3 ms·

"I knew this was going to happen," but he didn't do anything about it? Irresponsible at best.

Arnt 4y ago
Do you happen to be a programmer whose code has had similar bugs twice? If so, do you consider yourself "irresponsible at best"?
- 4RealFreedom 4y ago
  This wasn't a bug. It was designed with the properties and the builder knew it would happen. It also causes physical damage. Minimize this all you want but irresponsible is going easy.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    It was designed to have curved glassy surfaces. Both curves and glass are used a lot in modern architecture, for many reasons and "because it focuses the sun" isn't one of them. Combining glass and curves has been rare because it's technically difficult to build large curved glass. They were hardly ever combined until 1850, and it's still difficult today, 170 years after Crystal Palace. It's done though. Buildings go through review, which is rather like code review, and the review finds problems, and some slip through. In the case of this building the architect ordered a second review, where the bug was spotted and its consequences computed and found to be acceptable. (This is something engineers do all the time. When I had a hole made in a wall at home, a structural engineer computed how much the floor would sag and found it to be acceptable.) I'm guessing that the second review was carried out precisely because the architect wanted to be careful about those curved surfaces. Of course you can pretend that the curves were built in order to focus light and blame people for it. In that case you should accept that people blame you, too.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      > Of course you can pretend that the curves were built in order to focus light and blame people for it. No one said anything of the sort and I cannot conceive how anyone could possible think that they did.
      - Arnt 4y ago
        "It was designed with the properties and the builder knew it would happen"?
        Beltalowda 4y ago
        If you don't see how "designed with the property X" is radically different from "designed in order to do X" then I don't really know what else to say.
        Arnt 4y ago
        Well, the original article says it was designed to have curved surfaces. That it concentrated heat was something they discovered during review, which implies that it was not a design goal. Then they computed what the temperature would be, and found it acceptable. Then in reality the temperature was quite different from what was computed. The original article chose wording that distinguished between the design goal, the computed side effect and the actual side effect. 4RealFreedom chose wording that commingled the three.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  It's not particularly a "bug", it's more like an antipattern. Do you concatenate strings to generate SQL queries from user input? Of course you don't, that's just asking for a SQL injection attack, everyone knows that. Similarly, if you make a concave shiny thing and face it south (at least in the northern hemisphere), it'll focus the sun's rays. I find it hard to believe that the architect didn't know about focusing light, given that they'd have to have at least passed high school and this is the sort of thing you do in 1st year Physics. Any 12-year-old *at the oldest* knows this.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    Architects typically don't know such things (I went to architecture school), they hire engineers to compute the effect. This is typical practice: The architect draws intent, then hires someone to compute effect, then there are meetings about the difference between intent and effect, and modifications, and a loop, and eventually the thing is built. That one person does intent and another computes effect is deliberate. A kind of four-eyes principle. Then more eyes look at it when the plans are submitted to the city's authority, but that isn't usually as thorough as the review cycle between architect and hired engineers. In this case they computed that the peak heat would be 36°C, the actual peak afterwards is given as 72°C. Those are very different temperatures. FWIW, based on my somewhat primitive knowledge of this (I didn't finish that school) the most likely cause for the difference is imperfect modelling of the wind. How buildings affect wind is still an active area of research. Both this building and its neighbour affect air circulation in ways that couldn't be modelled using the current state of the art. When focused sunlight works on calm air, it can raise the temperature a great deal. Warm air staying calm instead of rising is a surprise, of course. (The poor modelling is common BTW, although usually not that serious. In my native Norway snow drifts often collect in surprising spots around new buildings, because the building produces calm air here, wind there.)

Arnt 4y ago

Do you happen to be a programmer whose code has had similar bugs twice? If so, do you consider yourself "irresponsible at best"?

4RealFreedom 4y ago
This wasn't a bug. It was designed with the properties and the builder knew it would happen. It also causes physical damage. Minimize this all you want but irresponsible is going easy.
- Arnt 4y ago
  It was designed to have curved glassy surfaces. Both curves and glass are used a lot in modern architecture, for many reasons and "because it focuses the sun" isn't one of them. Combining glass and curves has been rare because it's technically difficult to build large curved glass. They were hardly ever combined until 1850, and it's still difficult today, 170 years after Crystal Palace. It's done though. Buildings go through review, which is rather like code review, and the review finds problems, and some slip through. In the case of this building the architect ordered a second review, where the bug was spotted and its consequences computed and found to be acceptable. (This is something engineers do all the time. When I had a hole made in a wall at home, a structural engineer computed how much the floor would sag and found it to be acceptable.) I'm guessing that the second review was carried out precisely because the architect wanted to be careful about those curved surfaces. Of course you can pretend that the curves were built in order to focus light and blame people for it. In that case you should accept that people blame you, too.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    > Of course you can pretend that the curves were built in order to focus light and blame people for it. No one said anything of the sort and I cannot conceive how anyone could possible think that they did.
    - Arnt 4y ago
      "It was designed with the properties and the builder knew it would happen"?
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        If you don't see how "designed with the property X" is radically different from "designed in order to do X" then I don't really know what else to say.
        Arnt 4y ago
        Well, the original article says it was designed to have curved surfaces. That it concentrated heat was something they discovered during review, which implies that it was not a design goal. Then they computed what the temperature would be, and found it acceptable. Then in reality the temperature was quite different from what was computed. The original article chose wording that distinguished between the design goal, the computed side effect and the actual side effect. 4RealFreedom chose wording that commingled the three.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
It's not particularly a "bug", it's more like an antipattern. Do you concatenate strings to generate SQL queries from user input? Of course you don't, that's just asking for a SQL injection attack, everyone knows that. Similarly, if you make a concave shiny thing and face it south (at least in the northern hemisphere), it'll focus the sun's rays. I find it hard to believe that the architect didn't know about focusing light, given that they'd have to have at least passed high school and this is the sort of thing you do in 1st year Physics. Any 12-year-old *at the oldest* knows this.
- Arnt 4y ago
  Architects typically don't know such things (I went to architecture school), they hire engineers to compute the effect. This is typical practice: The architect draws intent, then hires someone to compute effect, then there are meetings about the difference between intent and effect, and modifications, and a loop, and eventually the thing is built. That one person does intent and another computes effect is deliberate. A kind of four-eyes principle. Then more eyes look at it when the plans are submitted to the city's authority, but that isn't usually as thorough as the review cycle between architect and hired engineers. In this case they computed that the peak heat would be 36°C, the actual peak afterwards is given as 72°C. Those are very different temperatures. FWIW, based on my somewhat primitive knowledge of this (I didn't finish that school) the most likely cause for the difference is imperfect modelling of the wind. How buildings affect wind is still an active area of research. Both this building and its neighbour affect air circulation in ways that couldn't be modelled using the current state of the art. When focused sunlight works on calm air, it can raise the temperature a great deal. Warm air staying calm instead of rising is a surprise, of course. (The poor modelling is common BTW, although usually not that serious. In my native Norway snow drifts often collect in surprising spots around new buildings, because the building produces calm air here, wind there.)