Walls

Glass walls on Huntsman Hall

Usually walls are seen as barriers – often, barriers that need to be torn down. Sometimes that’s what we need to do in education – tear down comfort zones, tear down broken practices of business, etc., to achieve success.

But sometimes walls can be good. They protect us from the elements. And they can decorate our lives.

Last week, at long last (drumroll please…) the walls started going up on Huntsman Hall. These walls are the glass exterior walls that enclose the building.

It is difficult to see the walls from any of the webcams because the place the glass walls are being installed first is on the inward side of the building – the side facing the Eccles business building – and not on the outside face of the building visible to the public.

It is amazing how quickly the glass walls can be “hung” (I use that word because that is literally how the large glass panes are installed). In just four days, a significant portion of the ground floor, west wing and inward side, are now complete. As the glass wall installation continues over the next few weeks, the look of the building will change dramatically.

The building will really start to look like a building!

Ken Snyder

Up on the Rooftop

The structure for the roof is now up on parts of the building, but today, they actually started installing the roof.

I recognize that it is better to install a roof in a season other than winter. Well, technically it’s still autumn, but as you can see from the photo below, they were removing snow to install the roof. But they’re doing it anyway. It’s going well – with just one hitch. The building contractor and the roofing subcontractor tell me that some of the roofing materials can’t be finally installed until the external temperature is 40 degrees. Let's hope that we get a touch of autumn sometime next week.


However, it is a good time of year to think about people up on the rooftop…

Ken Snyder