hmm?
Just don’t watch the last two minutes.
The last two minutes seemed more substantial than the first nine minutes, though.
I’ve watched it twice now and still have no idea what the point he is trying to make is supposed to be.
Maybe there isn’t one.
Also, these days hearing someone use the phrase “common sense” sort of makes me twitch.
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Wow. 3816 pipes is huge. (A bit too large for a building this size if you ask me.) Not exactly cathedral league, but easily outclassing your average parish church.
I wonder what disposition it had (baroque, romantic, …) when it was built. Good thing it was rescued and stored (for now). Hopefully it will be reconstructed, and in an adequate building, too.
Fun fact: organs can be superfund sites themselves, or be found at superfund sites, depends on how you look at it. About ten years or so ago I was involved in the cleanup and renovation of a historic building primarily, but not entirely, designed as a concert hall. It had an organ with ~3600 pipes which had been contaminated with asbestos in the 1970ies. I was used to tendering the usual works, but now I had to find an organ builder who was willing to have his crew get additional health & safety training and work in a contaminated area, disassemble and decontaminate all the parts and so on. In the end it all worked out nicely, though.
Buildings… Buildings die when they are abandoned. There’s no other word for it. Depending on the local weather/climate you can let things slide for ~5 years without properly mothballing it and get away with a renovation that is mostly cosmetics and not too much fixing structural elements. And mothballing it properly for 5 to 10 years will cost you almost as much as renovating it right away.
Anything beyond that… is usually deliberate fuckery by the owners to get rid of it. Sometimes it is people wanting to hold on to something they can’t afford to maintain, but more often than not it’s the greedy bastards’ option.
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I always forget about McMansion hell and am very excited when I rediscover it…
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Ah, yes, on Smith Lake. Not quite the Redneck Riviera—that’s Pensacola/Destin/Panama City—but the vibe is similar, but with fresh water and less golf. Here’s a link to the listing:
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The full listing is so unhinged… Jesus, what a house!
[ETA] OMG…WTF… the golf statue and the painting by the desk… just…
OMG… medieval stairway… for no reason…
This is the most unhinged house in history…
And then… the lakehouse…
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I love how half the photos were taken with a drone from very far away.
And this bathroom: “yes! I want the tile to look like you killed a giant albino snake and stretched it over the counters! It will be glorious and cleaning it will drive my domestic staff insane!!!”
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London’s famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale
[…]
There are other, mysterious chambers under the pyramid. Somewhere down there is the “war room”, apparently complete with bunk beds and chemical toilets. No mention of tinned foods. Perhaps that would have been sent down from the Billy Butlin-operated restaurant at the top.
Polley reckoned “war room” was a slightly euphemistic title. The tower was designed to withstand a nuclear blast a mile away, but in the event of hostilities breaking out, it’s difficult to believe that London would have been subject to just one blast, or that the incoming missile would’ve been that accurate. More likely, in his opinion, it was to deal with civil disorder - the original specification included a central locking system that the front desk guards would have hit in the event of the building coming under attack. “Strikes,” as Polley put it.
[…]
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And guess what?
The fire spread so rapidly because the building was covered with highly flammable polyurethane cladding, said Esther Puchades, deputy head of Valencia’s Industrial Engineers Association.
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Soon-ish to be the World’s second longest tunnel:
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Vast majority is on his drag career.
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