Engineering 

Ceremony for VA Palo Alto Mental Health Facility

ABC 7 news reports on the new $54 million VA Palo Alto Mental Health Facility currently under construction. Degenkolb Principal, Kirk Johnston, is the Project Manager for the new project.

Senator Barbara Boxer attended the VA's ceremony yesterday, as the structure's final steel beam was installed. The need for this 80-bed, 80,000-square-foot psychiatric center is abundantly clear. Everyday, more and more soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan and need help with issues such as post-traumatic stress.

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Community / Degenkolb / Engineering 

Rocketship Unveiling - Out of this World

The sun was blazing on Friday, as a large group of artists, passersby, city officials, and space enthusiasts gathered to celebrate the unveiling of The Raygun Gothic Rocketship at San Francisco's Pier 14. The temporary art installation is the latest in the Black Rock Arts Foundation's (BRAF) Civic Arts Program.

The ceremony was filled with great live music. The Phenomenauts played sci-fi punk/rockabilly tunes and the Space Cowboys DJ collective provided stellar beats. Gastronaut provided the ...


Community / Degenkolb / Engineering 

The Raygun Gothic Rocketship - Ready for Blast Off

The time has finally come for The Raygun Gothic Rocketship to land at San Francisco's Embarcadero! The unveiling of the The Raygun Gothic Rocketship will be tomorrow, Friday, August 6th at 3pm. The iconic, large-scale sculpture will be located at Pier 14 on San Francisco's waterfront until October 2011. The rocketship art installation is the result of the collaboration between the nonprofit organization, The Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) , and artists Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, David Shulman, and their ...


Earthquake 

Engineers for a Sustainable World: Padang reconnaissance

After travelling for 36 hours halfway across the world from San Francisco to Padang, Indonesia, I wearily walked past the collapsed wing of the Hotel Inna Muara and into a make shift hotel lobby where I met Greg Deierlein , 4 recent Stanford alumni, and the rest of the EERI reconnaissance team. This was my first exposure to Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW). All four Stanford alums had participated in ESW’s Seismic Mitigation and Tsunami Evacuation Project in Padang. ...


Community / Degenkolb / Green 

Engineers for a Sustainable World 2010

It all started from the first SEAOC dinner that I attended. Interestingly enough, the SEAOC dinner that night was dedicated to Henry Degenkolb, a great earthquake engineer. I recall Mark Sinclair provided the opening speech to commemorate Henry Degenkolb’s life and related his passion with the topic of the presentation that night, “Mitigating Seismic Hazard in the Developing Countries.” Brian Tucker, the founder of GeoHazards International (GHI) was the presenter. He started by discussing the alarming danger that many ...


Community 

Gently Used Limousine Looking for Good Home

A Lincoln Town Car five-ft stretch limousine named Vegas: how’s that for rolling in style through the muddy by-ways of Bamako?

Born in 1988, Vegas lived her youthful years at the beck and call of various celebrities in the Hollywood area. She then spent some 15 years in Las Vegas, plying the strip as a limo for hire. For most cars, that would have been the end of the road. But not for Vegas: in 2008, an intrepid team from San ...