Bob Vincent had a secret. Sitting with his wife, Maureen, in 2015 in a booth at the Space Needle’s former SkyCity restaurant celebrating their shared birthday, he’d just learned his longtime employer Hoffman Construction landed the contract of a lifetime: to renovate the iconic Seattle landmark. And he couldn’t say a word.
“I was thinking how amazing this is going to be afterward and how much of history we were sitting in right now,” Vincent says. “I wanted her to experience that.”
霍夫曼项目经理一生中熟悉其他看似的项目 - 他过去的工作包括西雅图中央图书馆和弗兰克·盖里（Frank Gehry）设计的流行文化博物馆。新利18备用网址但是，太空针翻新将物流带到了一架全新的飞机上，由文森特描述为在瓶子里建造一艘船。
Karen Olson, chief operating and chief marketing officer at the Space Needle Corp., says the concept for the Century Project was to “get out of the way of the view” and transform the disc, set 520 ft in the air, into a jewel box in the sky. The project replaced obstructions with 196% more glass, including floor-to-ceiling glass panels, an outdoor observation level with open-air glass walls and glass benches and an upper observation deck connected by a cantilevered steel and glass Oculus Stairs to The Loupe, the world’s first and only rotating glass floor.
太空针塔仍然对公众开放地g the renovation. Limited workspace, with access via one elevator during day hours, created an enormous logistical challenge.
To avoid the elevator choke point and large crane costs, Vincent enlisted BrandSafway to create a suspended, retractable 135-ft-dia platform connected to the landmark’s upper structure 500 ft above ground, comprised of a 16-ft-wide suspended ring in three sections, each connected with an 8-ft walkway. A weather barrier could withstand 115 mph winds.
Vincent’s next challenge was installing glass panels weighing up to 2,100 lb each. Hoisting each panel took 10 minutes. Due to Seattle’s wind, the panels could’ve become dangerous windmills. Vincent’s team developed motorized fans mounted to a custom spreader bar attached to the glass panels and controlled via remote from the ground to keep the panels from spinning during hoist. On the observation deck, a robot built by Breedt Production Tooling and Design grabbed each panel to maneuver it into place.
Kevin Koester, president of Apex Steel Inc., met Vincent in the 1990s and says his talent is “his ability to think outside the box and not handcuff us to our ideas.” Apex designed a one-of-a-kind gantry crane that was brought up piece by piece via the elevator and assembled by hand on the structure’s deck. “The fact that he is open to ideas, and his collaboration to provide his customers with the product they are looking for—that is the No. 1 thing I respect about Bob.”
BrandSafway的分支机构经理John May在1990年代后期也与文森特会面。梅说：“我对鲍勃的绝对参与感到有些震惊 - 他的头脑清醒和严肃的是项目安全性，这是一个巨大的优先事项。”
文森特说，他最自豪的是，太空针将成为数百万回忆的基础，就像他与妻子共享的记忆一样。
他说：“归根结底，看到每个人，看看他们如何享受体验以及客户如何照顾地标以及他们如何热爱空间……脱颖而出。”
