Comment by niftich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by niftich | Hacker News Reader

Las Vegas condo/hotel Vdara, one of the highrises in the City Center development, was designed by the same architect as the Walkie Talkie -- Rafael Viñoly -- and exhibits the same solar convergence phenomenon; affectionately called the 'Vdara Death Ray' [1][2][3].

In a 2013 interview with the Guardian [4], he claims there was not much he could do about the Vdara, as the customer specifically wanted an arc-shaped building; in fact the the City Center development has several sweeping arc forms, like in the neighboring Aria -- but the concavity of the Aria's highrises aren't oriented south to converge the midday sun [5], whereas the Vdara aims them right at the pool deck [2].

For both Vdara and the Walkie Talkie, he claims to have been aware of the phenomenon going into the design but lacked the ability to correctly calculate the impact. Further, if claims are true, for the Walkie Talkie he said: "(...) the original design of the building had featured horizontal sun louvres on its south-facing facade, but these are believed to have been removed during cost-cutting as the project developed." [4]

[1] https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/vdara-visitor-death-ray-s... [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315978/Las-Vegas-ho... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-vdara-death-ray-hotel-is-... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/06/walkie-... [5] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/36.10834/-115.17640

Ha Ha! Welcome to the world of Starchitects. For a building like the Walkie Talkie, Vinõly would have been personally involved only at the very beginning. The question of who is actually responsible for removing the mitigation measures from the 'Walkie Talkie' is likely to be very complicated, depending on the procurement route taken by the client. It is quite likely that a 'Design Build' contract was used for the Walkie Talkie, where the concept architect hands over the design to a construction firm who then employs a completely separate team of architects and engineers to do the detailed construction design. The building is documented in the 'employers requirements' by the concept architects and then this package of information is handed over the contractor to fill out the details. I don't know how Vinõly works, but its possible his firm hands over the employers requirements quite early in the process and the problem solved by the fins wasn't clearly communicated to the design build contractor who then removed them to save money once Vinõly was no longer involved. This would explain why he was so blasé about the known problem with the concave design.

http://www.pannone.com/media-centre/articles/construction-ar...

> The question of who is actually responsible for removing the mitigation measures

Same as the design phase. It is guaranteed that engineers would have foreseen and been able to calculate the heat intensity.

They just didn't have enough influence or ownership of the problem.

>Same as the design phase. It is guaranteed that engineers would have foreseen and been able to calculate the heat intensity.

Not the case. For the walkie talkie it was evaluated and the design (including location and it's orientation) were passed by a consultancy for a bunch of environmental items.

Seemingly that wasn't the case and they spent £13m retrofitting shutters. AFAIK the main contractor went after the consultancy for the money but I can't for the life of me find any references right now.

> lacked the ability to correctly calculate the impact

And didn't bother to get the ability either.

If you design a building that is literally a threat to public safety, and then you design a second building that poses the exact same threat, you should lose all professional licensure. If you do any work in that field again, you should be charged with criminal negligence or something similar.

"The developers have blamed the problem on "the current elevation of the sun in the sky," a position Viñoly seems inclined to share."

Like that was a surprise.

I just googled him. He's super famous. So he probably has that Frank Lloyd Wright thing going for him, where his buildings have glaring flaws but they are let off the hook because their work is so acclaimed.

On the topic of FLW, I've visited a number of his houses. One of my friends growing up lived in a Wright house. I've visited Wright's personal house, Taliesen. In my opinion, Wright is not really an architect.

I consider Wright more of a sculptor or an artist. His designs are terribly impractical, and are not versatile in the least. Additionally, he didn't account for the limitations of the materials he was using to build his structures. So his buildings tend to require a lot of repairs, and many have structural problems, leaks, as well as general safety issues.

Wright wasn't the least bit apologetic about any of these things, and it seems like Viñoly shares the same overwhelming egotism.

On a somewhat hilarious note, when I went to visit Taliesin, there were several rooms which I thought were poorly designed, but had an element that I considered a saving grace. In literally every single instance, it was something his wife had added/altered after his death.

So, point being, I think that when you allow an egotistical architect to design something without any sort of editorial limitation, you probably end up with a worse product overall.

If you're in Silicon Valley, visit the Marin Civic Center, sometimes called the Martian Embassy. That's one of Wright's later projects. It looks vaguely Star Wars. George Lucas, who lives in Marin, got some of his ideas from it.

I'm in Chicago, hence the plethora of Wright buildings I've been able to visit. (Plus I went to school in Wisconsin)

The Marin Civic Center looks super familiar, I guess is probably because I've seen Gattaca 3 or 4 times. I'll definitely check it out if I'm ever in the area.

I'd highly recommend the tours at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and the one at the Johnson and Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine Wisconsin if you ever get the opportunity. The J&J is largely a long marketing pitch for the Johnson family, but the buildings are fascinating. Taliesin is a lot more academic, and I learned a lot on that tour.

Taliesin West is probably more accessible to SV, and I'd assume the tour is quite good.

> On a somewhat hilarious note, when I went to visit Taliesin, there were several rooms which I thought were poorly designed, but had an element that I considered a saving grace. In literally every single instance, it was something his wife had added/altered after his death.

Sounds like Frank Lloyd Wright was the George Lucas of architecture.

That is exactly who I compare him to.

> I just googled him. He's super famous. So he probably has that Frank Lloyd Wright thing going for him, where his buildings have glaring flaws but they are let off the hook because their work is so acclaimed.

Architecture as a discipline has a real problem with this. Far too little attention is given to usability and the prosaic question of how a building turns out in practice; there's far too much back-slapping about "vision".

I remember reading back in 2004 a suggestion that MIT should force its architecture students to study in the building designed for the CS students and let the CS students have the nice architects' building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_and_Maria_Stata_Center vs https://foursquare.com/v/mit-building-7-rogers-building/4ab9... (Amusingly MIT sued Frank Gehry over the building later due to flaws, but it's been settled.)

Yeah, that Stata Center building is such a joke. It makes me mad, and I haven't even set foot in the building. Such a waste of resources and yet another example of what happens when you try to push form over function.

I'd say they've successfully deconstructed what it means to be a building though.

If I remember correctly, my university constructed a new building for the architecture department but it was so impractical they gave it to computer science instead.

My university had a building for the architecture department that was originally designed to be completely covered in vines so as to "hide" the actual architecture of it, to clear the students minds of preconceived notations, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, this was in the late 60s, so the concrete they used turned out to be poisonous to plant life, so no vines ever covered the building, there were some sad scrawny things in a corner, but that's it. And the underlying building was of course really ugly, so, yeah, that was a pretty big fail:

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkitekturskolans_byggnad,_%C3...

That building singlehandedly represents everything that's wrong with the profession that used to be architecture.

Fact: the building was so ugly that it self-ignited.

I did computer science, almost all our lectures and classes were around the gorgeous castle courtyard. We pitied the architecture students... :-)

There's a great BBC TV series (and book) which covers exactly this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0

Same with the Sydney Opera House. The original design had shells flatter to the ground. They were brought more upright for engineering reasons.

I think the result actually looks a lot better.

FWIW, all these points can apply to IT architects :-(

> So his buildings tend to require a lot of repairs, and many have structural problems, leaks, as well as general safety issues.

The Fallingwater House has some (really fancy) cantilever balconies, and even though the contractor building them silently doubled the cross section of the reinforcing steel -- in disagreement with FLW -- they were still too weak.

Fallingwater is aesthetically pleasing but belies FLW's poor understanding of structural engineering of the very materials he liked to use.

It was the client, Edgar J. Kaufmann (1885-1955) and his wife Lillian Sarah Kaufmann (?-1952) who started to second-guess some of Wright's decisions early on to the benefit of the house [1]; when Mr. Kaufmann shared some of his concerns with Wright he took them as a personal attack [2]. Mr. Kaufmann proceeded to hire structural engineers after the construction finished to get a second opinion, and continued to personally measure the deflection of the balcony as the years progressed. In my opinion the house is as much of credit to Kaufmann as it is to FLW, as without his informed skepticism the house would have been more famously remembered as a disaster than as a crowning achievement.

[1] http://old.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20011208lowry1208fnp3.... [2] https://failures.wikispaces.com/Fallingwater

The Kaufmann's had great taste. They commissioned the two greatest (IMO) modern american residences, Falling Water w/Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs w/Richard Neutra.

https://pleasurephoto.wordpress.com/tag/kaufmann-house/

There was a famous incident with the Johnson Wax building, where Wright had designed Some concrete support columns which the building code authority was reluctant to approve, so Wright tested one by loading it up with 60 tons of sand, 5 times the structural load it was required to bear.

http://evstudio.com/johnson-wax-building-concrete-and-glass-...

Coincidentally, 99% invisible has episodes for that too:

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/usonia-1/

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/usonia-the-beautiful/

The difference being that FLW's designs are beautiful while Viñoly designed the walkie talkie. Seriously, I see that monstrosity on a regular basis and it's super awful. Guy should be kicked out of aesthetics club.

The First Rule of Aesthetics Club is that you'll know when you see it.

Not everyone agrees on aesthetics though.

That being said, I find FLW's designs more aesthetically pleasing.

I spent two nights at the Inn at Price Tower:

  http://www.pricetower.org/stay/
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_Tower

They offered two types of rooms: a standard room and a two-story loft. My partner and I stayed in both--the standard the first night to save money, and the loft the second night.

I haven't seen the interior of other Wright buildings, but I _loved_ Price Tower. I'm no architect, and I'm sure there's plenty to criticize, but for something that was first conceived in the 1920s and built in the early 1950s, it's amazing. (I'm not sure how much the final draft was changed, but AFAIU the design is substantially the same as conceived of in the '20s.)

One noteworthy thing about the loft apartment in Price Tower is that it was loaded with electrical outlets. I distinctly remember our docent discussing the quantity and spacing of outlets, and IIRC those were a part of the 1920s design. There was a surfeit of places to plug in our chargers. And the general layout of the loft was very comfortable and pleasing, not to mention the incredible views.

I'd also note that the building seemed to be kept in fairly good condition. Given it's remote location, complex architectural features, meager financial support, and general public disinterest until recently, I doubt it's a complete maintenance nightmare. (AFAIK it's not killing people or setting them afire.) That said, the design clearly pushed the envelope, perhaps even by 1950s standards, so I'm sure it keeps some lucky building maintenance engineers busy and their employer stressed.

his buildings have glaring flaws

One of them being that they tend to be hideous

Shouldn't you already be charged with criminal negligence for the second building?

Naive question, but wouldn't using a hyperbolic arc instead of a parabolic arc completely solve the issue?

Or have windows that don't reflect the sun downwards.

Then you're shooting death rays in the sky, endangering aircraft like a thousand laser pointers.

Inverse square law. Any aircraft close enough to be affected are having a bad problem anyway.

Yeah but that's with respect to the focal point. The focal point could be a good ways up in the air.

And then London architects took care to reproduce this features religiously: http://uk.businessinsider.com/death-ray-skyscraper-is-wreaki...

Actually that building was designed by Viñoly too. He seems to have a personal preference for building death rays.

He seems pretty chill about it: "When it was spotted on a second design iteration, we judged the temperature was going to be about 36 degrees (Celsius). But it's turned out to be more like 72 degrees. They are calling it the 'death ray', because if you go there you might die. It is phenomenal, this thing." [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/06/walkie-...

That's what happens when a city government doesn't protect what to private owners are externalities. The owners of the building couldn't care less, and the architect gets the benefit of free publicity.

From the original article: 'fryscrapers'. I laughed.

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