Archinect - News

Concerns after high winds cause windows to shatter on San Francisco towers

2023-03-29T12:47:00-04:00

A city official in San Francisco is calling for extensive reports into the integrity of facades in the city’s downtown after a recent storm caused windows from multiple high-rises to be damaged.

According to the San Francisco Department of Buildings and Inspections, four buildings in downtown San Francisco suffered glass failure during a high-wind storm last week. The Millennium Tower suffered one broken window, as did 1400 Mission and 50 California, while the Salesforce East building suffered one broken window on every floor from floors 11 through 30.

As a result of the glazing failures, shards of glass were scattered across Mission Street, posing a hazard to pedestrians below. City officials have since directed building managers to secure impacted windows and commission professionals to ensure all buildings are safe, stable, and secure.

In the meantime, San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin told ABC7 ...

Building codes saved this Florida town from Hurricane Ian’s ravages

2022-10-03T17:30:00-04:00

Once the storm passed, the sight of Punta Gorda may have surprised some people. While it had typical post-hurricane storm debris, downed trees and several flooded streets, a number of homes and buildings appeared largely intact and many showed only minimal damage to their exteriors. How is it possible that the coastal city wasn’t more devastated by a storm that ranks among the most powerful to ever strike the United States? One major factor, according to some experts, are modern building code

While other southwest Florida communities like Fort Myers were devastated, Punta Gorda, a town of about 20,000, was saved thanks to strident code changes enacted in the wake of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Charley twelve years later.

“It’s a demonstration that updated building codes really work,” University at Buffalo architecture professor Nicholas Rajkovich told the Post. Stricter structural load continuity, impact-resistant windows, and hurricane shutters are all hallmarks of a so-called “modern” code whose continued absence the AIA warned against earlier in the summer. Florida alone has an estimated $3.7 trillion worth of properties that are susceptible to storm and wind damage, making the need to further adapt lessons offered by the survival of Punta Gorda's Harvard Jolly-restored Charlotte High School imperative in the minds of experts statewide.

Previously on Archinect: The building industry is preventing resiliency efforts in areas increasingly affected by deadly st...

Chicago could become site of the Great Lakes' first offshore wind farm

2022-09-10T09:00:00-04:00

If state Rep. Marcus Evans has his way, Chicago will enter the race to build the first offshore wind farm on the Great Lakes. Evans has introduced a bill that lays the groundwork for a proposed wind farm in Lake Michigan, about 10 miles from the shores of the Southeast Side. The bill sets up a fund that would help the state to compete for federal money, including $230 million for port infrastructure projects available from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Evans introduced the bill, the Illinois Rust Belt to Green Belt Pilot Program Act, in January. The legislation would establish a path toward creating the offshore wind farm by allowing the state to apply for federal infrastructure funds. The proposal promises to create over 1,200 jobs, primarily occupied by underrepresented populations, an aim bolstered by its potential location near Black and Latino communities. The bill has since been referred to a House committee.

Illinois will face competition from Ohio and New York state in its quest to be the first home of an offshore wind farm via the Great Lakes as the two states are developing plans to respectively establish farms in Lake Erie.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the initiative has garnered support from local community groups, however, there remain reservations due to concerns over whether the promise to reserve jobs created from the...

O2 Arena badly damaged as high winds wreak havoc in London

2022-02-18T12:34:00-05:00

Social media is buzzing about the unreal damage to the O2 Arena's PTFE-coated glass fiber roof, which tore off during a live performance in the early morning hours Friday. A spokesperson for London’s Fire Brigade told the Evening-Standard there is no “actual collapse” of the roof or structural damage to the 22-year-old arena otherwise. More significant buildings across the capital were damaged by the storm’s 70+ mile per hour winds, including Herzog & de Meuron’s Laban Centre, which lost considerable parts of its facade.

More and more of the Dome is being shredded pic.twitter.com/EUgyH2ryvK
— Ben Hubbard (@BJFHubbard) February 18, 2022

The scene is reminiscent of the collapse that happened to Montreal's Olympic Stadium the same winter that the O2 (then called the "Millennium Dome") opened. The Rogers Stirk Harbour-designed arena was originally meant to be a temporary structure before undergoing a conversion into a full-service entertainment venue in 2005. A Fugees reunion concert th...

New York City and State are elevating offshore wind farm investments

2021-10-15T12:39:00-04:00

Late last month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) announced a 15-year, $191 million plan to make New York City a leader in the offshore wind industry.

Called the Offshore Wind Vision (OSW) plan, it ensures the city meets its climate goals of 100-percent clean electricity by 2040 and carbon neutrality by 2050. The investment aims to create over 13,000 jobs and generate $1.3 billion in average annual investment; ensure 40% of job and investment benefits are directed toward women, minorities, and environmental justice communities; and reduce 34.5 million tons of CO2, which is the equivalent of removing nearly 500,000 cars from roads for 15 years, as noted in New York City’s press release.

The OSW plan is focused on three core areas: sites and infrastructure, ensuring the development of “best-in-class” infrastructure that will support the construction and operation of offshore wind farms; business and workforce, prepari...

Supertall swaying could soon be a thing of the past

2021-09-28T20:18:00-04:00

Although far from soothing, advances in materials science and construction technology, along with experience, are starting to help residents’ day-to-day comfort levels climb along with buildings’ heights. Experts are constantly refining ideal structural shapes, masses, and weights, as well as more obscure features like the multiton machines known as tuned mass dampers, which are designed to limit a building’s sway.

Residents of Rafael Vinoly’s billion dollar 432 Park tower have begun to pursue legal remedies against the property developers over the building’s annoying sway and a host of other abject failures. Case studies, in addition to advancements in building science could mean a future with fewer problems. Bloomberg CityLab has more on the nauseating lessons of supertall developments here.

Norwegian company developing 1,000-foot-tall offshore wind turbine farms that could power 80,000 homes each

2021-08-23T10:37:00-04:00

A Norwegian company is developing a new technology for floating, offshore wind turbine farms. Unlike traditional wind farms, these are organized in stacked, square grids, standing nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

The grids would stand at 1,000 feet tall, composed of multiple smaller turbines in a staggered formation atop a floating platform anchored to the ocean floor. Founded in 2017, Wind Catching Systems, in collaboration with Aibel AS as the main contractor and holding companies Ferd AS and North Energy ASA, aims to commercialize this wind catching technology.

The company claims that its grids will increase efficiency, reduce land use by 80%, and reduce production costs, allowing the system to be immediately competitive with other traditional grid prices. In addition, the team states that one wind catching unit will be able to generate five times the annual energy output of the world’s largest single turbines and could produce enough electricity for 80,000 European househol...

Video of NYC's Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge facing high winds goes viral

2020-12-08T20:07:00-05:00

Earlier this month, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was closed due to weather. However, a video posted to Twitter of the bridge undergoing heavy winds went viral due to the sights and sounds recorded.

Bridges are built to pass strict safety and construction standards and be capable of withstanding various weight loads and weather conditions. Yet, in this case, the high winds that swept through the bridge created a sight that could have come out of a sci-fi film. On top of the dense fog cloaking the bridge, the video below left many viewers ready to share their thoughts.

"Suspension bridges — particularly the longest span in North America — are engineered to be flexible, and any movements on the bridge were within its safety standards," shares MTA Spokesperson Aaron Donovan. "The MTA's weather event safety protocols were activated early and worked as designed with no structural damage, no major vehicular accidents, and no injuries resulting from Monday's high winds."

London to regulate wind design for new skyscrapers

2019-08-20T09:00:00-04:00

Tougher building rules for skyscrapers have been drawn up by the City of London because of concerns that a high-rise, urban microclimate will generate winds capable of knocking over cyclists and pedestrians. Developers will have to provide more comprehensive safety assessments of how proposed buildings will affect people on street level, with more robust testing of roadways and pavements using detailed scale models in wind tunnels and computer simulations.

After a series of high-profile skyscraper design controversies, including documented incidents of pedestrians being knocked off their feet and cyclists being pushed sideways into the path of vehicles due to strong skyscraper-generated winds, London is moving to regulate the wind-driven impacts of new high-rise towers in the city.

Moving forward, the city will require tower projects to meet a tougher set of wind regulations at the start of the design development phase, according to The Guardian. Those tests will be coupled with later “micro-level” examinations of a given tower’s design that will test the magnitude and degree of wind generated by the forms of new skyscrapers, as measured from “36 wind directions, using separate consultants for computer and physical simulations,” according to The Guardian.

Under the new rules, the speed of downdrafts created by new towers will be capped at 18 miles per hour. Measured speeds at that level and above will be classified as being “uncomf...

The world's largest offshore wind farm is now operational in the Irish Sea

2018-09-06T15:43:00-04:00

The world’s biggest offshore windfarm has officially opened in the Irish Sea, amid warnings that Brexit could increase costs for future projects. Walney Extension, off the Cumbrian coast, spans an area the size of 20,000 football pitches and has a capacity of 659 megawatts, enough to power the equivalent of 590,000 homes. The project is a sign of how dramatically wind technology has progressed in the past five years since the previous biggest, the London Array, was finished.

The Walney Extension is made up of 87 turbines and has a total capacity of 659 MW, enough to power almost 600,000 homes in the UK. This makes it now the largest operational offshore wind farm, however with wind farm supersizing along the British coastline it may not hold the record for long.

A 714MW is set to be up and running in 2020, while Ørsted itself is planning 1,200MW and 1,800MW farms off the Yorkshire coast. Currently, offshore wind farms provide nearly a tenth of the UK's electricity.

Cavalry 360° imitates forgotten sounds amidst quintessential English landscape

2017-08-26T04:00:00-04:00

Last month, Cavalry 360°, a vast site-specific musical instrument designed by NEON opened on the banks of the North Tyne, UK. The structure uses the force of 32 wind turbines to create an ever-changing sound of the cavalry moving across the landscape—horse’s hooves hitting the ground.

Arranged in a circular form to allow people to step into the work, Cavalry 360° measures 3.5 meters high and 12 meters across. In the setting of a quintessential English landscape, the work seeks to connect the visitor to the place's long history, manifested in the preserved walls of the Roman cavalry fort. The constantly altering in direction and rhythm sound is created by beaters, the number of which represents the 500 horse that used to inhabit the site.

Photography: Lightly Frozen / English Heritage / Anthony Chappel-Ross.

Kevin Booth, Senior Curator at English Heritage, noted, "It is designed to connect the viewer with the environment, to invite people to look through the work at the landscape bey...

Chicago's new Studio Gang-designed tower to have a blow-through floor

2017-07-24T14:25:00-04:00

...So today's engineers battle not only the force of gravity but the the whirling pockets of wind, known as vortices, that can cause towers to shake or vibrate. Failure to do so would make the motion of the building — or "acceleration," as engineers call it — uncomfortably noticeable.

Tunnel tests for Chicago's future third-tallest skyscraper showed that the plan for the building—three thin, interconnected high-rises designed by Studio Gang—would not be able to withstand high winds. According to the engineers, the design for the Vista tower "would result in building occupants feeling ill and possibly afraid for their safety," Chicago's zoning administrator, Patricia Scudiero, wrote in an April 26 letter to Jack George, a lawyer for project's developers.

To resolve that flaw, the developers requested — and the city okayed — a change to the already-approved plan for the building: the 83rd floor of the 98-story, 1,198-foot East Wacker Drive tower will now be an empty space that Chicago's famous winds can blow through. The blow-through floor, a facade opening, will serve as a vent to relieve wind pressure.

Vista Tower skyline Image courtesy of Magellan Development Group

To further weave the floor into the tower, vertical bands present on the rest of the facade will e...

Calatrava's megatall Dubai tower: engineers complete wind tests and seismic studies

2016-07-28T14:05:00-04:00

[...] has completed advanced wind tunnel tests on The Tower at Dubai Creek Harbour, which is set to be 100 metres taller than the 828-metre Burj Khalifa when complete. Emaar said the wind tests were crucial in defining the final height and design aspects, while the project’s Spanish-Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava Valls added that they "were an important component in the structural design stage, and we have deployed innovative engineering techniques to confirm the strength of the new icon".

The Tower at Dubai Creek Harbour project previously in the Archinect news:

Walkie Talkie Tower summons the elements again — this time it's wind!

2015-07-09T14:30:00-04:00

The City of London Corporation has promised a more "rigorous" assessment of developers' predictions of ground winds, following complaints about strong gusts outside the 20 Fenchurch Street Building, better known as the Walkie Talkie. "I almost got blown over the other day walking up past the building," a sales assistant working nearby said earlier this year. "When I got around the corner it was fine. I was scared to go back."

It's not the tower's first run-in with the laws of physics:

First Texas town makes longterm plans to switch to solar and wind energy

2015-03-30T20:45:00-04:00

Because of its size and intense radiation, Texas leads the nation in solar energy potential, but the solar industry has long struggled to get a foothold in the state... and solar energy currently makes up a tiny percentage of the state’s energy portfolio. That’s beginning to change. Improving technology has driven down the price of solar power, making it more competitive with other resources — even without incentives, developers say.

The municipal utility of Georgetown, a Texan city of about 55,000, recently signed a 25-year contract with SunEdison to buy 150 megawatts of solar power as well as 144 megawatts of wind power from the EDF Renewables wind farm through 2039 -- reportedly being the first city-owned utility to take action on such a plan (and not long after the end of former Texas governor Rick Perry's tenure). While eco-conscious benefits were taken into account, Georgetown signed the deal primarily for financial reasons.

Supercomputing project simulates architecture's influence on urban microclimates

2015-03-24T13:24:00-04:00

A research team from the Mechanical Engineering department at University of Utah is using high-performance computing resources from XSEDE to instantaneously and accurately simulate how infrastructure elements, such as parks, buildings, and parking lots, as well as their specifications and variations, affect air characteristics and quality in urban settings.

When Buildings Howl: A Primer on Architecture That Whistles

2013-12-05T15:19:00-05:00

On stormy days and windy nights, Tribeca residents say their neighborhood is filled with a strange, high-pitched whistling sound coming from the redeveloped World Trade Center site. It's an inopportune location for howling (although, really, where is?), but it's hardly the first building to surprise its neighbors by humming or whistling. [...] But just to be clear? It's not haunted. Port Authority's rep told Pix 11 he hopes ghost stories won't "become part of the dialogue."