Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Photo Gallery

Hearst Memorial Mining Building Retrofit 
University of California, Berkeley


Views of the Hearst Mining Building construction site from an altitude of around 300 feet.  (Canon 24-mm, June 2000)


Before going to Europe I found myself on campus one Sunday with a reasonable wind from the west. I thought it would be interesting to take a few central campus shots and wondered if I could stage a kite from the small courtyard between Evans Hall and the Bechtel Engineering Center. From this point I could place a kite over the intriguing seismic retrofit of John Galen Howard's Hearst Mining Building. My first try failed. I could get the Rokkaku to fly but the winds were to variable to loft a camera. I came back the next day and had better luck in winds that were still quite turbulent.

The Hearst Mining Retrofit Project is fascinating. Among other improvements, the designers have specified a complete replacement of the building's foundations and the installation of a base isolation scheme to protect the building from future ground movements. This shot shows the temporary staging that supports the building as the new foundations are built.  (Canon A5 digital camera, June 2000)
And here we have a view of the new foundation on the left and the old on the right (Canon A5 digital camera, June 2000)
After shooting a couple of rolls of the retrofit project I took the prints over to the construction office to share with the project folks. There I lucked into a detailed, and informative, hard-hat tour being conducted for engineering alumni. They graciously allowed me to tag along. 


An aerial view of the building's many flues on the left and hard-hatted tourists entering the building's front entry.  (Canon 24-mm left, May 2000 and Canon A5 digital camera, June 2000)



The Hearst Mining Building, a gift of Phoebe Hearst near the turn of the century, is one of UC Berkeley's major landmark buildings. Mining was once major business in California and one in four Berkeley students were in this major. The Hearst gift, and many that followed it, helped establish the Beaux Arts motif for campus architecture. The seismic project is going to great lengths to protect the building from earthquakes of the future. 

A view of my rooftop terrace launching site toward the left of this photo (Canon 24-mm, May 2000)



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