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Correcting Killer Architecture
minstrelmike writes In Leeds, England, architects are adding a plethora of baffles and other structures to prevent the channeling of winds from a skyscraper that have pushed baby carriages into the street and caused one pedestrian death by blowing over a truck. Other architectural mistakes listed in the article include death ray buildings that can melt car bumpers and landscape ponds that blind tenants.
Whatever about hipsters I'm certainly no fan of modern glass, concrete and steel spiderweb homogeneity. I mean you could take a building off the streets of just about any modern city and transplant it into another without anyone raising an eyebrow. Even the iconic ones are rarely that interesting, just more elaborate variations on the theme. Go back in time a little and enormous cultural variations can be found in architectural design, producing some marvellous and unique urbanscapes.
Still I suppose, at least it's not brutalism. *shudders*
Maybe they can add on wind turbine to harvest this free energy?
This article reminds me of another English building with a concave mirror in it, that actually melted plastic parts of cars parked on the wrong spot at the wrong time by concentrating sunlight on it. http://geekologie.com/2013/09/...
Why not instead of baffles construct an array of wind turbines to take the energy out the wind? Fix the deadly gales problem and power the building at the same time.
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Well, people keep asking for their flying cars, and now that they got them, thanks to that building in Leeds, they're upset?
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
The architect designed in a solution to the death ray before the 'walkie talkie' was built.
The builders cut costs and didn't add the sunshades, so blame the builders and planning authority.
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RTFA - the architect behind the "Death Ray" building designed in measures to prevent the problem. Idiot cost-cutters removed them during the build.
So.. it has come to this
> If the building had to be torn down then the cost / loss would be so high that developers would never make mistakes like this again
Yes, and if we had the death penalty for theft, there'd be no more mugging!
So.. it has come to this
If you had RTFA you would see that he specifically put sun sheilds in his design. They were "value engineered" out. Which means, as ever, it's the accountants and senior managers that deserve to die.
Sunshields would be a workaround and not a PREVENTION.
Prevention starts at the problem source, which is a curved, reflective surface. Making the curve non-parabolic or pointing the aperture north would have been prevention. But sunshades are rather acknowleding the problem and working around it. (Usually adding more complexity and points of failure, but that's another story)
Yes, sometimes you have to use workarounds, maybe the source of the problem might be the solution to an even bigger problem, or the new problem isn't big enough to warrant fundamental design changes, but still that's not prevention.
bickerdyke
Don't anthropomorphize The Law, otherwise those killer inanimate constructions will rise out of their foundations and smack you silly.
If your building can hurt people because non-architects can take away some nonstructural bolt-ons, then your building has a design fault.
Buildings are often modified as tastes change, if something is as simple to remove as these sun shields proved to be, then it's not unreasonable to assume that in the future, after the building is older and the purpose of the shields long-since forgotten, that someone would restyle the exterior and remove them, creating this problem again.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Go back in time a little and enormous cultural variations can be found in architectural design
Perhaps that says more about the reduction in cultural variances than changes in architectural design. Huge commercial skyscrapers dominate the skyline of globalized commercial centers around the world because globalized commercial centers share the same culture.
Been watching old movies lately?
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I heard a story about another "killer building" near Chicago. (Haven't checked the claims for truth - just repeating it as I heard it.)
Seems there was this nice commercial builing next to O'Hare Airport. Curved walls, lots of lawn, nice walkway up to the door in the middle. Great view through the space over the airport runways.
There was this one spot on the walkway where more than one person was found unconscious or dead of apparent heart failure. There were enough that somebody looked into the coincidences.
Turns out the building's curve was parabolic and it faced a runway. If you happened to be at the focus when a jet taking off crossed the axis, the building concentrated the sound of the engines on you...
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