Hacker News Reader

Comment by useless_foghorn | Hacker News Reader

The columns: https://atlive-wp.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uplo...

I think it's two of the five columns on the right in this image: https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6352/6dc1/66b7/442f/b...

Note that they are absent from this render: https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6352/6d02/da69/b45e/2...

> located on the ground floor near the former cloakroom, halfway between the street entrance and the stairs and lift leading down to the basement. Three adjacent structural columns have needed to be retained.

Why would the architect want those columns to be there? It makes absolutely no sense.

In architecture, there is this phenomenon where people may have an irrational fear of collapse. Adding (the suggestion of) redundant structural support may take away that fear.

Same reason why the WTC windows were smaller than they needed to be, to give people a sense of security.

You triggered memories of being in the south tower observation deck with my feet a foot and a half from the window and my forehead braced against the glass, staring 1200 feet straight down.

> there is this phenomenon where people may have an irrational fear of collapse.

That's most appropriately a "phobia."

> may take away that fear.

I'm also not aware of any materials that suggest a way to deal with generalized megalophobia is by adding by false lobby columns everywhere you go.

for some reason this makes me think of gauls who purportedly believed that the sky was about to fall on their heads. now i imagine them lining all their roads with tree trunks and large stones, and wait, now i got the purpose of stonehenge. ;-)

On the other hand, this comment reminds me of a project I started working on midway through, in London many years ago, demolishing and rebuilding an operational train station under a 20 storey building.

My first site meeting with the contractors we were standing across the street and looking at the massive new columns they installed on the side street holding the transfer beams for the building above. And I am not saying anything looking, just looking at the structurals and back at the building and counting the columns. Not wanting to make a fool of myself, but there was no way of avoiding it, but there was one more column on the structural drawings than on the building.

So I mentioned it, and the head contractor goes pale and cancels the meeting. The next time I went to site there was an extra column. Redundancy is not just there for phobias and earthquakes.

London Bridge?

Architects' whimsy doesn't always "make sense" from a practical standpoint but often has some kind of reasoning behind it. In this case it's right there in the article - for purely aesthetic reasons, to invoke the sense of entering an underground "crypt" sort of space when the real treasures (the artworks themselves) lie on a floor above. Makes a little more sense when you know what the article doesn't obviously state, that the whole extension uses a lot of pastiche of ancient Egyptian style, Tutankhamen's tomb and all that, and that the street level entrance is lower than the original main entrance of the National Gallery itself.

It's disappointing to see you being downvoted for asking a genuine question. Such silly downvoting is pointless, counterproductive to conversation, and needs to stop.

That first link is spot on. Looking at the third image in the article, they are standing next to the destroyed column, and it is clearly one of the columns you indicated.

https://cdn.sanity.io/images/cxgd3urn/production/0a733d1463e...

Oh wow (having never been to the museum) I was picturing much classier looking columns. Those are terrible and Lord Sainsbury was absolutely correct.

Ha, was looking for this, just read 3 articles about these columns without a picture of the layout. Resorted to a video tour, are you sure it wasn't the larger ones here? https://imgbox.com/nh1Wx8JF

That would make more sense! I was misreading this article: https://architecturetoday.co.uk/learning-from-venturi-scott-...

Thanks for the correction!

which of those are the 'two large columns in the foyer'?

I have no idea, there is a severe lack of graphic context in these articles about a specific architectural detail. In the original article it looks like people are standing by the column the letter was found in.

Yeah it's insane that they have an article about these columns and don't show which ones it is prior to showing the people next to the deconstructed one without any context of where they are located.

No, that's up on the first floor. The "unnecessary columns" were the ones in the foyer on the ground floor.

The guy was right, but as a donor surely someone there could have just instructed the architect not to add them in.

Here on one side of the argument is a rich guy who's giving you millions, and on the other a glorified hired hand who's looking to be expressive or whatever. Money talks, usually, I'm surprised how the architect got away with this one back in the day.

If you hire a world famous architect and then start micromanaging their design they will walk away from the project and publicly tell everyone it’s going to be shit. They don’t want to be associated with something that is not their design; it’s bad for their brand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com