Huge trippy skyscraper with top floors that appear to hover may be built in San Francisco

[pesco]

Originally published at: Huge trippy skyscraper with top floors that appear to hover may be built in San Francisco | Boing Boing

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[gracchus]

Let me guess: Ronald Hamburger will be chief engineer on the project.

[Brainspore]

@pesco

Of course, the effect mostly depends on keeping that floor completely empty

Looks to me like the effect is simply the result of using an all-glass façade on the 6th floor of from the top which reflects the color of the surrounding sky.

[generic_name]

(source)

[spetrovits]

Looks like two buildings got mixed up in someone’s Revit file. What an ugly edifice.

[felixtannenbaum]

Much like the floating, the idea that any of these will be affordable is a cheap illusion.

[Hank]

Well here’s hoping they sink the piles to bedrock for this building

[DenverLett]

Needs a net around it to catch all the birds when they collide.

[MotoGuzzi]

This would be murder for migratory birds, and should not be allowed.

[MikeR]

Are they planning on building this one vertically?

[da_Bird]

Either mirrors, or if they want to get a little fancier use LCD panels broadcasting a video image taken from the other side of the building. Like a better version of the “invisible car” that Top Gear made a few years back.

[d4l3d]

“Low income” is where the illusion is most pronounced.

[Bfarnn]

[jaded]

@pesco

15% of them will be “very low income.”

I’m reminded of the “poor floors” in Cory Doctorow’s Unauthorized Bread. I won’t be surprised if their access cards will only admit them to a rear entrance doorway, leading to an unfinished “lobby” that serves one elevator car that’s also shared with the rest of the tenants during peak hours.

[tyroney]

I know I’m not optimistic enough to plan to build a building. (assuming I had piles of money sitting around to build buildings with) Maybe making it flashy is supposed to help make it pay off?

[Papasan]

A bargain at any price, if it stays vertical.

[Jesse13927]

@gracchus

Ronald Hamburger

[moortaktheundea]

@pesco

though just 15% of them will be “very low income.”

Low income and very low income are slippery beasts, particularly in a city like SF with severe inequality. In all likelihood they are using HUD guidelines for that cutoff. HUD numbers are based on metro-wide area median incomes. That sounds reasonable at first, but then you look closer. The median per capita income in the city proper is about 56k* per year. The HUD very low income cutoff is 65k for a single person household. That means that the very low income threshold is more than the median individual income. So 15% of units are affordable for a slightly higher than average income.

Edit: Missed that was bad data. The correct number should be 72K. That moves it above the very low income cutoff, but below the low income cutoff.

[fuzzyfungus]

That’s pretty much their entire portfolio. Take some elements(typically aggressively reflective glass plus one other gimmick) that are more or less banal in the context of skyscraper construction; slap together a rectangle out of those; then start perturbing some of the values in the CAD model until your rectangle is less rectangular in a variably coherent way.

To top it all off; have two different projects named “infinity” in your portfolio to demonstrate the depth of your well of ideas.

[Slide]

@jaded

I won’t be surprised if their access cards will only admit them to a rear entrance doorway

The “Poor Door” as Chuck Rhodes Sr calls it.