Energy efficiency and green improvements to existing buildings have often received less public attention and political play than “sexier” green initiatives such as renewable energy generation with solar panels and windmills or LEED-cert…
With the economy struggling and thousands of unemployed Americans looking high and low for work, you might wonder why anyone should care about something like dryer lint. Fair enough—but here’s why: According to the U.S. Fire A…
Concrete is the most prevalent building material in existence today, though most people probably don’t notice how widely used the material is until it begins to break up in front of their homes, or falls off of their buildings, roads an…
Time was, when you had a big construction or renovation job, you hired a general contractor, and if the job was big enough, that contractor hired subcontractors. But in recent decades, a new player has entered into the process…
Walking on the sidewalks of New York can be tough; you need to maneuver through streams of pedestrians chatting away on their cell phones, many walking right at you from the opposite direction, and you need to be focused on what’s in fr…
There was a time when the buildings being built in New York City were largely constructed of earthy materials—limestone, brownstone, brick, terra cotta—and glass really only figured into their design in the form of windows and skylights…
On almost any given block in New York City, it’s easy to see how things have changed in architecture and construction over the decades. Historic buildings like the New York Public Library or Grand Central Station are noted for their ext…
Doing a major window replacement or repair project in a building that’s home to hundreds of people isn’t easy. There are any number of scheduling and access considerations, and time is obviously of the essence, as it’s impractical and un…
Wayne Bellet, of Manhattan-based exterior maintenance firm Bellet Construction, is getting a dose of his own medicine. At the time of this interview, it’s his own office that’s under construction, he explains over the racket of dueling h…
Local Law 11 inspection is a requirement of the New York City Department of Buildings that every owner of a building higher than six stories must retain an architect or engineer to inspect their façades. Based on this inspection, a repo…