Here's Downtown's Wilshire Grand Slowly Coming Apart

Downtown's mid-century Wilshire Grand hotel is in the slow process of being torn down--floor by floor--to make way for a new skyscraper (the above photo shows work as of this week per the project's Facebook page). For a comparison on how they do these sort of things in Japan, check out this from Skyscraper Page poster ChelseaFC. It shows a tower being demolished from the inside, a quiet, clean, and efficient technique that brings down the interiors of floors and uses jacks to lower the debris toward the ground--from the outside you get the appearance of the building slowly shrinking. Demolishing buildings with explosives like they often do in Vegas doesn't work in dense environments like Tokyo or Downtown LA--the Wilshire Grand sits atop a subway--so the shrinking method could get huge here.

· Japan Presents the Incredible Shrinking Building [YouTube]