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The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

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Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a living in organized crime. You can make a living polluting the environment. You can make a living defending corruption, helping the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. The problems of the wealthy are as the problems of a tick sucking the lifeblood from a host. Rest assured that extending them empathy and compassion will be a strictly one-sided arrangement when push comes to shove.

I've worked with and lived around both poor and relatively rich people, but I can't say that the rich stand out as lacking empathy or compassion specifically. From my experience I would say the opposite is true, creating "anti network-effects" for many poor people. There seems to be growing resentment of "the rich" recently, but I believe that's misplaced. Things will get worse for "the poor" until the cause is diagn…

I don't know that the rich are above-average in lacking empathy or compassion. Though there does seem to be a correlation between wealth and ruthlessness, which isn't exactly the same thing.

However, when we see bad behavior from the rich, like the Koch brothers, their wealth amplifies the bad behavior and it seems to have an outsized effect upon the world.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#72
post #40

> Initial findings showed that 73 percent of mechanical, electrical and plumbing components observed failed to conform with the developers’ drawings How is that even legal? Let alone technically possible? How does construction of these monsters work? "Yo, Bert, I need some 5x5 high-elastic steel framing for the 72th floor!" "Sorry man, we ran out of that when we 'redesigned' the elevator shaft, how about you take thi…

I am doing a restoration of an old palace in Poland, the biggest issue is often the contractors do not understand the architect’s drawings. The drawings are more for the regulators such as building control than actually for the people working on site. Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible, leaving it to the constructor to actually make it up on the job. Somebody said to me…

I think Alexander's ideas and patterns are very lean processes instead. He see what's the terrain like, what's the use like, builds a bit, and reevaluates along the way. He even explicitly have drawings rendered 'for regulation' but changes it after it's built.

Context: I'm assuming Alexander here refers to Christopher Alexander. He has authored books related to identifying architecture patterns with 'liveness' in them, from the very small to the big scale. I think a lot of his ideas can be applied to software too and even really matches up with Extreme Programming. I recommend reading The Nature of Order for the fundamentals of his ideas and how it fits with the world. I'll refer to him as CA in this comment.

I think it's the overspecialisation of roles and the 'waterfall' aspect of the engineering that normalises this. The architect don't (or can't) verify whether their designs work along the way. CA once described a story where he needs a constant feedback with the soil engineer for the start of the project but his request is denied by the client. The client wants the engineer to start and finish his survey first and then for CA to receive the reports only. CA ended up declining to work with the client due to that. As with Software Engineering/Development, there are questions that only surfaces when we do a part of the building, and can't be predicted. This is why the continuous feedback is important. I'm not sure whether the architect in your case _can_ come back to the site and direct the constructors against the drawings, even if the later directions are more suitable to build.

It's a bit weird that now we're taking missed plans as the default, when the Empire State Building (and NYC skyscrapers of the time) ran ahead of their schedule, with Lean principles by focusing on constraints and workflow instead of planning the minute details: https://chrisgagne.com/1255/mary-poppendiecks-the-tyranny-of...

I'm afraid that a lot of churn in Software Development also comes from a similar overspecialisation, overplanning, and the wrong kind of feedback loops. 30% of costs wasted seems like the better end for software. The difference is that building physical buildings has happened for thousands of years and there is a lot of history to compare with the current day. Software has at most 100 years of history, and currently it's still very much the wild west and every team is trying to stumble upon a process that is sustainable. This doesn't even count that a lot of developers see themselves and the job differently, and the organization also sees the Tech/Engineering team differently.

This comment is more of a rambling than a coherent thought, but I thought I'd get it out there. I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling like the current Software Development process is a mess. There has been good efforts (Extreme Programming and agile, not branded Agile) and current good effort (Basecamp's evangelism of their work process and the Shape Up book) to carve a sane way, but it needs to be the normal practice instead of the contrarian view/practice.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible If the drawings are indeed for regulators, then architects should be sued when they prove to be impossible impossible. Failing that, we should get rid of architects to begin with (if they draw impossible things, what good are they?), and have actual engineers draw something that can actually be built. (Of course, the engineer should r…

Let me compare this to physics. We theoretical physicists will publish an experiment that we think is perfectly feasible. When we show it to the experimentalists, they will laugh and implement a very basic version of it with lots of simplifying assumptions, because that is all that is possible within technology and budgetary constraints. They will write a paper about it. The theoreticians will understand things a lit…

> I don't think this back and forth is what happens between architects and contractors. Contractors are not paid to produce knowledge, and they have no incentive to better conform to regulations. So I expect the convergence between architects and contractors is very slow.

> I don't think the solution is to regulate architects more, but rather to create a system where contracts actively provide feedback, so that processes can be iterated upon.

I really recommend Christopher Alexander's work to you because of these views. He explores how past buildings have managed to be built and how the architect contractor feedback loop can be effective.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#74
post #65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even dry walls can be made virtually sound proof. If you look at the pdf below (it's in German) on page 49, you can see that noise reduction of almost 80dB is possible. This is impressive. For reference, a very simple drywall has a noise reduction of roughly 45dB. https://www.knauf.de/wmv/?id=1112 (link updated, thanks for pointing this out)

> file:///C:/Users/jansan/Downloads/metallstaenderwaende_w11_20_04_ger.pdf I literally just now spent some time explaining to a colleague, why the file "does not open for me". You pasted a path to a local file in your computer.

It happened like this: Clicked on the google search result, file opened in browser, blindly copied the link from address bar. Thanks and sorry.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am doing a restoration of an old palace in Poland, the biggest issue is often the contractors do not understand the architect’s drawings. The drawings are more for the regulators such as building control than actually for the people working on site. Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible, leaving it to the constructor to actually make it up on the job. Somebody said to me…

> Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible If the drawings are indeed for regulators, then architects should be sued when they prove to be impossible impossible. Failing that, we should get rid of architects to begin with (if they draw impossible things, what good are they?), and have actual engineers draw something that can actually be built. (Of course, the engineer should r…

When we built, we had both, an architect and a construction engineer. The architect was a necessity to send plans for approval (you need a permission to hand in these plans, and an official stamp, both of which our engineer didn't have anymore since he was retired). Besides that, the architect was a complete waste of money. Unable to properly use his CAD software, made a ton planning mistakes. These mistakes had to be fixed by the contractors, e.g. plumbing requires a pump to get waste water to sewer level. For the ground floor that is, first floor is already above sewer level. Our architect passed both floors through the pump. And it continued on.

Basically, the architects plans were used as a basis to work from during construction. Luckily we had people able to do so. As our engineer put it: architects "paint" houses, the actual drawings and design to turn into something you can build is done by engineers.

Both, architects and engineers are liable for their designs so over here. Reason why the stamp is so important and expensive, you need quite a pricey insurance for that.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#76
post #4

I get conflicted feelings about this. On the one hand it's highly unlikely anyone in that tower would get a shred of empathy from the common man (and highly unlikely this is even one of their 5 other homes), but on the other it's just a damn shame that some of the most prominent landmarks in the greatest city in the world are crappy places to live at. I'm not of the opinion they're eyesores - the nyc Skyline was stag…

> I'm not of the opinion they're eyesores - the nyc Skyline was stagnant for decades until these needles came in. One way or another progress in that regard is good?

What “good” does a skyline do for society? The enormous costs to build super talls would go much further in myriad other ways, even just by making a few tall or many regular size buildings. Very far from progress if you as me.

Actually, I would take the construction of a novel building just to give views and prestige to less than one hundred families to be evidence of societal regression, since it can be used as a proxy for extreme wealth inequality.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am doing a restoration of an old palace in Poland, the biggest issue is often the contractors do not understand the architect’s drawings. The drawings are more for the regulators such as building control than actually for the people working on site. Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible, leaving it to the constructor to actually make it up on the job. Somebody said to me…

I think Alexander's ideas and patterns are very lean processes instead. He see what's the terrain like, what's the use like, builds a bit, and reevaluates along the way. He even explicitly have drawings rendered 'for regulation' but changes it after it's built. Context: I'm assuming Alexander here refers to Christopher Alexander. He has authored books related to identifying architecture patterns with 'liveness' in th…

> I think a lot of his ideas can be applied to software too

Reportedly his book A Pattern Language inspired the GoF software patterns book.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#79
post #4

I get conflicted feelings about this. On the one hand it's highly unlikely anyone in that tower would get a shred of empathy from the common man (and highly unlikely this is even one of their 5 other homes), but on the other it's just a damn shame that some of the most prominent landmarks in the greatest city in the world are crappy places to live at. I'm not of the opinion they're eyesores - the nyc Skyline was stag…

> I'm not of the opinion they're eyesores - the nyc Skyline was stagnant for decades until these needles came in. One way or another progress in that regard is good? What “good” does a skyline do for society? The enormous costs to build super talls would go much further in myriad other ways, even just by making a few tall or many regular size buildings. Very far from progress if you as me. Actually, I would take the…

> The enormous costs to build super talls would go much further in myriad other ways, even just by making a few tall or many regular size buildings.

Note that these supertalls only exist in the first place because it's artificially difficult to build regular-sized buildings in Manhattan. It's very unlikely anybody would have bothered building anything in this specific form if not for the onerous zoning codes the developers were skirting when they designed them.

More info: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/gaming-ne...

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's a case of different construction standards in different countries? In Australia, I used to have an apartment in Eureka Tower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Tower The windows there were double glazed (good for heat and noise insulation), and I guess the walls were fairly thick as noise from neighbours was never a problem. The only significant problem, and specific to that building, was the designers…

I don't think it's purely a location-based thing. Not that long ago, Australia 108 became Melbourne's tallest building after surpassing the Eureka Tower in height. The residents there complained of walls that creak and crack like what you'd hear in a ship (which the 432 Park residents are also complaining about). https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/residents-of-mel... https://www.theage.com.au/national/victor…

Oh, that's interesting.

Somewhat related to that, when I was checking out apartments in the various CBD buildings, only the Eureka Tower ones seemed to have been built with any kind of quality or attention to detail.

Eg Surface finish of paint jobs was well done (even in non-obvious areas), gaps where surfaces join were consistent, and that kind of thing.

You could really tell it was done by people who gave a shit. Or at least, when looking at other places (Freshwater Place stands out), those ones were all clearly done by people who didn't. :/

So, the reports of problems due to potentially incorrect construction techniques in those buildings don't really surprise me.

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