.
We need to be done with that before the season is over, but this is essentially the space
that you're gonna get at the end of the day.
Right now we're looking in the reading room space
and the reading room will have wood furniture, wood chairs and a wood floor.
At night you'll have down lights.
They'll be kiosks with lighting as well as heating and cooling control.
You can see the frit.
The frit is gonna keep out 55% of the sun while it's still emitting enough light
without gaining any solar heat, whereas the clear laminated glass is further down.
That is a low e glass that will also keep out the light but not as much as the fritted glass.
And over here we're framing up for the walls for the preservation area.
There will be a ceiling on top of this so that it will be a closed in room
so that the preservation department can do sensitive work
where they don't, where light is not encouraged.
Over here to the north, we're getting set up.
This will be the circulation desk in the middle.
We're also framing out for the openings in the floor which will also be behind the circulation
where the automated book storage will pop up the books in bins through the hole
and the circulation desk attendant can retrieve them from that point.
Here we have the, the bridge connecting Mansueto to Regenstein proper.
And again this is all glass as well.
We'll have a terrazzo floor in here leading right into the reading room space.
And here's what we call the knuckle.
So here we have Regenstein and then here we have Mansueto.
So we have a, right here is the dividing point between old and new and on the other side
of this plywood wall we have the corridor that will lead all the way back
to the Regenstein entrance lobby and then also into special collections.
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