Showing posts from category: architecture
A rendering of architect James Corner’s winning design for the South Park
The verdict is in: after launching a design competition in July for London’s forthcoming 50-acre Olympic Park, the Olympic Park Legacy Company has announced James Corner Field Operations and erect architecture as the winners.
James Corner, the New York-based landscape architect, put himself on the map after designing the celebrated and oft-copied High Line park. His other notable work is Freshkills Park, the former Staten Island landfill the borough will, with Corner’s help over the next 30 years, reclaim as a recreation area that will be twice the size of Central Park. He’s bringing his landscaping expertise to the Olympic Park’s south end between the Olympic Stadium, the Aquatics Centre, and the park’s centerpiece, the Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond-designed ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture, a mammoth work of red, twisting tubular steel. He’ll be planting a hedge labyrinth (exciting!), event lawn, and outdoor theater along a tree-lined promenade.
While the south end’s focus will be on commercial use — festivals, food stalls, and the like — the north end will be more wildlife oriented. erect architecture, a younger emerging London team, has been tapped for its track record of whimsical playspaces, primary schools, and youth centers to create a community hub in the park’s north end, complete with a nature-themed playground for climbing trees and building dens.
Construction off the banks of the River Lea also include the VeloPark, which comprises a one-mile road circuit for cyclists flanked by wetlands, as well as miles of mountain bike trails surrounding the Velodrome. The entire operations of the park are slated to be renamed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in 2013 with the expectations that it will remain a major tourist attraction long after the Olympics are over.
To see renderings of the future Olympic Park, click the slideshow.
Source: ARTINFO
The unveiling of pictures of planned luxury residential towers scheduled to be built in Seoul, South Korea, has sparked instant controversy. The reason is obvious. The towers, which include a so-called “cloud” feature connecting them around the 27th floors, clearly resemble the World Trade Towers in the process of collapsing following the 9/11 attacks.
The designers of the towers, Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, have responded to the controversy by quickly publishing an apology in English. “It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks,” the designers insist, “nor did we see the resemblance during the design process.”
They did not see the resemblance during the design process? The problem with this assertion – apart from its inherent implausibility – is that they have admitted the contrary in Dutch. Thus Jan Knikker of MVRDV told the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, “I have to admit that we also thought of the 9/11 attacks.”
Moreover, given the context, the MVRDV architects could hardly have not thought of the 9/11 attacks. The residential towers, after all, are supposed to be built at the entrance to the so-called Yongsan Dream Hub: a complex of business towers that has been designed by none other than Daniel Libeskind, the designer of the original “master plan” for the reconstruction of Ground Zero. Indeed, as the below image from Studio Daniel Libeskind makes clear, Libeskind’s Yongsan Dreamhub “master plan” closely resembles his original “master plan” for lower Manhattan.
Source: The Weekly Standard
Residential towers by name-brand designers are outperforming others, even in a weak real estate market.
A decade after a bumper crop of residential buildings designed by internationally renowned “starchitects” began rising around the city, the early results are in.
As predicted, such residences were indeed pricier to put up. But especially in Manhattan, the supply of people willing to pay more to live in architecturally celebrated environs seems to be more than adequate.
The biggest surprise, however, may be the degree of flexibility shown at times by such celebrity architects as Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel and Robert A.M. Stern. Some have gone so far as to lower the ceilings of their creations and even change facings to meet fast-changing economic conditions and New Yorkers’ (especially rich New Yorkers’) less-adventurous architectural tastes.
“These architects are great both at helping developers resolve whatever issues come up and creating notable designs for buildings that can command high prices,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of Columbia University’s Center for Urban Real Estate.
Such compromises come in the context of cost expectations that are raised from the outset. For openers, starchitects can command fees up to twice those of their mortal brethren. Such buildings can also be more expensive to build. Everything from higher-than-standard-quality materials and mechanical systems added as much as 15% to the cost of constructing the 96-unit condo known as On Prospect Park in Brooklyn, according to Louis Greco, a principal with SDS Procida, the developer that tapped Mr. Meier for the job.
Despite all that, buildings constructed before the real estate crash were “incredibly effective,” selling quickly and at steep premiums compared with plain-vanilla projects, according to James Lansill, a senior managing director at brokerage Corcoran Sunshine. Even today, they still outperform the market.
A 2002 takeoff
The starchitect phenomenon started in earnest in 2002 with the completion of 173 and 176 Perry Street, a pair of sleek, 15-story glass boxes in the West Village on the Hudson River designed by Mr. Meier. They were followed in 2007 by such notables as Mr. Nouvel’s 40 Mercer, a 13-story glass palace built by Hines, and Robert A.M. Stern’s wildly successful 15 Central Park West, designed for developers Arthur and William Zeckendorf. The latter features two limestone towers inspired by the Art Deco architecture of their neighbors—and has racked up several of the city’s highest-priced sales in recent years.
But not all starchitect projects took off. In TriBeCa, developer Sleepy Hudson paid out $36.6 million for 5 Franklin Place and promptly hired Dutch architect Ben van Berkel to produce an ambitious design. The 20-story project died, however, when the recession hit.
With the economy still soft and construction financing continuing to be hard to find, the current crop of starchitect buildings in the works is small. There’s Extell Development’s 1,003-foot-tall apartment tower and hotel on West 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, designed by French architect Christian de Portzamparc. Mr. Nouvel’s controversial 75-story tower next to the Museum of Modern Art from developer Hines is also under way.
Having proven themselves so well and so widely, starchitect-designed residences look like they will be around a long time in New York.
“When building picks up, there’s going to be a greater sensitivity to higher-quality work,” said Mr. Meier.
Others agree that there may now be no turning back.
“It may not be optional,” said Stephen Kliegerman, president of Terra Development Marketing, which provides sales and marketing to developers, including many builders of luxury buildings. “Buyers are going to expect a certain level of design and, to obtain the highest price point, you’re going to have to give it to them.”
40 Bond
Location: 40 Bond St., Manhattan Architect/based: Herzog and de Meuron/Basel, Switzerland Completed: 2007 Number of units/size range in s.f.: 24/1,200 to 2,400 Construction cost per s.f.: $500 Sales price per s.f.: $3,000 Current occupancy: 100% Most striking features: Inspired by neighboring 19th-century cast-iron buildings, it has a shiny façade of thick, richly articulated green-glass, plus high, cast-aluminum faux-“graffiti” gates.
The timing was good for 40 Bond, the first U.S. residential building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the firm behind the Beijing National (Olympic) Stadium, aka the “Bird’s Nest.” It turned a nondescript block in NoHo into “one of the hippest places you could possibly live in New York City,” said James Lansill, a senior managing director at brokerage Corcoran Sunshine, which handles the building.
The property has a daring design and prices to match. They were nearly triple the going rate in the market, according to Ian Schrager, whose company developed the building. He attributes his success in getting those sums to a combination of star power and avant garde design. In June 2008, Mr. Schrager himself bought the 8,500 square-foot triplex penthouse.
“This might be one of the best examples of the power of working with world-class architects and letting them be free to design something radical,” said Mr. Lansill.
8 Spruce Street
Originally Beekman Tower Location: 8 Spruce St., Manhattan Architect/based: Gehry Partners/Los Angeles Completed: 2011 (interiors of upper floors still under construction) Number of units/size range in s.f.: 930 when finished/480 to 550 (studios) to 1,700 (3-beds) Construction cost per s.f.: NA Rent per month: $3,100 to $4,000 (studios), $12,000-$15,000 (3-beds), $45,000 to $60,000 (penthouses) Current occupancy: 530 units of the 620 completed Most striking features: Undulating stainless-steel façade resembles the folds in a large piece of cloth. The many bay windows create numerous interior configurations, with more than 300 unique floor plans.
Frank Gehry’s 76-story rental just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, built by Forest City Ratner, has attracted much critical acclaim. And it’s filling up quite nicely, despite studio rents that typically top $3,000, according to Susi Yu, Forest City’s senior vice president, retail development.
In fact, apartments are going at a 15% to 20% premium over the average luxury building rental, according to Clifford Finn, president of new market development at Citi Habitats. At the same time, the $875 million cost ran higher than normal, but not hugely above, according to Ms. Yu.
The building went through a series of twists to get where it is today. Forest City bought the land in 2004, planing to build condos, but switched to rental units two years later. Mr. Gehry then had to lowering ceiling heights and make other changes to lower costs so the building could work as a rental. After the crash, it looked like the project would have to stop at the 38th floor, but Forest City renegotiated union costs and went back to work.
On Prospect Park
Location: 1 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn Architect/based: Richard Meier and Partners/Manhattan Completed: 2009 Number of units/size range in s.f.: 96/962 to 3,500+ Cost of construction per s.f.: $350 Sales price per s.f.: Around $1,000 net, $800 gross Current occupancy: 75% Most striking features: A stark contrast to the neighborhood’s surrounding brownstones and brown-brick buildings, the glass and white metal structure features an ultra-modern design and noteworthy views of the park and plaza.
Pritzker Prize-winner Richard Meier designed the 15-story pristine modern building, carefully taking into account lighting and shadows from the park it overlooks. But when the bottom fell out of the market, On Prospect Park was 60% sold and half of those buyers dropped out, according to Louis Greco, a principal with SDS Procida, the project’s developer.
SDS halted construction, re-examined prices and re-opened for business in the spring. Now, prices are at about 90% of their original level and Mr. Greco hopes to have the building’s 96 apartments completely sold in a year.
While about half of the residents are from Brooklyn, the rest are from around the world, according to Cheryl Nielsen-Saaf, senior vice president and associate broker at the Corcoran Group. “To a great extent, that’s because of the architect,” she said. “He widened the market and broadened the net.”
Superior Ink
Condominiums and Townhouses Location: 400 West 12th St., Manhattan Architect/based: Robert A.M. Stern Architects/Manhattan Completed: 2009 Number of units/size range in s.f.: 68 plus 7 townhouses/800 to 3,200 (apartments), 3,800 to 4,750 (townhouses) Construction cost per s.f.: $500+ gross Sales price per sq. foot: $3,000 net Current occupancy: 100% in tower, 5 of 7 townhouses sold Most striking features: Red-brick facing is designed to fit in with the surrounding West Village neighborhood and exploit Hudson River views. The townhouses hark back to residences of 100 years ago.
Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, designed this building after local preservationists objected to the original plan for a 270-foot modern glass tower. In an effort to retain the feel of the site, which housed an ink factory built in the early 20th century, Mr. Stern created a 17-story red brick building with 68 condos and a row of seven townhouses with private garages.
Its cost per square foot of construction made the project “one of the most expensive buildings we’ve built,” said Bruce A. Beal Jr., an executive vice president of Related Companies, Superior Ink’s developer. On the other hand, sales for tower units, which started well before construction was completed in 2007, “exceeded our expectations,” he said.
Interest is still high. One buyer who bought an apartment for $25 million in 2009, resold it a year later for $31.5 million, which worked out to a whopping $4,983 per square foot.
Source: Crain’s New York Business
With an expansion into a New York office, FREE continues its evolutionary approach to contextual design.
Fernando Romero Enterprise (FREE) grew out of the architect’s Mexico-based Laboratory of Architecture (LAR) founded in 1999. Then last December FREE opened a second location in New York. “It’s a significant shift,” said practice director Armando Ramos, alluding to the firm’s increasingly multi-disciplinary approach to design as well as its U.S. presence. Romero, whose early career resume reads like a Who’s Who of architecture figures—Enrique Morales and Rem Koolhaas among them—has had a string of successes since starting his own practice in Mexico.
His interest in research and architecture act as a mirror for social, political and cultural currents, often informing books that feed into building projects. Although the concept building, a bridge-like museum with access from American soil and Mexican, stemming from his 2007 book, Hyperborders, never materialised in the Americas for complex political and land ownership reasons, it has manifested itself in a project in China that straddles a lake in a park.
The focus on context has remained a thread throughout other work. Indeed, rather than being tethered to an explicit ideology and signature style, FREE’s work is fluid with each building specific to its setting and circumstance. “It’s evolutionary and ideas are recycled,” said Sergio Rebelo director of design in the New York office. There may be no formal language, but the firm’s work is not directionless. The recently opened Museo Soumaya and Plaza Mariana in Mexico City, the plans for a network of hotel rooms in Brazil, and a masterplan for a cultural retreat in South Mexico are testament to this diversity. “I think for good or for bad we don’t have a dependency on a specific style,” said Romero. According to FREE director Armando Ramos, the firm’s dynamism derives in part from Romero’s experience working with European firms, including Alvaro Siza in Portugal and Jean Nouvel in Paris.
The office has not announced any U.S. projects yet, but there are allusions to a planned tower, and Romero is preparing an exhibition next year to showcase these plans along with the firm’s existing work to its new audience. Unlike FREE’s Mexico office that neighbors the Luis Barragán house, where Romero once put on an exhibition of interventions with the likes of Gilbert and George among others, the New York office nestles underneath the High Line in Chelsea, opposite Pace Gallery. Here, on the border of the area’s new, ongoing, and prospective developments along the Hudson, it’s a fitting location for a firm keen to make its mark in uncharted waters.
Continue reading at The Architects Newspaper
HOK has been selected to design Porsche Cars North America’s new headquarters in Atlanta, following an intense design competition. This innovative development includes a contemporary workplace, a Technical Service and Training Center, and a Customer and Driver Experience Center with an integrated road handling track. The nearly 200,000-square-foot complex will accommodate up to 400 employees under one roof on a high-profile, 26-acre Aerotropolis site near the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The headquarters will provide Porsche a strong foundation for continued growth in its largest market worldwide.
“Our vision for our new U.S. corporate home is to create a bold and energizing environment where the physical elements are as memorable and moving as the Porsche driving and ownership experience,” said Detlev von Platen, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America. “HOK has perfectly interpreted this vision into a dynamic design that is as emotionally charged as Porsche automobiles.”
“Our design goal was to capture the essence of the Porsche brand and performance,” said Todd Bertsch, director of design at HOK in Atlanta. “We have designed a movement-filled building with the same high-energy feel and performance as Porsche automobiles. By integrating the track into the lower levels of the office building and weaving in subtle motorsport-related cues, we can immerse employees, dealers and customers in the Porsche experience.”
HOK’s design will create a single home for the Porsche North America family by bringing together office, training and driving functions while creating a unified brand experience. An interior “Main Street” and courtyard area showcasing the vehicles will function as the heart of the facility. From this courtyard space, customers and employees will be able to interact while watching the action on the track below.
“We’re delighted to work with a client like Porsche,” said Bertsch. “Its design philosophy and culture are very similar to HOK’s. We each emphasize integrity, simple elegance and high performance. We are approaching the design of Porsche’s North American headquarters much like they approach the design of their automobiles. We want to create a high-performing, low energy consuming building while emphasizing a superior customer experience.”
Reflecting Porsche’s commitment to the environment, HOK is designing a highly sustainable building and targeting a minimum of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification. Energy conservation measures include fine-tuning the building orientation and creating a highly efficient building envelope. The team will explore opportunities for natural ventilation and on-site energy generation and green roofs that reduce the heat island effect and filter rainwater before it returns to Atlanta’s water system.
Employees will enjoy a contemporary light-filled workplace that promotes collaboration and inspires creativity. Central café areas, team rooms and huddle spaces will support Porsche’s cooperative, transparent culture.
HOK’s integrated design services for the project include architecture, interior design, workplace strategy, sustainable design, high-performance building engineering, environmental graphics and landscape architecture.
Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA), based in Atlanta, Ga., is the exclusive U.S. importer of Porsche sports cars, the Cayenne SUV and Panamera sport sedan. Established in 1984, it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Porsche AG, which is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and employs approximately 220 people who provide parts, service, marketing and training for 196 dealers. They, in turn, work to provide Porsche customers with a best-in-class experience that is in keeping with the brand’s 63-year history and leadership in the advancement of vehicle performance, safety and efficiency. At the core of this success is Porsche’s proud racing heritage that boasts some 30,000 motorsport wins to date.
HOK is a global architectural firm that provides planning and design solutions for high performance, sustainable buildings and communities. Through its collaborative network of 25 offices worldwide, the firm delivers design excellence and innovation to clients globally. Founded in 1955, HOK’s expertise includes architecture, engineering, interiors, strategic facility planning, consulting, lighting, graphics, and construction services. In 2011, DesignIntelligence ranked HOK as the No. 1 role model for sustainable and high performance design.
HOK projects include the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia; the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida; King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia; and the New Doha International Airport in Qatar.
Source: PR WEB
Last spring, developer Related Cos. became disenchanted with the design of the first phase of Hudson Yards, the gargantuan project on top of a train storage yard along the Hudson River.
The original design of Hudson Yards had three straight boxy towers.
“I could tell that Stephen wasn’t in love with it,” recalls Jay Cross, who oversees the project for Related, referring to the developer’s chairman, Stephen Ross. “He felt he wanted the buildings to be more dramatic. And we found that the marketplace was looking for bigger buildings.”
That made for a busy summer for Related and its architect William Pedersen, one of the name partners at the firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. The result, which was recently unveiled, is an improvement in terms of the interactions of the buildings if not in the aesthetics of the buildings themselves.
With 26 acres and more than 12 million square feet of potential developable space overtop Hudson Yards competes with the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site as New York’s current, highest-profile development effort. Related has signed a deal with handbag-maker Coach Inc. to move its headquarters into 600,000 square feet in the south tower.
A new rendering shows two jagged towers
Kohn Pedersen’s original first-phase design called for three boxy steel office towers, the shortest one in the middle, along the east side of the site. Each building had the same square-jawed look of consternation: renderings showed stacks of long, plain blocks of steel and concrete arrayed to look like a cubist abstraction, or a screenshot from Tetris, the old block-stacking video-game. In between was to be four stories of retail space centered around a large glass box with a cyclone-shaped structure.
The design wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t the sort of arresting, statement-making architecture that one would expect a next-big-thing type of project. KPF’s early designs for the buildings were like Buckingham Palace bobbies: standing straight and erect, faces constant, but not saying much of anything at all.
The new plan for phase one, recently unveiled, describes a much different composition. The 30-story middle building is gone. New renderings show two jagged towers—the more northerly one 67 stories and sloping diagonally toward the city, the other, 51 stories and angled towards the Hudson—that slash through the skyline. Connecting the two buildings will be eight stories of retail and trading-floor space.
Hudson Yard’s New look Slideshow
The two office towers are disappointing as stand-alone buildings. Like most modern office towers they are brash and arrogant instead of being noble and poised. Their form is shard-like: all harsh angles with a jaggedness that evokes crystals or canyon rock formations.
But the new design helps make up for this in the way the office buildings interact. The mirror-image slopes of the two buildings, which would regard one another differently from nearly every angle of viewing, give viewers the sensation of two dancers in the midst of a paso doble. The southern building, which would house Coach, is, sensibly, the female of the pair —slightly shorter, with the atrium manifested as a slit in the dancer’s ball gown, giving a glimpse of a flash of leg underneath.
Mr. Pedersen talks frequently of the “responsibility of tall buildings” to interact rationally with the urban context around them. The towers, through their interplay, emphasize the presence of a long, open, park space—set to run east-west from the towers to the river—that will go in between them.
“The buildings have to be able to, by their internal biology, create social connections,” Mr. Pedersen says. “Too many buildings around the world have independent, sculptural shapes. The effect here is to connect the building directly to the city.”
This intent is certainly palpable in the design. And if Related eventually ends up landing another signature tenant for the north tower, the plan will be realized, and the two buildings will go ahead and dance their way around the fabric of the city’s newest cluster of statement-making skyscrapers.
Source: WSJ
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KPF, Related Companies, William Pedersen
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The latest twist on designer parking garages: a Jetsonesque elevator that whisks residents to their condos while they are still in the driver’s seat.
Pull over into the designated space. Turn off the engine. And enjoy the oceanfront view as you escalate in a glass elevator that takes you, while you are sitting in your car, to the front door of your apartment.
No, this is not the latest Disney ride.
The $560 million Jetsonesque tower will rise in Sunny Isles Beach as part of a collaboration between Germany-based Porsche Design Group and a local developer, Gil Dezer. It likely will be the world’s first condominium complex with elevators that will take residents directly to their units while they are sitting in their cars.
“You don’t have to leave your car until you are in front of your apartment,” said Juergen Gessler, CEO of Porsche Design Group.
Here is how it will work: After the resident pulls over and switches off the engine, a robotic arm that works much like an automatic plank will scoop up the car and put it into the elevator. Once at the desired floor, the same robotic arm will park the car, leaving the resident nearly in front of his front door. Voila, home!
The glass elevators will give residents and their guests unparalleled views of the city or of the ocean during their high-speed ride, expected to last 45 to 90 seconds.
“What this is really doing is taking two technologies that have existed for centuries and putting them together,” said Gil Dezer, president of Dezer Properties. “It’s taking the robotic arm and it’s putting it in an elevator.”
The building, to named Porsche Design Tower, was approved unanimously Thursday night by the Sunny Isles Beach City Commission. Before the meeting, Mayor Norman S. Edelcup said he had not heard any opposition to the plan.
The cylindrical building will be erected on 2.2 acres of land at 18555 Collins Avenue. The 57-story luxury tower will have 132 units. Smaller units will be allocated two parking spaces and larger ones will have four, with 284 robotic parking spaces in total. There will be three elevators.
Residents will be able to see their cars from their living rooms.
“So people with fancy cars and antiques, they will actually have a really nice view of them,’’ Dezer said.
Units will range from 3,800 to 9,500 square feet and could cost up to $9 million.
The car elevators are the latest twist on Miami Beach’s burgeoning passion for designer parking garages. The highly acclaimed 1111 Lincoln Road designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron opened in 2009; also planned are garages by London architect Zaha Hadid, Mexico’s Enrique Norten and Miami’s own Arquitechonica.
Dezer said his hopes are that many other buildings in the United States and the rest of the world will be constructed following the Porsche Design Tower model.
But this will be the first and last one in South Florida, he said.
“We want to keep this really exclusive and not have this become a McDonald’s kind of style. The tower is going to change the skyline of Miami Beach,” Dezer said. “This is something Floridians should be proud to have in their state.”
Rendering above of the 57-story, $650 million Porsche Design Tower condo planned for Sunny Isle Beach by developer Gil Dezer. The building features glass elevators that whisk drivers with the cars directly to their homes. Courtesy of Porsche Design Group.
Source: Miami Herald
October ABI up 2.5 pts to 49.4
* New projects index up 3 pts to 57.3
* AIA says demand for architects’ services volatile
* New projects index up 3 pts to 57.3
* AIA says demand for architects’ services volatile
A leading indicator of U.S. construction activity rebounded in October, the AIA said on Wednesday.
The architecture billings index rose 2.5 points last month to 49.4, according the American Institute of Architects. Any reading below 50 indicates an overall decrease in demand for design services, a predictor of construction spending nine to 12 months in the future.
A separate index of inquiries for future projects rose 3 points to 57.3. That measure is more often above 50 as clients reach out to multiple architecture firms.
October’s rebound was encouraging, but demand for designs remains volatile, the group said. Conditions in various regions range from improving to poor and are likely to continue that way in coming months, the AIA said.
Conditions are strongest in the U.S. Northeast and weakest in the West.
A depressed construction market has been a headwind for manufacturers of construction machinery and components that make up buildings’ infrastructure, such as electrical, cooling and security systems.
Analysts who cover industrial stocks have called the billings index as important an economic indicator as the monthly industrial data from the Institute for Supply Management.
Most diversified industrial companies get at least some revenue from the nonresidential construction sector, which includes office buildings, retail and warehouse space, and institutional buildings such as schools and hospitals.
Companies exposed to the sector include Honeywell International Inc , Tyco International Ltd , Ingersoll Rand , Eaton Corp , Caterpillar Inc , Deere & Co and Terex Corp .
European companies such as Siemens AG , Schneider Electric SA and lock maker Assa Abloy are also significant players in the sector.
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Architecture has come a long way since 1885, when William Le Baron Jenney built what is widely considered the world’s first skyscraper. His eight-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago was designed with metal columns and beams instead of heavy masonry, leading the way for even taller constructions to come. In January 2010, SOM’s Burj Khalifa smashed the world record for tallest skyscraper in the world. The smooth steel stalagmite towers half a mile above Dubai, with its very tip often obscured by clouds.
These days, the claim of being the tallest building in the world is never held for too long. With skyscrapers going up at seemingly breakneck speeds, one would think that things have changed dramatically since Jenney’s architectural revolution in Chicago, and there is no doubt that they have. But Kate Ascher exposes the inner workings of these modern marvels in her new book The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper, and it turns out that contemporary design solutions are sometimes more primitive than one would think. She sat down with Fresh Air host Terry Gross to answer a few questions, for instance, what happens when you flush a toilet on the top of the tallest building in the world? Click to learn more.
What Ascher immediately assured NPR listeners was that even after digging for dirt on these unbelievable feats of engineering, she feels safe taking the elevator to a triple-digit floor. But she does provide some intriguing food for thought for our next trip to an observation deck. For one, she told Gross that engineers purposefully design buildings to sway back and forth in order to alleviate pressure caused by wind currents. Even more jarring is the fact that there is no precise formula behind the amount of sway in a building but only a maximum fraction of the building that is permitted to sway (one-500th).
An excerpt from The Heights, via NPR.
She also explained how some skyscrapers are designed with large pools of water or some other material stored at the top of the building. These high-altitude tanks, called tuned liquid dampers, work to counter the sway from strong wind currents, functioning under basic laws of physics: when wind comes from one direction, the water will subsequently rush back in the other direction, working to keep the building in place.
As for the toilets thousands of feet in the air, we were told that flushing a toilet from the top of a skyscraper is not too different from flushing a toilet in a house. Water from toilets one or 100 floors above ground run into a septic system usually plugged into the city sewer systems, with the only real difference being the need for sophisticated twists and bends in the plumbing inside tall buildings to prevent waste from accelerating at terrifying speeds.
The most surprising fact was that despite the Burj Khalifa’s sophisticated design, the ultra modern high-rise is plugged into a city that has relatively outdated sewage infrastructure. Ascher remarked that for a number of Dubai’s skyscrapers, wastewater doesn’t deposit directly into the city sewer system. Instead, it gets trucked out to treatment plants and placed on a queue for sometimes up to 24 hours. The same goes for tall buildings in India and presumably other countries. Though Ascher foresees these countries investing in a more comprehensive, interconnected sewage system, right now it’s quite a paradox imagining a half-mile tall building requiring a half-mile long queue of wastewater-carrying trucks.
Source: Architizer Blog
Department store will open 160,000-square-foot behemoth at Bay Plaza Shopping Center. Store will be retailer’s second in the borough.
Attention shoppers: A big new Macy’s is coming to the Bronx. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based department store chain has signed on for 160,000 square feet at the Mall at Bay Plaza, a site under construction at the Bronx’s Bay Plaza Shopping Center. The store, expected to open for business by spring of 2014, will take up three floors and be connected to an existing 150,000-square-foot JC Penney, which is currently open on the ground floor of the center.
The new Macy’s will “deepen our presence in the diverse and densely populated New York marketplace,” said Ron Klein, chief stores officer at Macy’s, in a statement. The 850-unit chain currently has one store in Manhattan, two in Brooklyn, three in Queens and one in the Bronx’s Parkchester section. Mr. Klein noted that the new outpost will sell merchandise tailored to the needs of the Bronx neighborhood. Construction is slated to begin this spring.
Developer Prestige Properties is currently in the process of leasing the remaining 470,000 square feet of the Mall at Bay Plaza, which will include a 1,800-car parking garage. Asking rents for the shopping center range from $100 a square foot to $200 a square foot. Prestige Properties is spending about $270 million to develop the Mall. The new construction is expected to create over 1,700 permanent jobs for the area. As part of the existing Bay Plaza Shopping Center, the Mall will bring the center’s total size to 2 million square feet.
On Wednesday, Macy’s, which recently announced it will be spending $400 million to renovate its existing Herald Square flagship, released third quarter earnings. The store raked in a net income for the quarter of $139 million, versus $10 million in the year-earlier period. Sales totaled around $5.85 billion, a 4% rise from last year. Same-store sales, an important measure of a retailer’s health, were up 2.2% in October.
Source: Crain’s New York Business
