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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?
...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!
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.
The building design was pretty clearly intended to resemble a MacBook lid, and there's around a 0% chance that it was a coincidence.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
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*
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
There's also 0% chance that Apple just casually designed the building and it was not signed off on by architects, engineers, the city / state building inspectors and planning commissions, and thus met all requirements for handling snow and ice. My guess is the pitch of the roof was such that it did not require snow guards, but in reality it needs them.
Better known as 318230.
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.
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.
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".