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Why do you think that they didn't think about it? That's pretty silly. I'm guessing that you haven't built tall buildings before (I certainly haven't) but it s

Why do you think that they didn't think about it? That's pretty silly. I'm guessing that you haven't built tall buildings before (I certainly haven't) but it seems perfectly plausible to me that precautions were taken (coating/shape/etc.) but for various unexpected reasons they were insufficient. Smart people make big things and big things can have big mistakes. It's sad that its so easy for some people to invent unintelligent straw-men to mock in internet comments.

mikeash 13y ago
There's simply no room for the scenario you're proposing. The math of curved reflectors is reasonably simple. What kind of "unexpected reasons" could possibly cause this problem? Maybe this guy did think about it. Maybe he's not stupid? But that's worse for him, because it means he knew what would happen and didn't care. This is on about the same level as dropping a piano from the top of the building and crushing whatever was below at the time. It's so basic that there's no way to say that it was unforeseeable, so either the person dropping the piano failed to think about gravity, or they didn't care about the damage they did.
- uxp 13y ago
  Maybe this guy did think about it. I'm sure the guy _DID_ think about it, as he was the one that architected the "death ray" building in Las Vegas, as pointed out further up the thread And the crescent-shaped Vdara Hotel and Spa in Las Vegas, designed – astonishingly – by the same architect as the Walkie Talkie, was briefly known as "Death Ray Hotel" when it opened in 2009 after guests complained a 15 sq m area of the pool deck was hot enough to singe their hair and melt plastic. - http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2013/sep/03/walkie-talkie-death-ray-buildings-heat http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2013/sep/0...
- jacobparker 13y ago
  That's... wow that's a really naive idea of how engineering works. You think that you do a few sin's and cos's and then mistakes just can't happen? That stuff you did in middle-school? I guess civil engineering really needs you. Why are you referring to a singular "this guy"? I hope you understand that the design an construction of a skyscraper involves more than one person at every step. I'm not sure why you are floating the conspiracy theory stuff - I really hope that's some kind of straw-man you're trying to pull, because otherwise... seek help.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I never said mistakes can't happen. I said that this mistake is an elementary one that should not have happened. Some mistakes are complex and hard. This mistake was trivial. Doubly trivial in that the guy who made the mistake already did it at least once before. I am referring to a singular "this guy" because there's an architect, "this guy", who designed the building. He determined the shape. The shape caused the problem. Yes, there's an army of people involved in the details, but the shape was one guy. What "conspiracy theory stuff" are you talking about?
    - notahacker 13y ago
      Most software bugs are, when described to the layman after the fact, pretty elementary, but at least structural engineers usually don't insist the software architect that wrote the initial specs for a project must have been stupid when the version the outsourced dev team releases crashes under certain input parameters.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        The software equivalent of this mistake would be spending millions of dollars building software targeting Linux when the customer needs to run it on Windows. It's not "certain input parameters", it's obvious environmental conditions that should have been considered at the outset. I would really like one of the naysayers in this thread to describe to me exactly how a mistake like this gets reasonably made. I keep getting replies saying that there are good reasons why something like this would happen, but nobody has actually given me one. There are no confounding factors in this case that invalidate the freshman physics calculation that tells you that this building design will melt things or light them on fire. There is no excuse for not doing said calculations when designing a curved glass building, especially when you already made the mistake on a previous building you designed. And there is no conceivable way you thought you mitigated the problem while actually failing to do so in a reasonable fashion.
        notahacker 13y ago
- mark-r 13y ago
  What kind of "unexpected reasons" could possibly cause this problem? Perhaps they did a simulation but there was a bug in the software? If you read the article on the Las Vegas building, you'll see that they expected some kind of window coating to counteract the problem but found after the fact that it didn't work. There are 1000 different reasons why the actual outcome might not match up with initial projections. I think it's naive to assume that they didn't think about the problem at all. Edit: after reading some of the other comments, perhaps I'm the naive one. Interesting thread.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    The window coating explanation makes no sense. You test that on individual panes before installing them and see how much light it really absorbs. Either the coating underperformed, in which case they should have caught it, or the coating performed to specification but wasn't specified to block enough light, in which case they should have caught it. I'd like to know at least one of these "1000 different reasons" why this could happen. Because I can't think of a single one, and nobody else has given me any....
    - jacobparker 13y ago
      I'd like to know at least one of these "1000 different reasons" why this could happen. Because I can't think of a single one, and nobody else has given me any.... You would have to ask someone who does this for a living. iOS and Rails developers are not qualified to speculate. Next time you ask "how stupid could they be?" the answer is "smarter than I am, apparently".
      - mikeash 13y ago
        On what basis do you make that statement, exactly? Nearly all architects go their entire career without building structures that concentrate the sun into a point hot enough to melt things. This architect has done it twice now. Sounds like he is doing something wrong, not that this is a problem inherent to the field.

mikeash 13y ago

There's simply no room for the scenario you're proposing. The math of curved reflectors is reasonably simple. What kind of "unexpected reasons" could possibly cause this problem? Maybe this guy did think about it. Maybe he's not stupid? But that's worse for him, because it means he knew what would happen and didn't care. This is on about the same level as dropping a piano from the top of the building and crushing whatever was below at the time. It's so basic that there's no way to say that it was unforeseeable, so either the person dropping the piano failed to think about gravity, or they didn't care about the damage they did.

uxp 13y ago
Maybe this guy did think about it. I'm sure the guy _DID_ think about it, as he was the one that architected the "death ray" building in Las Vegas, as pointed out further up the thread And the crescent-shaped Vdara Hotel and Spa in Las Vegas, designed – astonishingly – by the same architect as the Walkie Talkie, was briefly known as "Death Ray Hotel" when it opened in 2009 after guests complained a 15 sq m area of the pool deck was hot enough to singe their hair and melt plastic. - http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2013/sep/03/walkie-talkie-death-ray-buildings-heat http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2013/sep/0...
jacobparker 13y ago
That's... wow that's a really naive idea of how engineering works. You think that you do a few sin's and cos's and then mistakes just can't happen? That stuff you did in middle-school? I guess civil engineering really needs you. Why are you referring to a singular "this guy"? I hope you understand that the design an construction of a skyscraper involves more than one person at every step. I'm not sure why you are floating the conspiracy theory stuff - I really hope that's some kind of straw-man you're trying to pull, because otherwise... seek help.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I never said mistakes can't happen. I said that this mistake is an elementary one that should not have happened. Some mistakes are complex and hard. This mistake was trivial. Doubly trivial in that the guy who made the mistake already did it at least once before. I am referring to a singular "this guy" because there's an architect, "this guy", who designed the building. He determined the shape. The shape caused the problem. Yes, there's an army of people involved in the details, but the shape was one guy. What "conspiracy theory stuff" are you talking about?
  - notahacker 13y ago
    Most software bugs are, when described to the layman after the fact, pretty elementary, but at least structural engineers usually don't insist the software architect that wrote the initial specs for a project must have been stupid when the version the outsourced dev team releases crashes under certain input parameters.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      The software equivalent of this mistake would be spending millions of dollars building software targeting Linux when the customer needs to run it on Windows. It's not "certain input parameters", it's obvious environmental conditions that should have been considered at the outset. I would really like one of the naysayers in this thread to describe to me exactly how a mistake like this gets reasonably made. I keep getting replies saying that there are good reasons why something like this would happen, but nobody has actually given me one. There are no confounding factors in this case that invalidate the freshman physics calculation that tells you that this building design will melt things or light them on fire. There is no excuse for not doing said calculations when designing a curved glass building, especially when you already made the mistake on a previous building you designed. And there is no conceivable way you thought you mitigated the problem while actually failing to do so in a reasonable fashion.
      - notahacker 13y ago
mark-r 13y ago
What kind of "unexpected reasons" could possibly cause this problem? Perhaps they did a simulation but there was a bug in the software? If you read the article on the Las Vegas building, you'll see that they expected some kind of window coating to counteract the problem but found after the fact that it didn't work. There are 1000 different reasons why the actual outcome might not match up with initial projections. I think it's naive to assume that they didn't think about the problem at all. Edit: after reading some of the other comments, perhaps I'm the naive one. Interesting thread.
- mikeash 13y ago
  The window coating explanation makes no sense. You test that on individual panes before installing them and see how much light it really absorbs. Either the coating underperformed, in which case they should have caught it, or the coating performed to specification but wasn't specified to block enough light, in which case they should have caught it. I'd like to know at least one of these "1000 different reasons" why this could happen. Because I can't think of a single one, and nobody else has given me any....
  - jacobparker 13y ago
    I'd like to know at least one of these "1000 different reasons" why this could happen. Because I can't think of a single one, and nobody else has given me any.... You would have to ask someone who does this for a living. iOS and Rails developers are not qualified to speculate. Next time you ask "how stupid could they be?" the answer is "smarter than I am, apparently".
    - mikeash 13y ago
      On what basis do you make that statement, exactly? Nearly all architects go their entire career without building structures that concentrate the sun into a point hot enough to melt things. This architect has done it twice now. Sounds like he is doing something wrong, not that this is a problem inherent to the field.