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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

I find these 'design concepts' vexing; they consist of renders of impossible or non-existent materials and technologies. Are they intended as some sort of 'science fiction product designs', or do the creators believe that they can will things into being? And why do the concepts get so much press coverage?

I'm sure these renders look great in a portfolio, but as someone who does (a little) industrial design, I find unconstrained designs a bit pointless.

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I think you're missing the point, it's an elaborate joke to draw attention to Iran's difficulties:

> As a way to get around the imposed embargo, mining would have to be done secretly and undercover. Hence, a hybrid type is proposed, a mining farm that is juxtaposed by a vertical water theme park. The water infrastructure hides the hi-tech facility [...]

And that's on a public website. No way they're being serious. I think it's pretty funny;)

A vertical water park with cryptocurrency mining facility as a response to an international embargo seems to be an art project.

I find it funny and endearing- its absurdity seems to be part of the message.

Literally the first line of the article:

> As an entry to the 2019 Evolo Skyscraper Competition, JCPOA Tower was designed to combine cryptocurrency mining with a water park

So it’s a design competition. It would be similar to you asking why teams build autonomous vehicles for the DARPA grand challenges.

It's like if Stanford brought a picture of an L5 self driving car to the DARPA grand challenge.

And it's a self-balancing hydrogen fuel cell unicycle.

> I find these 'design concepts' vexing;

I don't find them any more vexing than anything else that also exists purely in the realm of 3D rendering and visualization software. Do people also find vexing (haha, video game in-joke) the design of the Pyramidion in Destiny 2, or the giant world eating octopus/robot production annihilation machines frozen in place in Horizon Zero Dawn?

It's purely nothing more than a creative opportunity for people to do something cool and fun with 3D CAD software. And perhaps for the Iranians who designed it, to get their personal names ranked higher in google searches and gain some very small degree of recognition in the architectural community.

I find unconstrained designs a bit pointless.

Competition's problem statement is at https://www.e-architect.co.uk/competitions/evolo-2020-skyscr... ... remember architects are not engineers. It's much easier to break than to build. What would you have proposed?

I probably wouldn't bother to enter these sorts of competitions, even if I were an architect, as anything realistic would lose.

I mostly design plastic enclosures, and assemblies for electronic products, and have to keep manufacturability top-of-mind.

The problem statement is the problem - it's way too broad and vague to yield useful results. If the aim is to find a solution to a specific problem (e.g. using less water), that should be the problem statement. If the aim is to find a novel improvement over the "standard" skyscraper, it should start with a reference design and then ask for an improvement subject to some reasonable constraints (e.g. improve one of the listed areas for at most a 10% cost increase).

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