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Comment by moron4hire | Hacker News Reader

Seems to me, if you're building a building primarily out of glass, you'd want to study the impact of the glare. There is a hotel in Las Vegas that has a similar problem. How can these building projects get approved, through so many people, and nobody once stops to think about the glare problem?

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It's less of a systemic problem with architects in general, more of a specific issue for one architect in particular: Rafael Viñoly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Vi%C3%B1oly). He designed the Vdara hotel in Vegas that had a concave facade which melted sunloungers; and he's also responsible for the "Walkie Talkie" building in London which we're discussing here. It's almost as if he has a blindspot when it comes to this problem. Maybe he looked at one of his own buildings too long.

No, it is a systemic problem. If a civil engineer routinely designed building that bits fell off and destroyed parked cars, he'd lose his license to practice! Where's the Guild of Architects when you need them?

Shouldn't the building require a review by the engineers after it is designed by the architect ?

Yes, in fact the cladding system will have been designed by specialist facade engineers, so they are probably at least partly to blame for this.

What, you mean like the civil engineer who designed the wobbly bridge? [0] Even though the phenomenon of synchronised footsteps causing large oscillations due to positive feedback is well enough known that there is another bridge in London built over 150 years earlier which has a sign on it saying 'Soldiers marching across this bridge must break step'.

I don't like the 'walkie talkie' and I'm not a fan of gesture architects like Vinoly, Libeskind, Ghery etc. But, there are plenty of other far less obtuse critiques of this kind of architecture than 'GOD you forgot to model the solar rays on the 3rd of September 2013, you IDIOT!!!'.

People do make mistakes, including engineers. And, by the way, the engineer who designed the wobbly bridge is still very highly regarded in the profession.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London

Edit: corrected grammar and moved sentence to clarify.

Making the mistake once is forgivable, but twice? After all the press from his previous parabolic building, you'd think he'd give it a second thought!

Haha, that would be amazingly hilarious if it didn't involve property destruction and waste.

The Frank Gehry-designed Concert Hall in LA had the same problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Concert_Hall#Reflec...). Gehry uses proprietary 3D design software based on Catia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATIA) to design the curved surfaces of his buildings. He's spun that off as a product in its own right (http://www.gehrytechnologies.com).

In Gehry's case, they did an after-the-fact analysis and dulled some of the reflective surfaces (it's quite noticeable, going from shiny to matte). Presumably, given the trend towards more sculptural buildings, analysis of reflections will become standard. It's not hard to do.

I've noticed that architects, at least below median architects, generally ignore the effect of sunlight on their designs. You'd think their profession would have noticed its importance at some point in the last twenty five centuries, but its apparently beneath them to care. This is a huge problem in many office buildings I've worked in.

Lets align the desks so no one can see anything due to the glare in the afternoon (LOL better yet if no blinds/shades for artistic stylistic reasons)

Hmm, putting a big monitor in the conference room? Eh who cares if no one can see it due to the sun.

It would be like mech eng pretending column buckling doesn't exist, or programmers pretending users never make data entry errors.

The days of the Vitruvian virtues have long since passed, friend. It doesn't matter if a building is useful. What matters is that it is a monument to cooperative egocentricity: the architect's and the commissioner's.

"It would be like... programmers pretending users never make data entry errors."

I think I've spotted a problem!

I've noticed that architects, at least below median architects, generally ignore...

It's my experience that most architects, and certainly most "below median" architects, only ever design one building. Everything they design is a variation on the same theme, whether it's a bank or a house or a library (and certainly if it's the ninth house they've designed this year). Their theme might evolve slowly over time, but it's rare to find an architect capable of producing actually-new work based only on the client's wishes and the requirements of construction. This is why you're best off finding an architect whose buildings you like rather than trying desperately to convince any particular architect to change her style.

So, if most feasible designs do not have this light-focusing property, most architects will never run into the problem. However, an uncreative architect who does somehow produce this effect, may be expected to do so repeatedly. Hmmm, that seems to accord with the record here.

Fun fact: this hotel, Vdara, and 20 Fenchurch Street 'fryscraper' were both designed by the same architect, Rafael Viñoly.

As I pointed out in another thread about this story, the basic concept has been around since at least Ancient Greece, so, how stupid do you have to be to construct a giant curved glass structure and not consider that it might burn things?

- Is that a serious question?

- Have you ever been part of a group that made a (complicated) mistake?

You gain nothing by deluding yourself about the intelligence of an imaginary person (there is no "you")

Try being less negative.

Yes, it's a serious question. My point is that this is not a "complicated" mistake. It's a very, very simple mistake. You're building a curved, reflective surface. First question should be, "what happens when the sun hits it?"

Edit: as another commenter pointed out, this isn't even the first time this architect has designed a building that burns things by focusing the sun: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327766

Still think my question is bad? Still think this is a "complicated" mistake?

Why do you think that they didn't think about it? That's pretty silly.

I'm guessing that you haven't built tall buildings before (I certainly haven't) but it seems perfectly plausible to me that precautions were taken (coating/shape/etc.) but for various unexpected reasons they were insufficient.

Smart people make big things and big things can have big mistakes.

It's sad that its so easy for some people to invent unintelligent straw-men to mock in internet comments.

There's simply no room for the scenario you're proposing. The math of curved reflectors is reasonably simple. What kind of "unexpected reasons" could possibly cause this problem?

Maybe this guy did think about it. Maybe he's not stupid? But that's worse for him, because it means he knew what would happen and didn't care.

This is on about the same level as dropping a piano from the top of the building and crushing whatever was below at the time. It's so basic that there's no way to say that it was unforeseeable, so either the person dropping the piano failed to think about gravity, or they didn't care about the damage they did.

Maybe this guy did think about it.

I'm sure the guy _DID_ think about it, as he was the one that architected the "death ray" building in Las Vegas, as pointed out further up the thread

And the crescent-shaped Vdara Hotel and Spa in Las Vegas, designed – astonishingly – by the same architect as the Walkie Talkie, was briefly known as "Death Ray Hotel" when it opened in 2009 after guests complained a 15 sq m area of the pool deck was hot enough to singe their hair and melt plastic.

- http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2013/sep/0...

That's... wow that's a really naive idea of how engineering works. You think that you do a few sin's and cos's and then mistakes just can't happen? That stuff you did in middle-school? I guess civil engineering really needs you.

Why are you referring to a singular "this guy"? I hope you understand that the design an construction of a skyscraper involves more than one person at every step.

I'm not sure why you are floating the conspiracy theory stuff - I really hope that's some kind of straw-man you're trying to pull, because otherwise... seek help.

I never said mistakes can't happen. I said that this mistake is an elementary one that should not have happened. Some mistakes are complex and hard. This mistake was trivial. Doubly trivial in that the guy who made the mistake already did it at least once before.

I am referring to a singular "this guy" because there's an architect, "this guy", who designed the building. He determined the shape. The shape caused the problem. Yes, there's an army of people involved in the details, but the shape was one guy.

What "conspiracy theory stuff" are you talking about?

Most software bugs are, when described to the layman after the fact, pretty elementary, but at least structural engineers usually don't insist the software architect that wrote the initial specs for a project must have been stupid when the version the outsourced dev team releases crashes under certain input parameters.

The software equivalent of this mistake would be spending millions of dollars building software targeting Linux when the customer needs to run it on Windows. It's not "certain input parameters", it's obvious environmental conditions that should have been considered at the outset.

I would really like one of the naysayers in this thread to describe to me exactly how a mistake like this gets reasonably made. I keep getting replies saying that there are good reasons why something like this would happen, but nobody has actually given me one.

There are no confounding factors in this case that invalidate the freshman physics calculation that tells you that this building design will melt things or light them on fire. There is no excuse for not doing said calculations when designing a curved glass building, especially when you already made the mistake on a previous building you designed. And there is no conceivable way you thought you mitigated the problem while actually failing to do so in a reasonable fashion.

As another person with rather more knowledge of architectural design processes pointed out in great detail on this page, the group that designs the facade is not the same as the group that models its behaviour under certain conditions, which is not the same as the group that makes the final decision on the tinting of glass panels, which is not the group that erects it to surprisingly imprecise tolerances.

We're not talking about something obvious like Linux vs Windows. We're talking about something which is superficially obvious like integers can exceed X digits ...where the actual integers are the product of a decidely non-obvious set of calculations intended to generate low values but affected by code several specialist teams have commit privileges to.

We're talking about a very slight degree of concavity on part of a large facade focuses the sun's rays for two hours a day, two weeks a year provided the surface material is sufficiently reflective and London has less than its median 68% cloud cover for September. And we're also talking about a building that isn't finished yet: here's an architect's rendering of the offending facade that appears to have ridges the current sheer shiny wall doesn't http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&safe=off&client=firefox-...

It's not like either glass facades with some degree of concavity are unusual or being singed by them is common. Unlike database errors those stupid developers keep coming up with.

n.b I don't even like the building; it's fugly from where I'm sitting. I'm going sunbathing there tomorrow though.

Except it's not "non-obvious" at all, but highly obvious.

The people who designed the facade are not the same group that models the behavior under certain conditions? Well, that's apparently stupid, and somebody in the first group should have said, hey, where does this thing focus sunlight?

At some point, somebody drew a giant curved reflective surface and failed to consider what it would do to the sunlight. That is dumb. I don't see any way around that.

Sigh. There is not one architect that designed the building (even if one gets his name on for publicity reasons - there is a team.) The architect is also only one part of the process - I sure hope you know that they don't actually implement their designs.

The "conspiracy theory stuff" is the "But that's worse for him, because it means he knew what would happen and didn't care." part. That was an extremely ignorant comment to make.

I'm happy that you think its a simple mistake, but you don't have the credentials to claim that. Middle school math doesn't cut it.

Do you have the credentials, or are you simply arguing on the same base I am?

What kind of "unexpected reasons" could possibly cause this problem?

Perhaps they did a simulation but there was a bug in the software?

If you read the article on the Las Vegas building, you'll see that they expected some kind of window coating to counteract the problem but found after the fact that it didn't work.

There are 1000 different reasons why the actual outcome might not match up with initial projections. I think it's naive to assume that they didn't think about the problem at all.

Edit: after reading some of the other comments, perhaps I'm the naive one. Interesting thread.

The window coating explanation makes no sense. You test that on individual panes before installing them and see how much light it really absorbs. Either the coating underperformed, in which case they should have caught it, or the coating performed to specification but wasn't specified to block enough light, in which case they should have caught it.

I'd like to know at least one of these "1000 different reasons" why this could happen. Because I can't think of a single one, and nobody else has given me any....

     I'd like to know at least one of these "1000 different reasons" why this could happen. Because I can't think of a single one, and nobody else has given me any....

You would have to ask someone who does this for a living. iOS and Rails developers are not qualified to speculate. Next time you ask "how stupid could they be?" the answer is "smarter than I am, apparently".

On what basis do you make that statement, exactly? Nearly all architects go their entire career without building structures that concentrate the sun into a point hot enough to melt things. This architect has done it twice now. Sounds like he is doing something wrong, not that this is a problem inherent to the field.

It's a sad human trait that thinks they know best and do not heed the lessons already learnt from history, and therefore bound to make the same mistake someone else has already made. Worse still is when is the same mistake you have already made!

The situation is even more amazing than you think. That Las Vegas hotel you mention was designed by the same firm [1][2].

[1] http://www.rvapc.com/works/707-20-fenchurch-street [2] http://www.rvapc.com/works/index/691-vdara-hotel--spa-at-cit...

The hotel in Vegas was built with a special film on the glass to reduce the glare by 70%. So they were obviously studying it/thinking about it. But if 70% is not enough, imagine if they had actually done nothing?

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/vdara-visitor-death-ray-sc...

Inner city solar power plant!

If only there were some technique they could have used to calculate the amount of energy that would get focused with the 70% film in place to see that it was still too much.

Especially if the building is going to be curved!

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