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. — Bloomberg
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.
5 Comments
Supertall superlux towers are nauseating without being in them.
WHAT??? You don't like giant penises built on the pretext of density and sustainability?
Aren't tuned mass dampeners a staple of supertalls for decades? Steinway and Central Park Tower aren't that much more recent than 432 for tech advances in the meantime to have alleviated the problems of a super thin supertall, though they may have benefited from the experience.
From the Bloomberg article:
Viñoly didn’t have any outsize concern for those with a particular fear of heights. He simply knew that his ultraluxury apartment building, the unofficial team captain of Midtown Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row, was going to sway like crazy in the wind. “If you saw the facade, you’d have not one, but two heart attacks, because the thing does move,” Viñoly said during a lecture while the skyscraper was under construction. “Don’t tell the tenants.”
Maybe don’t go living in a supertall if you have a fear of heights...I have zero sympathy for the super rich that can afford living in such buildings.
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