The very public plaza
at North America’s premier music venue, Lincoln Center in New York City,
had a continuing problem with leaking plaza expansion joints. Almost
since its initial construction in 1959, it had been leaking water from
the grand plaza to the underground occupied spaces and parking levels below. Two subsequent
retrofits based on
buried joint systems still failed to remedy the
leaks. The fourth attempt at a fix was planned to be an expensive custom
solution designed exclusively for Lincoln Center involving years of
engineering and a significant manufacturing and installation cost to the
developers. And even then it would be an untested solution hoping to
alleviate the problem.
In 2008 EMSEAL entered the discussion, introduced after recent successes
at other high-profile New York City installations including Yankee
Stadium. After reviewing EMSEAL waterproofing projects in New York and
Washington, DC, the decision was made to install
EMSEAL’s MIGUTAN system. With a
30-year track record and tens of
thousands of feet installed and functioning, the
MIGUTAN expansion joint system has proven to be well suited for
applications, particularly over occupied space, where the totally
watertight integration of expansion joint and deck membrane are a
fundamental requirement of
split-slab or
sandwich-slab construction as found on this
plaza deck.
MIGUTAN's unique design incorporates side membranes which
integrate with the deck waterproofing system to form a
continuous, completely watertight system. After installation the final
view for pedestrians is that of a
simple pair of closely aligned stainless steel capping strips straddling a thermoplastic rubber gland.
Technical personnel
at EMSEAL created
CAD details and manufacturing plans to adequately address the
hundreds of feet of plaza expansion joint to be installed in this
retrofit application. They paid particular attention to maintaining
continuity of seal
through the transitions at
direction changes around columns as well as at deck to wall conditions
and terminations.
The result today is a watertight solution at Lincoln Center’s
famed plaza. Exposed to severe water, snow and the temperature ranges
found in the northeast United States, as well as hundreds of thousands
of visitors and accompanying foot traffic each year, EMSEAL’s
MIGUTAN
system is keeping water from leaking through the deck.
Avery Hall, the
Metropolitan Opera House, the NY State Theater and the Julliard School
of Music finally have a watertight public plaza deck worthy of the
Lincoln Center’s great fame.
Who else is
using EMSEAL plaza and split-slab expansion joints?
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