Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Interim Crits

25 April 2012: Apologies to readers of this blog that we are still missing photos and reports from earlier dates. We have a Sustainable Tall Buildings page on Facebook and photos tend to go on there first:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sustainable-Tall-Buildings/197219710385859
We have reports to add for Feb 23, Mar 8, Mar 22, Mar 29 2012.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Hearst Tower visit

13 April 2012: During our New York field trip, we had the pleasure of visiting the Hearst Tower, New York's greenest skyscraper designed by Norman Foster. It was originally rated at LEED Gold, but now it is up and running and measured, it has been re-rated at LEED Platinum. Victor Liu arranged our visit, and we had a good introductory talk about the design features of the building. The atrium is a wonderful place to be in, with the great megastructure surrounded by the walls of the original Hearst Building, and it includes art exhibitions and a great little food court.
 Hearst took a similar view to the clients for Commerzbank in Frankfurt - which is that "this is our Home", and we want the best building, so it does not have to conform to conventional tall building economics, it has to be the best workplace with the greatest feeling of well being for the employees. There was only one architect for it - Norman!
Yichen, Victor, DNC, Anh, Wejha
Hearst has an entirely latticed megastructural frame

Friday, April 13, 2012

New York Isover site

13 April 2012: During our New York trip, we took a little diversion to look at the New York site that we have used for two years running. It was the Isover site in 2010, and we used it again in Autumn 2011. The site is to replace the ugly large concrete parking structure in front of 88 Greenwich St (residential tower behind the site).
   Here is Janet Jing Huang, one of our Sustainable Tall Buildings students beginning the long demolition process with a red umbrella.... it may take some time. 

Thursday, April 12, 2012

KPF visit in New York

11 April 2011: During the New York field trip, we visited the office of KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox) one of the leading architectural practices in the world, and very very important in the world of tall buildings. They are architects for the Heron Tower in London, and the Shanghai Financial centre.
    Their commitment to Sustainable Design is underlined by employing two specialist architects, Krista Raines and Gera Feigon who are involved in all projects, from day one. Their presence ensures that sustainable design thinking starts from the very first outline design, through to final completion and validation. There is a strong ethos in the practice that every project must achieve high LEED ratings.
    During the talk, they showed us slides of : Islin Metropark (major refurb); Boston design project with emphasis on shading (unbuilt) ; Minnesota student centre (emphasis on daylight and columns design) ; Unilever HQ London (rebuild behind facade); Hysan Place in Hong Kong (complex shape with breezeways through building); Endesa HQ in Madrid (major atrium design with ground exchange); Hudson Yards, NYC, north of Chelsea (neighbourhood and tower cluster built on deck above rail-lines); Lang Fang master plan (city of 20 million), trying to achieve energy balance, with energy, water, urban agriculture etc. (mentioned that they had done project for Djakarta as large as Manhattan).
After the talk, we had a tour of the office areas - they use the long side walls of the core as a running exhibition of the work of the practice. They also have a large model display space. 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Visit to New York April 2012

11 April 2012: The school offers field trips, and 31 students from Nottingham and Ningbo went to New York for a week from 9-16 April. There's a few Tall Building students in this photo, a few Urban Design students, and the remainder are students from Ningbo, China, doing the joint Architecture and Services Engineering course.
 (Its a trick photo, we stand in front of a blue screen and they put the building in later. We were on our way up to the observation balcony)
Enjoy this set of 360ยบ panoramic tours of Manhattan!
http://www.airpano.ru/files/Manhattan-New-York-Virtual-Tour/2-2

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Lunch at DNC House

3 April 2012: The term has ended, and we took the earliest opportunity to have a social gathering. Most of the Tall Building studio made it over to DNC's house in West Bridgford for an extended lunch. As usual, everybody brought a little something to eat, so there was plenty to go around. Some of us are looking forward to a New York field trip. 
Everybody is relieved to have got past the end of term crit. There are a few weeks now to recharge batteries, think about dissertation, and reflect on ways to advance the design project.
 Veronica, Phil, Sayali, Rishika, Zuzar, Udayan
DNC, Wezha, Ronssi, Noura, Deepika, Pelin and Alejandro