A building weighing seven million pounds currently appears to be floating in mid-air in Provo City, Utah. The huge exterior walls of the century-old temple rest on 40-foot-high stilts, which make the building appear to be as light as a paper mock-up. The building was damaged in a 2010 fire, and it’s now being restored and converted into a Mormon temple by the LDS church.
A historical treasure and city landmark, the Provo Tabernacle was originally constructed from 1883 to 1898 and has since been used as a gathering place for community meetings and cultural events, most notably an annual performance of Handel’s Messiah. After a fire gutted the building in 2010, Church leaders decided to restore the building and convert it into a Mormon temple.
In the course of which, a large area has been excavated around and beneath the temple walls with the church remaining in place on stilts, giving the building an extraordinary appearance, while not actually moving it. To preserve the most important parts of the Provo Tabernacle, which was destroyed in a fire two years ago, engineers gutted the interior of the building and dug down to create space for a two story basement. Workers first stabilized the building shell by removing two of the five rows of brick in the wall and placing steel ties around remaining rows. A concrete wall was then inserted on the inside of the brick to give it more stability and strength. Stilts were ten installed and the crew excavated the soil 40 feet below the tabernacle, clearing room for the large construction site currently in full operation.
Via This is Colossal