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Apple's MacBook Air-like Store Roof Wasn't Designed To Handle Snow... in Chicago (9to5mac.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report Apple opened its new flagship retail store in Chicago earlier this year to much acclaim, but as the weather turns from fall to winter, a design oversight is causing some problems. As reported by Chicago blog Spundart, Apple seemingly didn't design the MacBook Air-like roof of the store to account for snow... in Chicago. Apple's newest Chicago store garnered earlier attention for its roof design that mimics a MacBook Air, but one clear oversight is that there are no gutters to catch snow or ice. Furthermore, as the multi-level store sits along the Chicago River, the roof is sloped downward, meaning that anyone standing on the walkway along the river gets hit with falling snow and ice. Further reading: Apple is really bad at design.
Obviously you're holding the building wrong.
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If they really completely forgot about snow and ice they have a much more serious problem.
What about the WEIGHT of the snow and ice on the cantilevered roof with just the glass to support it?
I looked at the picture and couldn't tell how far it was extended out from the central supports but if there's a lot of snow on top that then catches rain and sleet to become a heavy thick blanket of ice, I would imagine there could be some structural issues (if it even flexes a little maybe it would cause the glass to shatter).
Any structural engineers who know this kind of construction and can shed some light on this issue?
They've done OK using that philosophy.
...that intentionally slows down the snow and ice after one year.
The snow falls of the roof just fine, it's not accumulating to the point of a collapse. So the problem isn't the roof.
The problem is people are pedestrianing all wrong.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I was unaware that Apple was an architectural firm.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Build early, build often?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Hey everybody, look at all the crybabies whining about Apple. Never mind that it doesn't actually affect anyone here, and the building design probably isn't Apple's fault. Slashdot readers just want something to whine about and get butthurt about, so the crybabies are out in force.
It looks like the "solution" is a practical one - rope off the area directly under the falling ice. From the picture in TFA, it looks like this means roping off roughly half of the maybe 40 foot wide staircase, which itself is probably not so popular in the snow and ice. I like to laugh at stupidity as much as the next guy, but I'm not feeling it here. They sometimes close certain subway entrances in NYC because of falling ice - I imagine something similar happens in Chicago.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Holy shit, your complete insensitivity to anyone else and your willingness to make excuses for Apple is simply staggering.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
...and one thing that sticks out in memory is in some of their stores, they had opted to build things against code and safety guidelines and just pay the fines as long as it wouldn't shut down the stores.
The company got in trouble regularly because of things like people hurting themselves by walking into glass doors that are hard to see without appropriate markers and whatnot.
They didn't give a fuck.
That's Apple nowadays: all form over function.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I'm going to blame California, not Apple, for this one. I had a relative who worked in the Metropolitan Transit Commission here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. When putting in light rail, they got a consultant from California, who absolutely insisted that all you needed for bus and train shelters was a roof, no walls. That is not a good idea in a Minnesota winter.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Does anyone really think Apple designed the building? They conferred with architectural design firms with their image in mind. The firm they chose should've accounted for snow; the building permit office and inspectors should never have cleared a building with a sub-standard roof for Chicago weather. I hate Apple as much as the next person, but let's stop stroking our dicks over something that's hardly Apple's fault.
Yeah, the worst Dems are in the safest districts, as is true for the GOP. If you don't actually have contested elections, you basically have no responsibility.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Ever see a slate roof with those spikes in the roof over the doorways? That is so the ice/snow doesn't slide down all at once and kill someone. Would be quite an oversight if modern building codes didn't require prevention of this sort of thing. Whoever reviewed and approved of such a roof in Chicago should be fired. Due to safety risk the building should be closed until the problem is mediated.
Just looked at the article and saw the pic of this building, LOL that's just a hilarious design. How do they pass modern insulation requirements with all that glass?
It's holding onto the roof wrong.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
No, like sheets of snow and ice that form on the roof and then slide down the slope when rising temperatures cause some melting, resulting in large chunks of ice and snow pelting passersby at high velocity.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
The space that is roped off is run by the company which owns the plaza. The stairs are slippery from the falling ice and snow, so they roped them off because they don't want to get their asses sued off.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Same logic as with their products. Buy early, buy often...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not laughing at them, I'm laughing with them.
I'm laughing at their customers, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Two-feet thick glass walls?
#DeleteFacebook
i always thought was to discourage pigeons from roosting, and then shitting on people as they walk in (though roughly the same idea?)
The roof works fine, it's the damn snow that's the problem.
Maybe write into the specs that the roof cannot be used to keep snow away. While you're at it, just to be safe, write it for water in general. Or hail. Or anything else that might fall from the sky.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It looks pretty. Maybe an engineering problem.
But it sounds like the roof works fine, and the complaints are it's inconvenient for people who aren't in the Apple store.....
Sounds like another marketing/sales ploy just like their CPU slowing tactic. Don't want to get hit by falling snow/ice? Come inside and buy something!
Whoever reviewed and approved of such a roof in Chicago should be fired. Due to safety risk the building should be closed until the problem is mediated.
It's not really a safety issue in itself that they don't have gutters; more of a convenience for customers not getting caught up in a bit of snow sliding off the roof.
Adding gutters "to divert snow" can increase hazard: as dangerous icicles tend to form under gutters, and the icicles are essentially frozen missiles that can fall with force.
Also, if a huge amount of snow were to slide down at once, there's no way a standard gutter would make that impossible.
My understanding is roping off certain areas is pretty common, so that works as a solution.
I work in Downtown Chicago.
First, we haven't really had snow yet. And by that, I mean we haven't had a good snowfall over 15" in one go, or our 36" annual snowfall, or our 89.7" record snowfall. I thought this would be a story about the roof handling the weight of snow. I'm guessing professionals that know Chicago had that in mind.
Second, snow accumulates on exterior building walls, melts, freezes to ice, and falls off. Pretty much all of Downtown Chicago in winter is orange cones and signs saying "Danger–Falling Ice".
So this is nothing unusual. Well, except it's Apple. That's the only thing that makes the story interesting at all.
Its not a bug, its a feature!
My first thought when Apple announced it was putting a big glass building in Scottsdale, Arizona was "Welp, that idea came from somebody who doesn't live in Scottsdale, Arizona."
Apparently the "architect who is obviously from out of town" problem is not unique to that store.
That's why they are paid well. They should have ensured this issue was addressed in the design somehow.
Inspired by the famed architect I. M. Pei, itâ(TM)s Appleâ(TM)s latest product - the iMpale.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's great and all but I never mentioned gutters. My point was that allowing a possible giant sheet of ice to slide down and kill someone is a safety issue and should be addressed. Possibly with those spikes that retain snow from sliding off in one big sheet.
Just because ropes are common doesn't make it right. Especially since this is a brand new building that in theory should not be allowed to be built with this type of design flaw regarding public safety.
Falling ice is a common issue in the Chicago loop when weather starts to warm and ice on buildings starts to melt and fall off. Just google "chicago killed falling ice" to get an idea of how often this happens.
Many years ago (1990s) I took a guided trip round Chicago and one of the things was a building with that was square or rectangular section with a sloping roof at such an angle that it was a diamond shape.
Maybe this one? https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
The guide said the angle was almost perfectly wrong - just flat enough that snow would build up ... until all of a sudden it wouldn't and there'd be an avalanche.
The solution, IIRC, was auxiliary heaters.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's not about me, genius. This story posting is simply dumb — someone complained about a building — who fucking cares? We need less crap like this.
Please stop letting haters lead the conversation.
At first glance I thought TFA hinted at a failure of the roof under snow load. That would have been something.
Despite the idea of corruption which Chicago is popular for. I expect Apples design was a bit too different for the engineers to really evaluate.
The biggest thing I see is Apple Stores design, is a very California type of design. However up in the Great Lakes area, we need a different style of buildings.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So disabling half of the staircase is okay with you?
When the staircase is 40ft wide, why does it matter if only 20 feet of it are open... that sounds like a design win to me (even if inadvertent).
I mean, have you measured the stairways in your own home or building or asylum?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Really? You don't see how days worth of falling snow and forming ice falling on someone's head at one time might be more dangerous than a light snowfall.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
From the picture in TFA, it looks like this means roping off roughly half of the maybe 40 foot wide staircase, which itself is probably not so popular in the snow and ice.
Are you kidding, or have you just never lived in a cold area before? You still have to use stairways in snow and cold, if the ice is actually a problem you just use the railings as well. Those are typically installed at the edges of the staircase, but with the roped off area you can't use half the railings on those stairs now (in fact that stairway is poorly design, it's wide enough that there should be a railing in the middle as well, but that's probably a separate issue).
From the picture they've also completely blocked off an entire staircase on the other side, which, granted, is a pretty useless staircase unless you're admiring the building, but still demonstrates that the building is *not* well or practically designed (ironically, the fact they have to close that staircase should tell you the building isn't even well-designed to look good, since you'd need that staircase to admire the building properly, and it's entirely roped off). Roping off the area means the snow probably won't actually *kill* anyone, but it's clearly an unintended band-aid solution that only solves the symptoms, not the underlying problem.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Apple's newest Chicago store garnered earlier attention for its roof design that mimics a MacBook Air, but one clear oversight is that there are no gutters to catch snow or ice. Furthermore, as the multi-level store sits along the Chicago River, the roof is sloped downward, meaning that anyone standing on the walkway along the river gets hit with falling snow and ice.
Designed by Apple in California ;-)
Are you kidding, or have you just never lived in a cold area before?
I'm not kidding, and the reason I recognize that area as being relatively unpopular and the loss of half the stairway as insignificant is because I've lived only in cold areas.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So disabling half of the staircase is okay with you?
Well, yeah. Why wouldn't it be?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I expect Apples design was a bit too different for the engineers to really evaluate.
What is hard to evaluate about flat, slick, unobstructed?
You do not understand the permitting process.
The stamps of the licensed architects & engineers are a surrogate for actually understanding and vetting the design. The plan reviewers and inspectors only look for specific code issues. Actually, it would be an impossible burden for them to thoroughly review all aspects of every building design, unless you had more inspectors and plan reviewers that you have architects & engineers submitting plans, and required mountains of additional paperwork from the architects & engineers.
The new Apple design meme
Beautiful Slippery Brittle
Exactly what you want in your cell phone
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
That stairway leads to the water taxi and tour boats that aren't even in service during the winter.
Looking at the photo, it sure looks like an oversight on snow and ice given the apparent certainty of sheets of it falling off at some point. Other posters have remarked that for Chicago, cordoning off sections of the sidewalk around certain buildings is no unusual for winter. It's apparently standard practice there to deal with snow and ice.
But what about rain? There are apparently no gutters or diversions for rain, either. We don't get to see the main entrance to understand if the architects had made allowances to walk in and out of the building safely with regard to falling snow or ice, but what about rain? Does the entire roof drain off the edges to form standing sheets of cascading water during even light rainfall? It would be an embarrassing design defect if your customers were nearly guaranteed to be pelted with precipitation during inclement weather both on entry and exit of the structure.
But for those of us not in Chicago, all we have to go on is one photo, and a blog entry. Perhaps someone who is actually there could help clarify the situation.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Just tired of all types of haters making the world worse for everyone. Why does Slashdot cater to them?
I have to say... I haven't yet seen a single Apple design feature that I actually like. Apple aren't "design". They're "designer". That is, they're all mouth, charge big money, for something basic or impractical or just stupid.
Design is about function just as much as it is about aesthetics and I can't find a single Apple feature, gadget, hardware or accessory that... well, functions better than anything else. Sometimes it's even hard to point out something *satisfactory*. Even the boxes things are packaged in drive me mad (who in their right mind makes a trapezoidal box for a large expensive flat item that only tessellates if you turn half of them upside-down?)
And, yes, I manage hundreds of Apple devices as part of my job (not my choice, I made the disclaimer when I took them over that I thought it was a big mistake of theirs, they realised it themselves within a matter of a year and are now backpedalling and moving AWAY from everything Apple).
Honestly, I can't find a single feature on an Apple device -
software or hardware - that I thought "that's pretty cool" when I first saw it. Nothing. Power buttons are un-feelable and yet on the rear of the devices, the stupid keyboards, the horrible mice, the packaging, the cabling, the layout for phone and tablet screens, no batteries, no expansion capability, everything about them just annoys me.
Even their "design" book where they show off Apple design? It's a white cover with a white spine with white writing on it so you can't read what it is when it's sitting on a bookshelf in normal lighting.
They are "designer", not "design", which means you're paying through the nose for shite, rather than have moments of "wow, look at that, isn't that cool how that pulls out, works, joins to this, has been put together, etc. and still works really well".
Well, good luck designing a roof that doesn't retain snow.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I love to pick on Apple as much as the next guy, but this is really an oversight from the civil engineering firm they hired to design it for them. The owner can have as much input as they want, and tell the architect what they'd like, but ultimately, the engineers are supposed to do a feasibility analysis that takes into account foreseeable conditions. They definitely have to design for snow loads for one, and if you have funny shapes, you should be aware that snow will accumulate differently than on a flat surface, and you should be doing some numerical modelling to try to predict this. It's time consuming, and expensive, but that's part of the reason fancy buildings cost more than cookie-cutter ones.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Probably not the city engineers. It's not their job to catch usability issues, only safety issues, as related to applicable codes. But Apple did NOT design the building themselves. They hired a consulting engineering firm to do it for them. Those guys should have paid attention to it.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
I completely agree. It's whoever Apple hired to designed who are at fault for this.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
The VERY COMPLAINT about Apple's roof is that it doesn't retain the snow, because of no gutters and the way it's sloped.
If Apple was giving away free falling ice before entering the store and then exchanging $300+ iWatches for it, they'll lose a lot of money at that store!