South Korea Plans Hashtag-Inspired Skyscraper

cylonlover writes "The hashtag or "#" symbol has taken on a lot more use in recent years, especially with the rise of social media tools like Twitter, where it's used to highlight popular topics. So in a way, it's a fitting model for an apartment building designed to act as a self-contained neighborhood, which is exactly the idea behind the Cross # Towers planned for South Korea. Dutch architectural firm, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), is modeling the look of the proposed building after the familiar symbol, by placing two interlocking bridges between two skyscrapers, which will also support outdoor park areas to mimic the sort of spaces you'd normally find on the ground."

Comments

I applied

[commlinx]

But apparently 140 other characters got in before me :/

Re:I applied

[Joce640k]

In other news, a solitary hash symbol is now called a "hashtag"

Re:I applied

[hey!]

You just don't know how architects are indoctrinated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H trained to think.

A building doesn't exist in isolation, it is part of a dialog with its environment, particularly other buildings. The building itself isn't a hash tag -- it's a hash sign; it *converts the buildings around it into hashtags*, thus calling attention to the fact that the implied statements of their architecture *are indeed statements*. This building is a postmodern sigil. Obviously the architect of this thing must be an a**hole. Who does he think he is, reifing the semiotic implicatures of other architects' work?

How long

[SJHillman]

How long before someone hacks it to play a giant game of tic-tac-toe?

Re:How long

[Anonymous Coward]

How long before Microsoft buys adjacent land to build a similarly-sized "C" tower?

"Dutch" as in "Danish"?

[phloe]

BIG are danish... not like the cake (which is a lie anyways)

Re:Wow

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This is the most exquisitely retarded thing I've heard in a long time.

It would utterly fail to surprise me if this 'hashtag inspired' thing is not so much the original plan(Hey guys! Let's substantially reduce the salable volume of the building, while making the engineering more complex and the construction potentially more expensive!) as a creative justification for design choices enforced by some mixture of local zoning requirements concerning density, light-blocking, or other building/city integration variables and the customer's desire to have a particular mixture of interior and windowed space to sell...

You don't generally deviate from building a big box covered in glass just because you are that enthusiastic about twitter or whatnot, you do it because you can't get away with putting up a big box covered in glass. The artistic side of architecture demands that there be an aesthetic 'concept' for the design, to go along with the renders and the scale model display; but it comes down to being an optimization problem in the face of local constraints...

The latest punctuation-inspired architecture

[Comboman]

This is just the latest in a long line of punctuation-inspired architecture:

^ Pyramids

/ Leaning Tower of Pisa

~ Guggenheim Museum

|| World Trade Center

Bad news for neighbors

[GameboyRMH]

All other buildings on the street will be disabled when this is finished...

Re:Wow

[Jeng]

Yep, even mentioned in tfa.

Originally the designers wanted to build just two incredibly tall towers, but height restrictions forced them to get creative. They essentially lopped several floors off of their original specs and reused them as bridges, giving the whole structure a unique look that will stand out among the Seoul skyline.

"hashtag" symbol? Really?

[flimflammer]

Since when is the symbol called "hashtag"?