A crew of constructors currently working on a huge new hotel and office complex in Los Angeles have set a new world record for the largest continuous concrete pour.
A total of 21,200 cubic yards of cement (16,208.6 m³) was used during the pour over the weekend as part of the process of foundation laying for the new Wilshire Grand Center.
The incredible engineering feat took 18 hours, beginning at 4pm on Saturday, with 208 individual trucks delivering concrete from eight production centers. Nineteen separate pumps feeding 13 hoses were used to fill the site with 82 million pounds of concrete.
The final building, situated in the Financial District of downtown L.A. will reach approximately 1,000 feet when complete. The 73-story hotel is being billed as the tallest building west of the Mississippi and is set to open to guests in 2017.
"Everything went about as picture perfectly as they expected,'' said Michael Empric, the Guinness World Records' official adjudicator on the scene.
"It was kind of like a ballet of trucks, moving in and out all night, to get this record done,'' he added.
The $1 billion project is being built by the Korean Hanjin Group, which owns Korean Air Lines. Korean Air chairman Y.H. Cho added that the record-breaking attempt is only the beginning of what he envisions this development achieving.
“This development is more than bricks and mortar,” Cho said. “Today we are setting the foundation for the future and a dramatic new downtown skyline. I look forward to sharing many more milestones with Los Angeles in the coming years.”
The pour beats the previous record of 14,000 m3 (494,400 ft3) of concrete, set (no pun intended), during the laying of foundations for the Federation Tower in Moscow in February 2006.
Chris Martin is the CEO and Chairman of AC Martin Partners and the master architect on the Wilshire Grand. Said Martin: “This project will reshape how people think about luxury and class in Los Angeles.”
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