So glad our gods in the sky are comfortable. Now how do the little people get their sun back!?
15
Instead of publishing an article about the great technology used to erect these monolithic symbols of capitalism excess, how about the NYTimes focus an article on the pure ugliness of these monstrosities and how they are ruining the great skyline of New York.
It's bad enough everyone now has to look at a gaudy toothpick building like 432 Park Avenue along as it overshadows the majestic beauty of the Empire State Building but even worse is the knowledge of knowing most of it's owners are corrupt foreign oligarchs using these homes as havens to shelter
money.
These building are an every growing symbol of what our country has become in its divide between the rich and poor. Shame on this city and the Department of buildings for approving the construction of these trophy temples for the mega foreign rich and corrupt. If the building is not commercial,which adds value by housing offices and jobs, there should be a strict height limit on how tall residential sky scrapers can become.
It's bad enough everyone now has to look at a gaudy toothpick building like 432 Park Avenue along as it overshadows the majestic beauty of the Empire State Building but even worse is the knowledge of knowing most of it's owners are corrupt foreign oligarchs using these homes as havens to shelter
money.
These building are an every growing symbol of what our country has become in its divide between the rich and poor. Shame on this city and the Department of buildings for approving the construction of these trophy temples for the mega foreign rich and corrupt. If the building is not commercial,which adds value by housing offices and jobs, there should be a strict height limit on how tall residential sky scrapers can become.
18
Dear Physics,
Even though I have left you a long time back, articles like these bring distant memories back. I wanted to let you know, you were my second love.
Lovelorn,
Undergraduate in Engineering and working in some other field.
PS: Sytem's resonance frequency. I miss words like those....
Even though I have left you a long time back, articles like these bring distant memories back. I wanted to let you know, you were my second love.
Lovelorn,
Undergraduate in Engineering and working in some other field.
PS: Sytem's resonance frequency. I miss words like those....
6
There's another problem with wind and skyscrapers not addressed in the article: the buildup in internal air pressure.
One Saturday morning (in the 1970s) while walking past One Penn Plaza, a tall building near Madison Square Garden, there was a file cabinet on the ground and several stories up, a broken window.
Being NYC on a Saturday (there's little pedestrian traffic in that part of town), the event didn't even make the papers, but here's what I think happened.
I had worked in that building and it would sway noticeably during high winds. On that Saturday there was a high wind from the North and the cabinet was ejected on the South side of the building.
My explanation: the cabinet was in a small office on the South side. The office door was closed. The wind penetrated the building. Pressure built up in the small office until BOOM the window cracked and the cabinet was ejected.
I hope the engineers have considered this potential problem.
One Saturday morning (in the 1970s) while walking past One Penn Plaza, a tall building near Madison Square Garden, there was a file cabinet on the ground and several stories up, a broken window.
Being NYC on a Saturday (there's little pedestrian traffic in that part of town), the event didn't even make the papers, but here's what I think happened.
I had worked in that building and it would sway noticeably during high winds. On that Saturday there was a high wind from the North and the cabinet was ejected on the South side of the building.
My explanation: the cabinet was in a small office on the South side. The office door was closed. The wind penetrated the building. Pressure built up in the small office until BOOM the window cracked and the cabinet was ejected.
I hope the engineers have considered this potential problem.
6
i heard about this 40 years ago ,asking an engineer"what's in that huge skylight
at the top of the citi corp building".(53 rd & lex)
he described a huge block of concrete,suspended in a viscous fluid,and shielded
by hydraulic dampers
at the top of the citi corp building".(53 rd & lex)
he described a huge block of concrete,suspended in a viscous fluid,and shielded
by hydraulic dampers
1
What's wrong with letting the super-rich swing in the wind?
12
Those who live "way up there" get what they pay for.
6
These spindly towers turn my stomach but for other reasons.
20
Many years ago I worked on the 48th floor of the former GM building at 59th and 5th avenue. During a heavy storm the building would sway in the wind and would creak as it swayed, it sounded like an old wooden sailing ship at sea. The best part was watching the chandelier in the reception area sway back and forth.
8
are you really talking about your former boss?
This Seattle architect now retired never had to design one of these- and he's more than glad. JG
5
Amazing feats of engineering so often go unnoticed, or are purposefully hidden from view. I always think of this whenever I pass by the ventilation towers of the Holland tunnel. I'd read about damping systems in other skyscrapers, nice to learn about them in New York as well.
8
How about this awful possibility: a small plane packed with explosives hits a wide, tall building in NYC. Effect? Not enough to topple the building. Then again, a small plane packed with explosives hits a thin, tall building in NYC. Effect? Well, let's hope that doesn't occur.
It isn't the issue of swaying in the wind that matters but what's blowing in the geo political wind that engineers are not experts in. In other words, it is a whole lot easier for the wrong person to get his/her hands on a small plane than it does commandeering a large jet.
It isn't the issue of swaying in the wind that matters but what's blowing in the geo political wind that engineers are not experts in. In other words, it is a whole lot easier for the wrong person to get his/her hands on a small plane than it does commandeering a large jet.
7
Are you ready to ban small planes? How about a Ryder truck? That one actually happened.
Gee, imagine that the one week of the year you decide to spend in your $100 million penthouse, the wind is blowing at 50 mph! I can fully empathize.
20
When I was an architecture student I worked for a model builder; we delivered the original model of Battery Park City to the top floor of 1 Chase Plaza on a very windy day. Mr Rockefeller's corner office was creaking loudly from its corner window mullion, and the coffee in our (forbidden) paper cups was rocking back and forth. On the way out, I impertinently asked the receptionist how much the building moved; she glared at me over the top of her glasses and said "Enough to make you sick, dear. Finished?"
20
Post Sept. 11, I do look at the tall, skinny buildings and wonder what would happen to them in an earthquake or something, especially the one on W57 street which is visible just about from every clear point in the city, seems like since that bldg is so tall some might think like myself that it just might snap in two during strong winds or other weather conditions. The reality is know one knows what Mother Nature can do, until she actually does it, no matter what precautions architectures make. God forbid, but in Manhattan I guess it would be the domino effect with one tall building just knocking down another. In some bldgs I've worked in on a floor above 30 or 40, on windy days, especially in the fall, the bldg will creek back and forth, and many people say they can feel it swaying back and forth. I have to say though at 750 7th Ave, was the 1st time I felt the bldg sway one day I was in the ladies room and actually felt the sway of the bldg while in the sitting position.
6
Fascinating, not so much the sloshing-water method, but the pendulum-in-a box method.
Unless I missed it, I don't believe the reporter ever said what the ballast weights are made of to get the thing heavy enough to equal 100 elephants. I'm no civil engineer, but I cannot imagine that a block of lead -- even a big block -- would weigh enough. Is it some denser material? The only thing I can think of is uranium.
(Be a great place to store nuclear material! This isn't read in Iran, is it? Maybe that's where inspectors need to look.)
Unless I missed it, I don't believe the reporter ever said what the ballast weights are made of to get the thing heavy enough to equal 100 elephants. I'm no civil engineer, but I cannot imagine that a block of lead -- even a big block -- would weigh enough. Is it some denser material? The only thing I can think of is uranium.
(Be a great place to store nuclear material! This isn't read in Iran, is it? Maybe that's where inspectors need to look.)
1
Considering the pricing for places like this, I wouldn't be shocked to hear it's a massive nugget of solid gold.
3
>> installing giant counterweights, or dampening systems
Technically speaking, the correct term is damping, not "dampening."
Technically speaking, the correct term is damping, not "dampening."
12
Let's not forget the 50-year-old John Hancock, prettiest building on the Boston skyline (once they got the windows to stop falling out). It has a damper in it.
6
I suppose the buildings and their systems are periodically closely inspected, as are any number of things that still go wrong. Very interesting, for sure.
1
Well, let's hope that the architects and engineers behind these monstrosities have all taken this into consideration:
http://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/04/17/the_citicorp_tower_design_...
http://www.damninteresting.com/a-potentially-disastrous-design-error/
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural-integrity/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609257/The-New-York-disaster-ne...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/nyregion/21lemessurier.html
Methinks that someone is suffering from an (O)edifice complex...
http://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/04/17/the_citicorp_tower_design_...
http://www.damninteresting.com/a-potentially-disastrous-design-error/
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural-integrity/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609257/The-New-York-disaster-ne...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/nyregion/21lemessurier.html
Methinks that someone is suffering from an (O)edifice complex...
11
Yes, I'm sure they have considered that, considering it's a very old story about a building constructed at the dawn of the tuned mass damper era, the structural flaws were fixed decades ago and the former Citicorp Building hasn't toppled over.
4
As a child visiting someone who lived very high up, I was entranced by a swaying chandelier. My father told me that it wasn't the chandelier that was moving, it was the whole building around it.
That was even more interesting.
That was even more interesting.
27
How close to the top of the building are these dampers installed, presumably very close to the top? Do the developers put one penthouse on the top, then the damper room, then everything else below?
I used to live in a community where the building height limit was 33 feet and it was very pleasant aesthetically. There was no attitude that just because we can technically cram in another 100,000 people that we must do so.
I used to live in a community where the building height limit was 33 feet and it was very pleasant aesthetically. There was no attitude that just because we can technically cram in another 100,000 people that we must do so.
5
Dampening means getting something wet. Damping is the word for reducing resonant motion. These are -damping systems-.
30
You completely and utterly failed. Probably because you don't know what you're talking about and didn't take the 30 seconds to look to see if your insta-opinion was right. The terminology they used was correct.
1
Actually, researching a bit more than 30 seconds would reveal that while "dampening" is often used to mean the same thing as "damping," and is not incorrect according to some sources, "damping" is indeed the more technical and scientific term.
6
Of course, if you are using the "water-sloshing" method, then "dampening" might be correct....
1
I found this article very interesting because i myself question how skyscrapers dont fall today in these massive storms now a days. The only way for these massive skyscrapers to fal is if we have a devistating earthquake which we rarely get in the tristate area. I mean you have to give it to the constructors of the buidings. But in the future we'll see what happens with these buildings.
2
A thousand years ago, the Japanese were using mass dampers in their pagodas. The "shinbashira" consisted of a massive tree trunk loosely fixed in the center space. With its great inertia, it reduced the movement of the sides of the pagoda that came in contact with it. Some modern buildings have taken up this example, notably the 2.008 foot Tokyo Sky Tree.
21
Many years ago I heard that residents on the top floors of the Hancock Building in Chicago rxperienced water sloshing out of their toilets when the windy city lived up to its name. Not sure if this was true or just urban legend.
1
Chicago got the name 'Windy City' from the ceaseless activities of its promoters - it has nothing to do with the weather.
5
True - but you need to be there when they put up ropes on Michigan Avenue and next to the IBM building to give pedestrians something to hold onto to keep them from getting blown down.
3
Urban legend, to my knowledge. (I've lived atop a tall building within eye shot of the Hancock for 30 years and followed the building's construction as a little boy in Chicago aspiring to become an architect.)
However toilet waters in high rises can become a bit choppy on windy days, even on lower floors. It would probably be more accurate to call the water "bouncy" as it throbs vertically not due to the building's movement but rather due to air pressure variations between the the building's interior air column and the internal pressure of the waste stack. But it's not bouncy enough to we one's bottom!
However toilet waters in high rises can become a bit choppy on windy days, even on lower floors. It would probably be more accurate to call the water "bouncy" as it throbs vertically not due to the building's movement but rather due to air pressure variations between the the building's interior air column and the internal pressure of the waste stack. But it's not bouncy enough to we one's bottom!
How do these anti-sway technologies affect a skyscraper's earthquake worthiness? Do they help or hurt?
I know NYC is not an earthquake hot spot but many other cities with tall buildings like Seattle are waiting for a mega-quake to strike.
I know NYC is not an earthquake hot spot but many other cities with tall buildings like Seattle are waiting for a mega-quake to strike.
7
The Discovery Channel did a piece on Taiwan's Taipei 101 Tower several years ago (youtube). I could probably speculate that if an earthquake did happen in New York; the damper would probably be stabilized by suspension cables rather than have it move violently with the building during an earthquake.
1
Wind is an excitation to a skyscraper, which sways in response. If the frequency of the excitation is in tune with the skyscraper's natural oscillation frequency, it will sway a lot. The mass damping system (not dampening, silly mistake pointed out by Michael in the UK above) changes the skyscraper's natural frequency away from the excitation of the wind. With added mass and springs, the skyscraper is given a much lower natural frequency, so sways more slowly and with less amplitude and does not lock-in to the excitation of the wind (resonance, a bad thing in this case).
If an earthquake excitation frequency is similar to that caused by the wind, the damper will help. If not, it just adds mass to the top of the skyscraper, and is probably a liability. If the earthquake happens to occur at a low frequency near that of the damped skyscraper, it will oscillate a great deal in response, possibly to very bad effect. Earthquake frequencies vary by ground type, fault type, etc. so the answer will depend on which building you're talking about.
If an earthquake excitation frequency is similar to that caused by the wind, the damper will help. If not, it just adds mass to the top of the skyscraper, and is probably a liability. If the earthquake happens to occur at a low frequency near that of the damped skyscraper, it will oscillate a great deal in response, possibly to very bad effect. Earthquake frequencies vary by ground type, fault type, etc. so the answer will depend on which building you're talking about.
26
In Taipei, we are right now enjoying the departure of a seriously large Typhoon (western pacific name for hurricane.)
I wish you'd said more about the Taipei 101 building because Taipei suffers from both high-winds and earthquakes. The dampers are necessarily designed for both.
I wish you'd said more about the Taipei 101 building because Taipei suffers from both high-winds and earthquakes. The dampers are necessarily designed for both.
7
I'm not buying it. Don't forget the Tacoma Narrows bridge where the wind just caught it the right way, it started swaying out of control and down it went.
5
The Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse of 1940 bridge is used every year in civil engineering programs as an example of wind not being taken into account in structural design. It started the modern field of wind tunnel testing to verify that structures can withstand wind loading. The Whitestone Bridge in NYC was retrofit after the collapse, due to its similar structural design.
30
Actually, a structural element (the mid-span cable band) failed (slipped). Not the only problem, there will always be surprises. We can get better. We can't get perfect.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/TNBhistory/Machine/machine3.htm
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/TNBhistory/Machine/machine3.htm
1
The Tacoma Narrows had no damping system and a perfect resonant frequency across its entire length so that winds at about 35-40mph at the correct angle "plucked" it like a piano string. It had swayed before, (hence the name "Galloping Gertie") but nothing was done. After its collapse other bridges which exhibited the same problems were stiffened, usually using trusses or triangular braces along the sides of the deck. Damping is not usually an option for such long, horizontal structures.
11
The architects of these remarkable buildings get no credit except for supplying an image.
If these buildings were works of art, books, or Broadway shows, it would be more likely the NYT would mention the names of the designers/creators.
It is great to see the engineers credited in an article about their specific work, but why not the architects, whose skills also make these buildings possible, if not handsome additions to our skyline.
If these buildings were works of art, books, or Broadway shows, it would be more likely the NYT would mention the names of the designers/creators.
It is great to see the engineers credited in an article about their specific work, but why not the architects, whose skills also make these buildings possible, if not handsome additions to our skyline.
3
Why not let the structural engineers have a moment in the spotlight! This article is about engineering, not architecture. Architects are usually in the spotlight even though the engineers are the masters behind the facade. It's due time the engineers, without whom architects' buildings would never stand, get a mention.
38
And RWDI, the engineering firm credited here as an international giant when it comes to the effect of wind on buildings, got its start and maintains its world headquarters my hometown, Guelph, a city whose tallest building, recently built, is 18 stories. Go figure.
Oh, perhaps I should add that the small town feel of Guelph as a fabulous place to live and raise a family has been studiously pushed as an attraction for industry. I have no inside knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised if RWDI has stayed headquartered here because its employees like the ambiance...far, far a way from the massive structures they model in their wind tunnels.
Oh, perhaps I should add that the small town feel of Guelph as a fabulous place to live and raise a family has been studiously pushed as an attraction for industry. I have no inside knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised if RWDI has stayed headquartered here because its employees like the ambiance...far, far a way from the massive structures they model in their wind tunnels.
1
The damping system is the work of the Structural Engineer not the Architect.
2
432 Park Avenue is so astoundingly and aggressively ugly, a crass festering eyesore that makes Trump Tower look elegant and sophisticated, that only an Arab sheik, a Russian oligarch, or a Chinese Communist Party member would want to live there.
But then when you are laundering your tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains, best not be too fussy about who accepts your 'all cash' offer.
But then when you are laundering your tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains, best not be too fussy about who accepts your 'all cash' offer.
70
Wealth, hubris and excess will doom western attempts at civilization!
17
"Civilization" is not the proper title- "wretched excess" is a lot more accurate. JG-
5
The mass dampening system is the sprinkler system. The system that keeps it stable in high winds is a mass damping system.
51
Thank you. Ask a British mechanic to check your car's "dampeners" and he won't get anywhere near the shock absorbers, aka "dampers", though he might sell you a full tear-down and re-build of the windscreen washers. Parts will take 6 - 12 weeks.
6
Would that also be the ridged plumbing system in a building acting as a damper?
Even the experts sometimes use dampening on their harmonic oscillators: "Then we describe the transient behavior of a harmonic oscillator that is subjected to a dampening mechanism."
"University Physics" By George Arfken
https://books.google.com/books?id=PfadZy35Wh0C&lpg=PA271&dq=%22d...
"University Physics" By George Arfken
https://books.google.com/books?id=PfadZy35Wh0C&lpg=PA271&dq=%22d...
1