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you speak latin? are you a monk?!
captcha: modo. By the way...
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Actually I read it with a flippant French accent. Haha.
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In the US Ground Floor and 1st/First floor are generally synonymous. Exceptions can occur, of course; if a building is trying to promote a sort of Continental air, they will use the more British style of having the first floor be above the ground floor. If a building is built on a slope, sometimes you will have a Ground floor that is situated at one entrance level, and a first floor situated at the other; in these cases either floor could be above the other - usually the main entrance is where the Ground floor is situated.
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You're making the entirely wrong assumption that anyone would have listened to Diogo.
A: No, the Rock Star made up his mind, and refused to listen to anyone else. Also, I'm sure at this point in his career, the Rock Star kept a large assortment of yes-men nearby.
B: What should he have done? Had a team of autonomous mops on standby? Ran shop-vacs 24-7? Please tell me how he would stop the flow of water by his mind.
C: Again, this fails based on your initial assumption.
Do you really think that "some guy" who works "with computers" is really going to trump a Mr. Name architect?
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Umm, you did say it didn't happen.
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I had always thought the same thing until just a few weeks ago, when I was looking into local (U.S.) laws regarding colleges and universities.
To my surprise, they are required by law to have horrendous amounts of capital at all times - I don't remember the actual numbers, but it was on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the tiniest community college, and grew quite quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if the big universities were required to keep millions upon millions just in capital.
If you're running a business (which all educational systems are), and you were required to have all that capital just sitting around (it's illegal to invest it), what would you do? Acquiring huge, sprawling campuses and building super-fancy buildings actually sounds like a good idea at that point.
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So what you are saying is that there IS a central column of the building large enough to use a crane for lowering the equipment into the new server room? Let me get this right here; THERE IS A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BUILDING THAT IS BIG ENOUGH TO TRANSPORT EQUIPMENT FROM THE BASEMENT TO THE TOP FLOOR.
What you have here is the REAL WTF? WHY DIDN'T THEY INSTALL AN ELEVATOR IN THE EMPTY COLUMN THAT SPANS ALL THE FLOORS IN THE BUILDING!?!?!? Is Crane rental that cheap?
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While the ground may be warmer than the air in the winter, the heat capacity of air is less than one hundredth that of ground, meaning you're much better off using the air as an insulator.
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Selective quoting is pretty lame.
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That sounds a lot like Sheffield, UK. My experience of architects is that their focus is on a nice picture for their portfolio, but the user wants something that can be used for >30 years. They need to be kept on a short leash.
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Frank Gehry is an Asshole. Period.
captcha jumentum: really getting moving in Israel
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"Reminds me of the, possibly apocryphal, story about my alma mater... They designed a new block inhouse, with a sports centre in the basement, and only when construction started was it realised that they'd forgotten to allow for the weight of the water in the pool, resulting in a building with a total height of about 1m above ground. That was an engineering school too."
EVERY university has that story. It's usually a library that doesn't account for the weight of the books.
I think this story originated with the engineering department at the University of Pisa
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Sounds like a lot of architects I used to work with when I did construction. I used to see a lot of genius designed that failed to account for the local geography, roads and even houses. But hey.. on paper it's perfect.
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At the risk of feeding a troll, my response
A) "we all know that if he properly informed this professional building planner" . The guy ( or gal ) was an architect, not a building planner - two different things. And from what I read ( did you ? ) , he not only warned the architect, but he also "continued his protests, carrying his case before the dean and eventually the university president". Doesn't sound like "short vague email".
b)"getting off his lazy ass" .."he sat at home for 4 days ". Agin, I read he "was looking into renting a gondola for his commute", which implies he was commuting to work every day, not at home. Additionally, please inform me how he was to go about "installing pumps". Sure, a decent industrial pump is going to run $500. He is suppose to pay for that out of his pocket ? And how exactly is he suppose to install the drain ?
c) "decent compromise" . Apparently Diogo was not the only stakeholder in this. "Diogo and the other stakeholders sat down to plan a solution that would minimize downtime and get servers running for the CS labs before the fall semester ". Diogo's plan sounded like it would be the solution to this problem. Sometime one has to go for short-term while a more permanent solution is being worked on. At that point, the problem was not "how can we stop the server room from flooding" but rather "how do we recover as fast as possible" ?
Apparently you have never lived in a place where the water table is a factor, but (hopefully) you have been to the beach. Ever dig a hole as the tide is coming in? As fast as you bail, the same amount of water rushes in. Additionally, as someone else pointed out, where do you put the bailed water ? Outside ? Then it just comes back in.
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Not necessarily. I don't believe the story that George Bush was a frequent sexual partner of his vice president, but I don't say it didn't happen.
I don't believe that it did happen != I believe that it didn't happen.
(You should read more Raymond Smullyan - his examples are much nicer than mine)
Captcha: tristique. Not Latin, you'll notice. Possibly an abridged edition of a Levi-Strauss book?
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this reminds me of my experience in setting up an HPC datacenter in the basement of a Frank Gehry building. They installed a sump pump meant for a large house, and of course it flooded. thankfully, NJ springs are wet enough that it happened before we moved the expensive equipment and it was fixed.
But still, who builds a leaky, all glass exterior building as a Library? Books hate water and sun.
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We had a suicide door. Top secret government lab (hint E=mc^2), the site management was being handed over to a private contractor who suddenly had to obey safety legislation that the government doesn't. The rules said that extra fire exit doors were required on all labs.
Unfortunately our building was on the edge of a hill - ground floor on one side was a 2 story drop to a loading bay on the other.
The plans didn't call for any sort of stairway outside and there was no way to fit one.
But the door was installed anyway.
We nailed a bar across it.
Site safety came back and removed the bar, then they fitted a large illuminated EXIT sign over the door.
Then they came back and fixed a thin piece of yellow tape across the door to mark that it wasn't to be used!
And these were the people responsible for stopping us turning the surrounding 10 miles of countryside into a large crater!
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Did it work?
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Great article, thanks for the laughs.
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As hard as it may be to admit, to me it seems that the folks who design WalMart buildings do a better job. And it costs a heck of a lot less.
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Unless it was a very outdated building, the commercial HVAC system would have built-in ventilation and would replace building air with fresh air -- a few times per hour, IIRC.
Paper in books has very small exposed surface areas. By closing a book, you drive the air out from between the pages. So the only exposed surfaces are the edges of the pages. Imagine hanging large paper sheets to cover the front areas of each bookshelf -- that's not a whole lot of paper area to get oxidized.
Besides, if you remove oxygen from the air by a chemical reaction that binds it to a solid, you have local pressure drop and air gets sucked in from outside. Of course the oxygen concentration drops, but ventilation should take care of it.
I think that if anything, the lowered oxygen concentration was maybe a small part of the problem. We are way more affected by other things that would get added to the interior air -- think of various smells. You can have a very "stuffy" feeling inside air that has perfectly good oxygen content, it just smells bad.
In all likelihood, the building's HVAC was simply inadequate for the occupancy, and the books had nothing to do with it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasserhaus
^^
At least our architects had a basic understanding for fundamental needs; most of the time.
However, I experienced that much fails from architects, I doubt they are awarded for anything else than ... well design ?
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[quote user="Chelloveck"][quote user="Brian LaPierre"]I can only presume that this
I don't know. The story never says what was explained about the unique geography. A floodplain isn't exactly "unique", so I must assume something else was said to the architect. [/quote]
Question, shouldn't an architect not from that area do a little research for a project of this scale as to the local weather conditions year round? The whole argument of what was "said" to the architect is pointless. If he failed to take into account the location and longevity of the design and just blindly designed a building then he failed. Maybe its just me, but I thought architects liked knowing they designed a building that lasts, stands the test of time if you will.
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You must have very soggy books if you can't tell the difference between libraries and swimming pools. The failed swimming pool on stilts was pointed out on the tour given to prospective students of Birmingham University, UK, in 1988, but I don't know if it's still there; it's mentioned in wikipedia but I can't find it on Google maps. So it does happen.
The first time there was a heavy rain storm at the current University of York computer science building, the roof water flowed down a service shaft into the server room. That was an oversight and fairly easily sealed, but the real problem with that building was it was designed without air-conditioning and on the assumption that the inhabitants wouldn't have computers on their desks. I can remember falling asleep in the heat a few times before they retro-fitted aircon. Hopefully their new one won't be so bad.
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in every project we do, there are problems anticipated by the technical staff and raised to management (along with alternatives to mitigate). They overrule us, and we're proven right. They have not learned yet to trust the experts they hired.
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There are indeed 2 kinds of architects in Belgium: architectural engineers like bjolling, and architects that did some artsy-fartsy curriculum. (bjolling: for example those from Sint-Lucas)
Best captcha so far: eros
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Captcha: the Latin word for green
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Yes, renting a crane for one day or even for one week to move all the servers is actually a lot cheaper than retrofitting a building with an elevator.
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I have worked in buildings designed by famous architects and that makes this story hard to believe: the kind of architect I hear about would never allow for any changes to his precious design even when the building is unusable as it is. You don't win architecture prizes with usable buildings, it seems.
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If someone tells me, "I am not convinced that X is true", yes, I don't assume that he is convinced that X is false. Such a statement indicates uncertainly.
But if someone says, "I don't believe that X is true", I take that to be pretty much synonymous with "I believe that X is false".
Are you a politician? This sounds like something a lot of those politicians say. "Now, when I said that I have never accepted campaign contributions from Mr Jones, I didn't mean that I did not receive the money and deposit it to my bank account, rather, I meant that I did not feel a sense of 'acceptance' about the money ..."
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I was in Brazil for two years and ran into a few people with the name Diego, but never Diogo.
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Please god tell me I'm not the only one who thought that was a joke. Or did my lack of sleep contribute to me not being able to spot the troll.
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You must not live in a place with cold winters. Experiment: try standing around, naked, in subzero (Fahrenheit) temperatures. Now try standing around in a down-filled parka, snowpants, and mask which you've just taken out of a refrigerator. In which case do you think you will die first? Air is a better insulator, right?
The air underneath a house on stilts is not insulating the house at all. It's flowing past, and if it's colder than the house (which, in the winter, it is, often by quite a bit), then the air is pulling heat away from the house.
Contrast that with the ground. In most areas, the ground will be 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit year around. And while it too will pull heat away from a warm building inserted into it, the ground isn't moving. (If it is, the heating bill is probably the least of your concerns.) You have to heat up all the ground touching your house before you can heat up ground a mile away -- heck, you'll never put heat into that ground a mile away. It's too far. But the wind howling under your house on stilts will travel hundreds or even thousands of miles across the frozen prairies before getting to your house. It's constantly being replaced. It's a big difference. The best effect comes if you can get your basement down below frost line, which a full sized basement will do. Down where the ground never gets cold enough to freeze, it's much better than having subzero wind whipping around the walls and under the floor.
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I would not be surprised. Wright was an artistic genius, but not so great an engineer. He was good at finding things that would look good (to a certain asthetic). I've also heard that Fallingwater has serious mold issues, which really shouldn't be surprising considering that the design incorporates a natural body of water inside the actual house. It must be fun for the preservationists to deal with it.
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There is that, but there is a very common tendency among people of all expertises to underestimate (sometimes fatally) the power of water. The guy's last job was supposedly in Dubai; I expect a rising water table is not a particularly big concern there, on the edge of the Rub' al Khali. He would not be the first architect to make such a mistake, nor will he be the last.
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Wasn't he also known for building some of the furniture into the house so that it couldn't be moved by the people who owned and actually lived there? From what I hear, Mr. Wright was one of the sew people who's ego was greater that Steve Jobs'
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On the other hand the compressive strength of air is dissappointingly low so it's difficult to use as a building material :)
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The building was original X meters high. The pool was filled. Then BIG BADA BOOM building is 1 meter tall.
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My alma mater has a dorm that was designed for hot, humid Florida. It has a ground floor that is smaller than the floors above it, with a large open area under the first floor that lets the wind blow through, cooling the first floor.
Unfortunately, this college is in Minnesota.
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This must be from the "you can do anything in 3 days" camp of system development...
but I'm intrigued - if a blunder can be made in a few days, then why do so many high-profile software projects waste millions before they're finally cancelled or fixed.
It must be a flaw in the teamwork processes.
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captcha: valetudo. Having the attitude of a valet
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The photo in 315872 is the Stata Center at MIT, for those who are curious. It replaced a 50 year old wooden structure.
And yes, it's a Gehry product.
And as ugly as it might seem from the outside, it actually works for its intended purpose inside. It does require some work to find someone for the first time, but it has spaces designed to encourage interaction between researchers.
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Ok, can this be the suicide door?
http://media.heavy.com/media/2010/07/Door-in-the-Air.jpg