Same architect, BTW.
It looks like an cartoon anthropomorphized skyscraper puffing out its chest…
Shouldn’t it be a convex design to be able to focus those sun rays so Jaguar-meltingly? Discuss.
/nerdbait
No, concave - like a parabolic dish. Just park your Jag at the focus.
Personally, I think theis building would make an ideal evil headquarters.
I’ll rise to the bait.
A convex lens focuses. A convex mirror would scatter. Concave is correct.
It took 2 years for them to finally give this award? Yeesh.
Also, mandatory Mythbusters Archimedes link
Had similar problems with the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall in LA - some of the polished, reflective concave surfaces were focusing sunlight onto nearby condos at certain times of day, baking the occupants. They ended up having to buff several panels to a matte finish.
The picture above is the convex side of the building, but the other side is concave and it’s that side that melted the Jaguar.
Noticed it’s on Fenchurch Street.
“She was tallish with dark hair which fell in waves around a pale and serious face. Standing still, alone, she seemed almost somber, like a statue to some important but unpopular virtue in a formal garden. She seemed to be looking at something other than what she looked as if she was looking at.”
—Arthur Dent
“Architecture” and “common sense”. They often don’t mix.
Reuters has it wrong - the award is organised by Building Design magazine, commonly referred to in UK architecture circles as simply ‘BD’. The other nominees were pretty staggeringly awful, too.
It totally ruins the London skyline, I can’t look at it without thinking of the cartoonified building characatures seen in Worms levels. Sure, Worms is great, but apart from being hella ugly it may subconciously compel the populus to solve their problems with rocket launchers and holy handgrenades.
Not the London Eye? Not the Shard? Not One Canada Square? Just this one?
Take your pick!
Bear in mind that these are allegedly the good ones:
(I do kinda like Trellick Tower - although Ian Fleming didn’t - note the architect’s name)
You have to wonder why they still let him near the CAD, after multiple instances of “Let’s build a parabolic mirror in a sunny location! Nothing could go wrong! I am genius of architecture!”.
If we let common sense dictate the design the poor architects would be put out of a job by those…dreadfully proletarian…engineers. We can’t have them going and designing buildings, their place is doing whatever tedious stuff with numbers it is that they are always talking about in order to transform my conceptual genius(as modeled without physical or economic constraints in a CAD environment) into a finished product!
Don’t underestimate the power of nepotism. Or perhaps plain stupidity. Sometimes it feels like knowing physics is a contraindication to become a manager.
We the engineers should rise up and hang the “designers” on their own ties. Then rebuild the world into making sense and working.
So that’s the problem with my strategy.
That’s one way to combat global warming… sorta.
