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"The developers said the phenomenon was caused by 'the current elevation of the sun in the sky', and that as Britain heads into autumn the problem should disapp

by aqme28 13y ago

"The developers said the phenomenon was caused by 'the current elevation of the sun in the sky', and that as Britain heads into autumn the problem should disappear." Thus solving the problem once and for all.

dasil003 13y ago
Hahaha! That's much funnier than my observation that it's just a particularly sunny summer in London and so this is a 100-year problem.
wil421 13y ago
Typical corporate response: its not our fault its the elevation of the sun. Once the sun decides to move it will not be a problem. How about they design a building right. If the 4 story condos I lived in previously were designed to be facing North and South so the sun didnt heat them up as much during the day. I would think a massive 37 floor building project in London would have taken into account the position of the sun as well.
- madaxe 13y ago
  It's owned by LandSec. They don't give two hoots what they build, or how they build it, as due to their "special status", they make great gobs of cash for anything they build, regardless of whether it's commercially viable, suitable, needed, and so-forth.
  - grabeh 13y ago
    What special status do they hold?
    - ddeck 13y ago
      I believe they are referring to REIT status, but the relevance is not clear.
- mseebach 13y ago
  No, it's a very measured and pragmatic response. It even struck me as something an engineer would write. Explaining the conditions leading to a problem is not evading responsibility. The test, of course, will be whether they will be using the coming 12 months to figure out a solution and applying it so this won't happen again next time there's sun in September. I think they will, since torching things is generally not a good idea, and also liability hell. > How about they design a building right. Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an unexpected way, you've never build anything. It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate way.
  - wil421 13y ago
    >It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate way. Any kid with a magnifying class can tell you what curved class can do with light. My point was that if building projects take in account which way the sun will move in the sky, then they should take into account what the sun might do when it hits the building. > Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an unexpected way, you've never build anything. You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. The fact remains that if it can mess a Jaguar up what happens when the sun rays are concentrated into a flat across the street that may have a small child or elderly person who may not be to leave the room when it starts getting hot.
    - VladRussian2 13y ago
      >You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. as it was already mentioned this architect had already built death ray building in Las Vegas >It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. Sun's potential energy flux on the Earth's surface, be it Las Vegas or London, is 1KWt per m2 of the surface _perpendicular_ to the flux. So given clear day and good angle (close to perpendicular) of a building to the Sun's light, the building will be beaming back significant part of that 1KWt/m2.
MattBearman 13y ago
"But what abou-" "ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
swang 13y ago
Yeah except you used the quote out of context. "In addition, we are consulting with local businesses and the City to address the issue in the short-term, while also evaluating longer-term solutions to ensure the issue cannot recur in future."
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  he distilled the part that contains the meaning while he left the auto-generated meaningless and tautological fluff ("longer-term solutions to ensure the issue cannot recur in future") out.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  The problem is that the building is basically a crude concave mirror, that problem will persist any time the Sun is in the right parts of the sky, the building continues to be the same shape, and the building's surface continues to be dominated by windows made of glass (or any material which has a similar degree of reflectivity, especially at high angles). There are simply no good, truly long-term solutions to this problem that do not involve drastic changes to the building. The best solution would likely be to do something about the windows on the concave side of the building, putting some sort of external shade on them, changing the angle each window faces, or something to disrupt the normal magnification effect. The correct solution is tearing down the monstrosity and building something that wasn't designed by an idiot in its place but that's likely too expensive to entertain at the moment.

by aqme28 13y ago

dasil003 13y ago

Hahaha! That's much funnier than my observation that it's just a particularly sunny summer in London and so this is a 100-year problem.

wil421 13y ago

Typical corporate response: its not our fault its the elevation of the sun. Once the sun decides to move it will not be a problem. How about they design a building right. If the 4 story condos I lived in previously were designed to be facing North and South so the sun didnt heat them up as much during the day. I would think a massive 37 floor building project in London would have taken into account the position of the sun as well.

madaxe 13y ago
It's owned by LandSec. They don't give two hoots what they build, or how they build it, as due to their "special status", they make great gobs of cash for anything they build, regardless of whether it's commercially viable, suitable, needed, and so-forth.
- grabeh 13y ago
  What special status do they hold?
  - ddeck 13y ago
    I believe they are referring to REIT status, but the relevance is not clear.
mseebach 13y ago
No, it's a very measured and pragmatic response. It even struck me as something an engineer would write. Explaining the conditions leading to a problem is not evading responsibility. The test, of course, will be whether they will be using the coming 12 months to figure out a solution and applying it so this won't happen again next time there's sun in September. I think they will, since torching things is generally not a good idea, and also liability hell. > How about they design a building right. Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an unexpected way, you've never build anything. It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate way.
- wil421 13y ago
  >It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate way. Any kid with a magnifying class can tell you what curved class can do with light. My point was that if building projects take in account which way the sun will move in the sky, then they should take into account what the sun might do when it hits the building. > Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an unexpected way, you've never build anything. You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. The fact remains that if it can mess a Jaguar up what happens when the sun rays are concentrated into a flat across the street that may have a small child or elderly person who may not be to leave the room when it starts getting hot.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    >You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. as it was already mentioned this architect had already built death ray building in Las Vegas >It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. Sun's potential energy flux on the Earth's surface, be it Las Vegas or London, is 1KWt per m2 of the surface _perpendicular_ to the flux. So given clear day and good angle (close to perpendicular) of a building to the Sun's light, the building will be beaming back significant part of that 1KWt/m2.

MattBearman 13y ago

"But what abou-" "ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

swang 13y ago

Yeah except you used the quote out of context. "In addition, we are consulting with local businesses and the City to address the issue in the short-term, while also evaluating longer-term solutions to ensure the issue cannot recur in future."

VladRussian2 13y ago
he distilled the part that contains the meaning while he left the auto-generated meaningless and tautological fluff ("longer-term solutions to ensure the issue cannot recur in future") out.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
The problem is that the building is basically a crude concave mirror, that problem will persist any time the Sun is in the right parts of the sky, the building continues to be the same shape, and the building's surface continues to be dominated by windows made of glass (or any material which has a similar degree of reflectivity, especially at high angles). There are simply no good, truly long-term solutions to this problem that do not involve drastic changes to the building. The best solution would likely be to do something about the windows on the concave side of the building, putting some sort of external shade on them, changing the angle each window faces, or something to disrupt the normal magnification effect. The correct solution is tearing down the monstrosity and building something that wasn't designed by an idiot in its place but that's likely too expensive to entertain at the moment.