Archinect - News

On the elevator's role in our skyrocketing housing calculus

2024-07-10T11:22:00-04:00

Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is often of such low quality and at high cost. The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. [...] It’s become hard to shake the feeling that America has simply lost the capacity to build things in the real world, outside of an app.

Stephen Smith, through the New York nonprofit Center for Building in North America, has been exposing variables that undermine the housing market's intricate calculus in the form of building codes, cost of labor, zoning regulations, and the construction industry.

He says: "Elevators in North America have become over-engineered, bespoke, handcrafted and expensive pieces of equipment that are unaffordable in all the places where they are most needed. Special interests here have run wild with an outdated, inefficient, overregulated system. Accessibility rules miss the forest for the trees," adding, "The United States and Canada have also marooned themselves on a regulatory island for elevator parts and designs."

Last year, New York City became the most expensive construction market in the world, with an average cost of $506 per square foot, according to an analysis from Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

One of Manhattan’s art deco gems is slowly breaking down its tenants with persistent elevator malfunctions

2022-03-29T12:34:00-04:00

At 20 Exchange Place, the sheer height of the building has made the persistent outages particularly infuriating for residents, who can pay as much as $5,000 a month for a market-rate one-bedroom unit. Since November, the skyscraper has been plagued by long elevator outages that have turned daily life upside down and trapped residents with mobility issues inside their apartments. Elevator service is unpredictable and often nonexistent, for hours at a time, above the 15th floor.

The building’s owner DTH Capital says Con Edison is the culprit, but a spokesperson for the company told the Times there was “no indication” that the malfunction has nothing to do with its service or equipment. The problems are so bad that the building had to hire an elevator mechanic to be on call 24 hours in order to replace the system's operating boards, which DTH attempted unsuccessfully to buy in bulk.

Tenants in the 57-story tower at 20 Exchange Place are getting by buying two weeks of groceries at a time. Some have been given new apartments elsewhere in the area or have signed non-disclosure agreements with the owners. Others are afraid to talk on the record, while still more either broke their leases or else wound up climbing a mountain of lament — including a 28-year-old nurse who thought she scored a deal during the Covid boom (“I’m a young, in-shape person, so I can do it. But it’s miserable.”)

“It’s a privilege that we are able to afford to live here, but we did not sign...

The future of elevators: Biometrics, on-demand services, and smart repairs

2019-08-14T09:00:00-04:00

As high-rises keep growing taller, more connected and more efficient, there is increasing pressure on Otis and rival elevator companies Schindler, Kone and Thyssenkrupp to reduce wait times for rides and to personalize experiences—for instance, by allowing riders to call elevators from smartphones.

Neil Green, Otis Elevator Company's chief digital officer, discusses the future of elevator design and functionality with The Wall Street Journal.

According to Green, the future of vertical transportation is set to include a larger focus on digital and smart technologies, including advanced detection systems for needed repairs, app-based elevator calling services, and biometrics to help ferry passengers to their desired destinations without the need to wait.

Green tells The Wall Street Journal, "I can envision a future where I simply walk up to the building, it recognizes who I am from biometrics, it knows that I work on the 10th floor, and it points me to the specific elevator car."

Chicago's Aon Center will have tallest exterior glass elevator in North America

2019-03-19T13:13:00-04:00

In the next few years, Chicago's iconic Aon Center will be getting a shiny, new glass-sheathed exterior elevator that is set to be the tallest of its kind in North America. Designed by locally based Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), the elevator — which will be tucked into the northwest corner of the tower — is part of the upcoming “The Observatory at Aon Center”. Construction begins this spring.

Courtesy of Solomon Cordwell Buenz.

At street level, visitors will first go through the geometric entry pavilion, which will contain ticketing functions, retail, and entertainment. Visitors will then hop into a pair of glass-walled double-deck elevators, which will transport them 1,000 vertical feet up the 83-story building in just about 60 seconds. The glass shaft will be anchored at every fourth floor of the tower.

Courtesy of Solomon Cordwell Buenz.

Once visitors reach the public observatory at the top of the tower, they'll be greeted by a panoramic view of th...

Elevator plunges 85 stories in former John Hancock Center after cable breaks

2018-11-20T13:15:00-05:00

Six people, including a pregnant woman, have plummeted 84 floors in an elevator inside one of Chicago’s tallest skyscrapers, only learning afterwards how far they had fallen. [...] One of several cables holding the elevator broke and the car fell rapidly, landing somewhere near the 11th floor.

Everyone's worst nightmare became a near fatal reality for six people trapped inside an elevator after falling 85 stories inside Chicago's iconic 875 North Michigan Avenue tower, formerly known as the John Hancock Center.

According to the Chicago Fire Department, the rescue operation inside the nearly 50-year-old skyscraper was unusually difficult: "It was a pretty precarious situation where the cables that broke were on top of the elevator. We couldn’t do an elevator-to-elevator rescue. We had to breach a wall on the 11th floor of the parking garage in order to open up the elevator doors."

Thankfully no serious injuries were reported.

New Yorkers with elevator phobia share how they've coped with their lifelong fear

2018-10-05T18:26:00-04:00

The elevator-phobic people of New York City are almost our own subculture [...] I’ve fantasized at times about a kind of utopia: a gleaming glass city free of elevators. But for now I, just like Gabriella and Rachel and Kevin and Nakia, still live in New York, and still constantly have to force myself to enter slim or squat boxes of despair. Why haven’t we left? What strange fate have we dealt ourselves, to live in a place full of hellscapes.

Having a deeply ingrained fear of elevators while living in a vertical landscape like New York City — which has over 60,000 elevators, by the way — isn't easy for some folks, like writer Amos Barshad. He and other fellow New Yorkers he interviews talk about how their phobia began, their search for answers to why they still have this fear, and how they manage it in their everyday lives.

Japanese scientists to run space elevator experiment in orbit

2018-09-05T13:31:00-04:00

A team made up of researchers at Shizuoka University and other institutions is set to conduct an experiment in September for a project to develop a "space elevator" connecting Earth and a space station by cable -- attracting attention as a possible dream vehicle for space travel and cargo shipments in the future.

The idea of a space elevator has been around since 1895 when Russian/Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (inspired by the newly erected Eiffel Tower in Paris) envisioned a very long cable running from earth's equator to space beyond geostationary orbit with a counterweight at the top to offset our planet's gravity—maintaining an upright tether, under tension, to run cars up and down.

Chicago's Willis Tower is getting new elevators

2018-05-08T15:36:00-04:00

The 16,000 people who work in and visit Willis Tower each day could soon be spending less time on their elevator rides in Chicago's tallest building. A five-year project to upgrade the tower's 83 elevator shafts -- and replace 97 passenger cabs, as some shafts have two-level elevators -- will start in June, according to the building's owner, Blackstone Group's Equity Office, and elevator firm Otis.

This major upgrade is expected to significantly reduce trip times as well as energy consumption (by as much as 30-35%), according to Equity Office and Otis.

The 110-story Willis Tower—once ranked as the world's tallest building for nearly 25 years—hasn't undergone such an enormous overhaul since it was completed in 1973 as Sears Tower.

The sideways elevator that will revolutionize building has arrived

2017-07-11T13:06:00-04:00

Until now, architects have had to design around the elevator shafts, which can comprise 40 percent of a building's core. Multi could allow them to install elevators almost anywhere, including the perimeter. Strong magnets on every Multi car work with a magnetized coil running along the elevator hoistway’s guide rails to make the cars float. Turning these coils on and off creates magnetic fields strong enough to pull the car in various directions.

After three years of work, ThyssenKrupp, a company synonymous with elevators, is testing the Multi in a German tower and finalizing the safety certification. Zooming up, down, left, right, and diagonally the new elevator was just sold to a residential building under construction in Berlin, and is expected to be sold to other developers soon.

"Multi moves to-and-fro through exchangers, which you can think of as sophisticated railway switches that guide the cars. Bearings called "slings" mounted to every elevator car allow it to change direction—say, move to the left, or even go diagonally—while keeping the car level with the ground. “The cabin never moves during an exchange,” company CEO Patrick Bass says.

Image courtesy of ThyssenKrupp

Designed to move 1,000 to 1,400 feet per minute, far slower than the 1,968 fpm experienced in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the new elevator prioritizes volume over speed. (Speeds over 2,000 feet per minute lead to ear problems and nausea.) Free of the cable...

Google's infamous 1000 floor elevator design question

2017-06-23T17:52:00-04:00

Potential employers don’t pose design challenges with the expectation that you blow them away with your ingenuity or clever solutions. They want to see if you ask probing questions that uncover constraints, or if you rush to the whiteboard without deeper understanding.

Design challenges are often used by companies to asses potential employees’ problem solving skills. This Google interview challenge in particular seems to have captivated the design community

—How do you design an interface for a 1000 floor elevator?

Dozens of designers around the world have attempted solving the problem by designing elevator's interface. They've all failed because of presuming too many variables—the user, the environment, the purpose... The answer to the question is that there is simply not enough information provided.

How elevators could fix the affordable housing crisis

2016-06-17T15:32:00-04:00

Elevators are [the] transportation breakthrough that made steel frame construction genuinely useful... tall apartment buildings make it possible for there to be plenty of housing for everyone even where land is scarce. If elevators were more widely used, they could unleash not just a boom of new construction in America's most expensive areas but an important secondary boom of higher wages for workers at all skill levels.

Related on Archinect:

World's tallest elevator tower is going up

2016-05-12T12:37:00-04:00

Elevator manufacturer Otis will build the world’s tallest elevator test tower in Shanghai, as part of the company’s bid to develop lifts for skyscrapers in China and around the world. The elevator test tower will be 270 metres high and it is an anticipated to be the tallest above-ground test tower in the world upon completion, Otis said on Tuesday.

In addition to being the home of the tallest building in the world with Gensler's Shanghai Tower, in 2018 Shanghai will also have the distinction of having the globe's tallest elevator test tower, which, to judge from Otis' renderings, could be described generously as occupying the extreme end of functionalism.

Meanwhile, in other sky-is-the-limit project news:

Newly patented space elevator could take astronauts 12 miles up into the stratosphere

2015-08-24T17:20:00-04:00

Canadian space and defense company Thoth Technology is attempting to make reaching the stratosphere as simple as riding an elevator up a tower about 23 times taller than the world’s tallest building. The Thoth space elevator patent, approved by the US patent office on July 21, specifies that the tower could be built on any “planetary surface,” (i.e. not just Earth), a sign that Thoth is thinking pretty far ahead. [...] the top of the tower will serve as a rocket launch site.

In slightly more recent-technology elevator news: