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DailyDirt: Dangerous Death-Ray Buildings

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

When architects design a new building or bridge, they really need to think through a lot of little details because these things usually last a long time (and take a long time to build). There are some famous design mistakes like the (original) Tacoma Narrows bridge which serves as a physics lesson for high school kids and a cautionary tale for any engineering/architecture students. Here are a few more potential physics lessons (in optics) involving buildings that demonstrate the real-word effect of “the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.”

• Architect Rafael Vinoly has designed a London building that isn’t quite finished yet, but sunlight reflected off its curved glass panels focuses on the ground and gets hot enough to melt cars. The skyscraper was previously called the “Walkie Talkie” for its overall shape, but now some folks are referring to it as the “fryscaper” after its death ray problem. [url]
• The shiny stainless steel exterior of the Walt Disney Concert Hall created a nice warm glow for residents across the street when the building was new in 2004. The architects had actually tried to take into account the glare of the building, but during construction some panels were placed at a slightly different angle than were in the plans. [url]
• In 2010, the Vdara hotel in Las Vegas featured its own death ray, magnifying the desert sun onto a swimming pool area where guests weren’t pleasantly greeted by temperatures that could cook a steak. This hotel was also designed by architect Rafael Vinoly, so perhaps he should lay off of the parabolic window for a while…. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: architecture, buildings, death ray, design, fryscaper, optics, rafael vinoly, vdara hotel

Pirated Buildings In China And The Rise Of Architectural Mashups

from the cut-and-paste dept

Although China is often glibly dismissed as little more than an imitator of others, yet another story about copying paradoxically shows it leading the way. That’s because what’s being cloned is an entire building complex that’s still under construction:

> The project being pirated is the Wangjing SOHO, a complex of three towers that resemble curved sails, sculpted in stone and etched with wave-like aluminum bands, that appear to swim across the surface of the Earth when viewed from the air. > > Zhang Xin, the billionaire property developer who heads SOHO China and commissioned [the famous architect Zaha] Hadid to design the complex, lashed out against the pirates during the Galaxy opening: “Even as we build one of Zaha’s projects, it is being replicated in Chongqing,” a megacity near the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. At this point in time, she added, the pirates of Chongqing are building faster than SOHO. The original is set for completion in 2014.

As the article in Der Spiegel quoted above notes, this isn’t the first time that buildings have been copied by Chinese architects:

> Last year, citizens of the Austrian hillside hamlet of Hallstatt were shocked when they inadvertently discovered Chinese architects had surreptitiously and extensively photographed their homes and were building a doppelgänger version of the UNESCO World Heritage site in southern China.

But here, as with the latest case, it’s hard to see what the problem is. Nobody is mistaking these pirated versions for the originals: the use of photographs in the case of Hallstatt, and “digital files or renderings” in the case of the Wangjing SOHO, means that the results will only be approximate copies, lacking many key details that make the originals artistically notable. If anything, their existence will encourage visitors to seek out the real thing to find out what inspired this massive effort. After all, if somebody goes to the trouble of constructing copies of entire buildings in this way, they must think pretty highly of the original.

What’s significant here is that this building piracy can be seen as part of a new trend — the rise of a high-speed cut-and-paste approach to urban design based around architectural mashups:

> Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who designed Beijing’s surreal, next-generation CCTV tower, has stated the super-speed expansion of Chinese cities is producing architects who use laptops to quickly cut and paste buildings into existence. Koolhaas, in the book “Mutations,” calls these architects Photoshop designers: “Photoshop allows us to make collages of photographs — (and) this is the essence of (China’s) architectural and urban production…. Design today becomes as easy as Photoshop, even on the scale of a city.”

Fortunately, the architect of the cloned Wangjing SOHO seems to agree:

> Zaha Hadid said she has a philosophical stance on the replication of her designs: If future generations of these cloned buildings display innovative mutations, “that could be quite exciting.”

Not only that: these pirate mutations will boost her already-considerable reputation in China yet further, and enrich her artistic legacy.

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Filed Under: architecture, buildings, china, copies, culture, hallstatt, zhang xin

DailyDirt: Really Tall Buildings in China

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Although China has been historically known for building lengthy walls that last for centuries, the country is now constructing skyscrapers at an incredible pace. It might seem logical that a country with a huge population would need to start building vertically, instead of horizontally, but these huge buildings have some unimpressive occupancy rates so far. Here are just a few interesting links on big buildings in mainland China.

• A 74-story building in China isn’t finished yet, but the locals are already complaining that the huge archway looks unflatteringly like a pair of giant pants. The British-designed skyscraper was supposed to be the largest gate-shaped structure — representing a “Gate to the East”, but Chinese bloggers have nicknamed the building “Giant Underpants” instead of “Arc de Triomphe of the East”. [url]
• Buildings more than 152 meters tall can be considered skyscrapers, and four of the ten tallest buildings are located in China. There are now hundreds of skyscrapers in China, outnumbering those in the US, but there are concerns about how sustainable these towers will be with low occupancy rates and questionable safety and building management. [url]
• The Sky City project is expected to be complete in January 2013, taking the title for the world’s tallest building away from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The more impressive feat, however, is that this building will be fully constructed in just a few months. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: buildings, burj khalifa, china, sky city, skyscrapers

German Photographer Plans To Add Back In Buildings That Opt-Out Of Google Street View

from the proving-the-ridiculousness-of-the-situation dept

We’ve never quite understood the general fears about Google Street View’s photographs, since they’re photographs of public places. However, many still seem somewhat freaked out by it all, and especially in Europe, they’ve continually put new rules and restrictions on Google’s Street View operation. Apparently, in Germany, people can specifically request that Google remove images of certain buildings. Of course, this is silly, and to prove that point, a German photographer is going to go photograph all of those buildings that have been excluded, then upload them to Google’s Picasa image hosting service, link them up to their GPS coordinates, and then “re-connect” them with Google Maps.

He’s basically doing a good job of pointing out how incredibly silly it is to say that you can’t photograph something that’s in public view. Anyone can photograph it, and with today’s technology, those photographs will likely end up online. Pretending that opting out of Google’s Street View protects any sort of privacy is folly, so congrats to Jens Best, for coming up with a simple and effective way of showing that.

Filed Under: buildings, germany, jens best, photography, privacy, street view
Companies: google