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News: architect Rafael Viñoly has admitted he knew the facade of his curvy Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London would focus an intense beam of sunlight onto a neighbouring street, but says that he “didn’t realise it was going to be so hot”.

Speaking to Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright, Viñoly said that his curvaceous 37-storey tower at 20 Fenchurch Street was originally designed with horizontal sun louvres that would prevent a glare strong enough to melt the paint and bodywork of parked vehicles on Eastcheap Street, but that they were removed to cut costs.

“We made a lot of mistakes with this building,” he said, “and we will take care of it.”

The architect claims to have identified the problem during the design stages, but says he was without appropriate tools or software to analyse the precise effect.

“When it was spotted on a second design iteration, we judged the temperature was going to be about 36 degrees,” he said. “But it’s turned out to be more like 72 degrees. They are calling it the ‘death ray’, because if you go there you might die. It is phenomenal, this thing.”

He also suggested that the problem could be down to changing climate. “When I first came to London years ago, it wasn’t like this,” he said. “Now you have all these sunny days. So you should blame this thing on global warming too, right?”

This week developers installed a two-storey netted shield to cover the facade of the building, now nicknamed “Walkie Scorchie”, while city officials have suspended three parking bays until a more permanent solution can be found.

Reports first surfaced at the start of the week that the building was damaging vehicles. Since then it has been reported to have cracked pavement tiles, started a fire and even been used to fry an egg.

This isn’t the first time that Viñoly has had complaints about sun reflecting from one of his buildings. In 2010, guests at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas complained of scorched hair and melted drinks glasses.

“That was a completely different problem,” Viñoly told the paper, stating that the brief for that project had called for curvy towers. “We pointed out that would be an issue too, but who cares if you fry somebody in Las Vegas, right?”

The Walkie Talkie is scheduled to complete next year.

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Images of the Walkie Talkie are courtesy of Shutterstock.

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says Walkie Scorchie architect Viñoly appeared first on Dezeen.

News: the “death-ray” effect created by sunlight reflected off the glazed facade of Rafael Viñoly’s Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London were predicted over a year ago by a professional CGI artist, it emerged today as developers rush to install protective screens.

The artist, who goes by the forum username Bobdobbs, anticipated that the curvaceous facade of the 37-storey tower at 20 Fenchurch Street could at certain times of the year create light reflections up to 600% brighter that its surroundings buildings, using a simple 3D mock-up of the volume.

“A clear hot late September/October day may throw up some very interesting lighting effects,” he wrote on a thread at website SkyscraperCity. “I’m fairly confident that the difference, from measurement, is about 600% brighter! I know where I wouldn’t want to stand!”

Comparing the project to nearby skyscraper The Shard, which is reported to have dazzled train drivers, Bobdobbs added: “The Shard’s death ray will be nothing compared to this.”

The news emerges as developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf take emergency action to prevent more damage being caused by intense glare from the nicknamed “Walkie Scorchie”, which is said to have melted vehicles, cracked pavement tiles and even started a small fire.

“Following approval from the City of London, we will be erecting a temporary scaffold screen at street level on Eastcheap within the next 24 hours,” said a spokesperson. “This solution should minimise the impact on the local area over the next two to three weeks, after which time the phenomenon is expected to have disappeared.”

They added: “We are also continuing to evaluate longer-term solutions to ensure this issue does not recur in future.”

Philip Oldfield, a tall buildings expert from the University of Nottingham, has suggested that amendments to Rafael Viñoly’s initial concept could be to blame. “It seems the original design included small horizontal balconies on the south facade rather than the continuous glass facade as built now,” he told The Independent. “This would have surely mitigated any significant glare like we are seeing at the moment.”

Other preventative measures that could be taken include adding small fins to the exterior or applying a special coating that reduces the impact of the reflections.

This isn’t the first time that a building by the Uruguayan architect has prompted complaints about glare. In 2010, guests at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas complained of scorched hair and melted drinks glasses. The hotel has since used anti-reflective film, oversized plants and rows of umbrellas to fix the problem.

The unfinished skyscraper is not set to open until next year and will feature an elevated garden and observation deck that will be open to the public.

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Photograph of the Walkie Talkie is courtesy of Shutterstock.

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News: the developer behind Europe’s tallest residential towers has attacked “fake and insidious” press coverage of the project, after claims that the 47-storey skyscraper has been built without elevators went viral.

Rafael Ballesta, sales manager for the Edificio Intempo residential towers, described the media storm as “ridiculous” and said: “We are constructing the highest residential skyscraper in Europe so how is it possible to build without elevators?”

Dezeen was one of several publications to feature the story, which was originally reported by Spanish newspaper El Pais.

“The journalist from El Pais issued some fake news and everyone else just copy-and-pasted it,” Ballesta told Dezeen. “People must not believe this fake news”.

A Twitter account dedicated to the Edificio Intempo building, which is nearing completion in the Benidorm beach resort on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, has responded to some of the publications who reported the news by tweeting that it is false and its elevators are working.

Another tweet links to a document published by engineers Florentino Regalado & Asociados showing section views of the building, including elevator shafts.

Ballesta says the towers feature six “latest generation” elevators, with three installed in each of the twin towers.

A Spanish journalist who has visited the building posted on her website that she had ascended as far as the building’s 45th floor using its elevators and included a photo that claims to show the elevator’s unfinished operating panel.

The project’s website also features photos of lift doors within the building.

In its story on 20 July, El Pais reported that the building was originally designed with 20 storeys, but developers later decided to extend it to 47 storeys and neglected to allow the extra room required by a lift ascending over twice as far. This meant that the top half of the building would be inaccessible by elevator.

The twin 200 metre-tall building, designed by Roberto Perez Guerras Architects, claims to be Europe’s tallest residential building and is scheduled for completion in December 2013. Consisting of two slender towers joined at the top by an inverted conical structure, Edificio Intempo contains 269 luxury apartments, which are being marketed primarily to Russian buyers.

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Here are two new images of Zaha Hadid Architects’ proposed 215-metre-high residential skyscraper for Miami. 

The 60-storey One Thousand Museum tower will be located on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami, overlooking the new Museum Park and Biscayne Bay.

The structure will feature a fluid concrete exoskeleton, rising out of the spa pools on top of the podium to a helipad and aquatic centre at the summit.

Apartments will cost between $5 million and $15 million, including duplex homes, half-floor residences, full-floor penthouses and one duplex penthouse right at the top.

See more images in our earlier story about the project »

Herzog & de Meuron are also working on a residential tower in the nearby Sunny Isles area of Miami and we featured the latest images of their design plus a movie from the developers last week.

Elsewhere in Miami OMA has landed the commission to redesign the Miami Beach Convention Center and John Pawson has designed 26 high-end apartments for a new leisure complex at Miami Beach.

Zaha Hadid Architects unveiled designs for a spiralling car park in Miami in 2011. More recent projects by the firm include plans for an apartment block that will be constructed beside New York’s popular High Line park and an extension to the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Visualisations are by Catapult 13 Creative Studios.

More architecture and design by Zaha Hadid Architects »
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by Zaha Hadid Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

News: the topping-out ceremony for the Gensler-designed Shanghai Tower, the world’s second-tallest building, takes place in Shanghai tomorrow (Saturday).

The 632 metre-high tower has now reached its full height and is second only to the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, which measures 828 metres.

The topping-out ceremony, to be held at the construction site in the Lujiazui development zone in Shanghai, will be attended by Gensler founder Art Gensler and senior figures from the Chinese government.

The twisting form of the tower is the result of wind-tunnel tests and is designed to reduce wind load by 24% during typhoons.

The 121-storey tower will be divided into nine vertical zones, with retail at the bottom and hotels, cultural facilities and observation decks at the top. The zones in between will contain offices.

Shanghai Tower is due to open in 2014. It forms the centrepiece of the emerging Lujiazui high-rise district in Pudong, which is located on a bend of the Huangpu river opposite downtown Shanghai.

The building already towers over neighbouring buildings including the 421 metre-high, pagoda-shaped Jin Mao Tower by SOM, and the 492 metre-high Shanghai World Financial Center by Kohn Pedersen Fox.

Last summer, research by the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats found that nine of the twenty tallest buildings under construction in the world were in China.

Work briefly started earlier this month on what would be the tallest building on earth – the 838 metre-high Sky City in Changsha in central China, which its developers believe they can build in just seven months. However construction was abruptly postponed due to issues with safety certificates and building permits.

Here’s some text about Shanghai Tower from Gensler:

Shanghai Tower will anchor the city’s Lujiazui district, which has emerged as one of East Asia’s leading financial centers. Designed by a local team of Gensler architects to embody Shanghai’s rich culture, the 632-meter-high mixed-use building will complete the city’s super-highrise precinct. It is the most forward-looking of the three towers symbolizing Shanghai’s past, present, and future. The new tower takes inspiration from Shanghai’s tradition of parks and neighborhoods. Its curved façade and spiraling form symbolize the dynamic emergence of modern China. By incorporating sustainable best practices, Shanghai Tower is at the forefront of a new generation of super-highrise towers, achieving the highest level of performance and offering unprecedented community access.

Gensler’s vision for Shanghai Tower has taken tangible form after completion of the immense foundation. Soil conditions in Shanghai—a clay-based mixture typical of a river delta—meant supporting the tower on 831 rein- forced concrete bore piles sunk deep into the ground. For three days, a small army of workers assembled to complete the marathon, 60-hour continuous concrete pour. When the job was finished, more than 61,000 cubic meters of concrete had been used to create the six-meter-thick mat foundation.

The tower’s scale and complexity have created so many “firsts” for China’s construction industry that more than 100 expert panels have been established to analyze every aspect of the design. Workers are busy building forms for the concrete core and erecting the gigantic composite supercolumns—measuring 5 x 4 meters at the base and reinforced with steel plates that weigh 145 metric tons each—that will provide structural support for the tower. To carry the load of the trans- parent glass skin, Gensler designed an innovative curtain wall that is suspended from the mechanical floors above and stabilized by a system of hoop rings and struts. And the strategic division of the tower into nine vertical zones will supply the lifeblood of the building’s heating, cooling, water, and power throughout with less energy and at lower cost.

Gensler won the Shanghai Tower project in an invited multi-stage competition among leading international architects. What secured the win were the tower’s design and performance, and Gensler’s commitment to China. To refine the tower’s shape, Gensler’s team used a series of wind tunnel tests to simulate the region’s greatest natural force, the typhoon. Results produced a structure and shape that reduce wind loads by 24 percent—ultimately yielding a savings of $58 million in construction costs. A simple structure, public spaces within the double façade, and sky gardens based on Shanghai’s traditional open courtyards will make Shanghai Tower an unrivaled asset for the Lujiazui district.

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