
Glare from London 'fryscraper' blamed for melting cars - dsr12
http://news.yahoo.com/glare-london-skyscraper-melted-jaguar-133036022.html
======
aqme28
_" The developers said the phenomenon was caused by 'the current elevation of
the sun in the sky', and that as Britain heads into autumn the problem should
disappear."_

Thus solving the problem once and for all.

~~~
wil421
Typical corporate response: its not our fault its the elevation of the sun.
Once the sun decides to move it will not be a problem.

How about they design a building right. If the 4 story condos I lived in
previously were designed to be facing North and South so the sun didnt heat
them up as much during the day. I would think a massive 37 floor building
project in London would have taken into account the position of the sun as
well.

~~~
mseebach
No, it's a very measured and pragmatic response. It even struck me as
something an engineer would write. Explaining the conditions leading to a
problem is not evading responsibility.

The test, of course, will be whether they will be using the coming 12 months
to figure out a solution and applying it so this won't happen again next time
there's sun in September. I think they will, since torching things is
generally not a good idea, and also liability hell.

> How about they design a building right.

Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an
unexpected way, you've never build anything.

It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing
that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate
way.

~~~
wil421
>It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing
that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate
way.

Any kid with a magnifying class can tell you what curved class can do with
light. My point was that if building projects take in account which way the
sun will move in the sky, then they should take into account what the sun
might do when it hits the building.

> Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in
> an unexpected way, you've never build anything.

You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. It is
quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially
in a mild climate like London. The fact remains that if it can mess a Jaguar
up what happens when the sun rays are concentrated into a flat across the
street that may have a small child or elderly person who may not be to leave
the room when it starts getting hot.

~~~
VladRussian2
>You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this.

as it was already mentioned this architect had already built death ray
building in Las Vegas

>It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars,
especially in a mild climate like London.

Sun's potential energy flux on the Earth's surface, be it Las Vegas or London,
is 1KWt per m2 of the surface _perpendicular_ to the flux. So given clear day
and good angle (close to perpendicular) of a building to the Sun's light, the
building will be beaming back significant part of that 1KWt/m2.

~~~
sergiosgc
SI pedantic, I know, but: What in the name of Tesla is a KWt? Perchance you
meant KW?

~~~
beedogs
yazmeya: your account appears as [dead] (aka hellbanned).

------
arscan
What I find the most amazing about this whole thing is that it was designed by
the same architect as the "death ray" building in Las Vegas. You would think
they would have learned from their mistake.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/architect-behind-the-
walkie-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/architect-behind-the-walkie-
talkie-building-2013-9)

~~~
moomin
Yeah, it's hard to describe it as unforeseeable when it's happened to you
before and is readily modelable.

~~~
johnchristopher
The guardian states this phenomenon is difficult to model:
[http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2013/sep/0...](http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2013/sep/03/walkie-
talkie-death-ray-buildings-heat)

~~~
berkut
It's not - given an accurate geometry model and reflective window material,
it'd be really easy to use a raytracer to test this:

* Renderers like Maxwell handle caustics nicely, and you could get away with rough photon-mapping (instead of time-consuming but very accurate MLT)

* Most renderers have very accurate physical sky light models which accurately model the intensity and position of the sun in the sky based on time of day and long/lat coords.

It'd be easy to python script a run of renders for each minute in the day (10
seconds for a render) over the next 5 years and then run an analysis of the
rendered image for intensity on the ground. Just set the ground material to
not be lit by any diffuse GI rays or direct lighting, and it would literally
just render out the reflected sun on the ground (or off other buildings if you
wanted to do it REALLY accurately).

It'd be time consuming and CPU intensive to do the rendering for all that:
2,630,880 renders for each minutes for 5 years, but you could probably work
out an envelope you could skip (definitely the night time) after doing the
first year.

7308 hours render time for the full 24-hour period for 5 years. But do-able,
and very parallel over multiple machines.

~~~
sampo
You know, indirect lighting surely doesn't melt plastic, so you absolutely
don't need Metropolis Light Transport here. And also you don't need to use
photon maps. The computations to map the intensity of specular reflections
from the building's windows would the equivalent to creating a photon map on a
scene, not using the photon map to render a complete scene.

~~~
berkut
What? It's the indirect reflection of the sun, specularly reflected (and
focused) off the building.

You need the light source (sun) reflected onto the ground (or whereever it's
reflected) from off the building.

You can't use standard path-tracing / ray tracing for that, as that traces
rays from the camera outwards, and wouldn't show the caustics (well, you might
be lucky and get one or two fireflies, but that wouldn't be the result needed
for analysis).

At the very least, you'd need BDPT. Photon mapping would be a much faster (but
cruder) solution.

~~~
lutusp
Basically what you're saying is you need classic ray-tracing from light
sources, such as one can get with Pov-Ray and similar old-school ray-tracing
programs.

~~~
berkut
Well, I'd define classic as standard "from camera" outwards.

POV Ray does classic (which won't give you what you need as it doesn't handle
caustics) or photon mapping which will.

Bi-directional path tracing (tracing rays from both the camera and lights in
the scene and joining the respective light paths in the middle), and
Metropolis Light Transport (a progressive variation of BDPT) are the most
accurate, but are often slow to converge to a noise-free result, mainly due to
the fact they do handle caustics (reflections of bright light focal patterns)
accurately, which introduces noise (over the standard GI noise).

But photon mapping would give reasonable results in a few seconds.

~~~
lutusp
> Well, I'd define classic as standard "from camera" outwards.

Fair enough. I was thinking of optical ray tracing, not graphic ray tracing.
In optical ray tracing the point is to analyze the paths of light beams
through lenses and from mirrors, not the POV of a camera necessarily.

I've been able to get pretty useful optical ray tracing out of Pov-Ray:

[http://www.arachnoid.com/raytracing/csg.html](http://www.arachnoid.com/raytracing/csg.html)
(note the animation toward the bottom of the page).

~~~
berkut
Yeah, I work in the VFX industry, so I'm a bit biased :)

Cool - actually, that would be a lot less computationally expensive (assuming
you just modelled the sun as a disc) tracing it backwards without any GI at
all. Photon mapping's pretty similar though, you've just got a final gather
process at the end of sending out the light rays. The difference is photon
mapping records all the hits to all surfaces. If you limited it to specular
ones (at least for the first ray bounce) you'd probably have something very
similar.

~~~
sampo
This is what I tried to say 5 or 6 messages ago, when I first replied to you.

------
mhandley
I went over there with the kids this lunchtime - pretty amazing heat focused
into the street. Lots of journalists and TV news crews around, including one
frying an egg. My youngest son found the heat too much, and ran down the
street screaming "I'm burning, I'm burning!", so naturally the press then
converged on us...

The funny thing is that the focal point is literally just round the corner
from the Monument which indicates where the great fire of London started. What
they really need now is a roof of photovoltaic panels along the pavement, and
they can really cash in on it.

Here's what it looked like today:
[https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/375265729060163584/p...](https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/375265729060163584/photo/1)

~~~
toyg
That's what I thought: Free energy! Tourist attraction!

But then again, in two weeks we'll be back to grey skies, and we only get a
real summer once every decade, so...

------
samatman
For Bay Areans who would like to experience this phenomenon for yourselves,
head on down to Lake Merrit. At the right time of day, the Cathedral of
Sauron[1] will send blinding beams of light right into traffic. Fun times.

Also known as the Cathedral of "Christ, my eyes!"

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Light](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Light)

~~~
wmeredith
I'm not a religious person, but I would be intrigued to hear Jesus Christ's
thoughts on a $190 million church...

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so
unlike your Christ." -Mahatma Gandhi

~~~
Dove
_I would be intrigued to hear Jesus Christ 's thoughts on a $190 million
church_

As would we all. But I'll say this, the Christian relationship with money and
with power is strange and counterintuitive, and the numbers don't generally
add up the way a humanist would want them to. For example, the obvious
argument -- that's a lot of money, it could be used to help the poor! -- was
tried on Jesus once, and didn't carry much weight:

    
    
        Matthew 26:6-13
    
        While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the 
        Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very 
        expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he 
        was reclining at the table.
        
        When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why 
        this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been 
        sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
        
        Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you 
        bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to 
        me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will 
        not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my 
        body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell 
        you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the 
        world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of 
        her.”
    

For a more obvious example, take Jesus' death itself. His ministry lasted a
short three years -- imagine what he could have done, what he could have
accomplished, had he lived a full life! He could have overseen the founding of
his church. Made it as powerful (or not) as he liked. Taught us so much more.
Healed so many more people. He gave all of that up, for gains that are . . .
suspiciously spiritual in nature.

But that's God's way. It can seem sideways and backwards sometimes if you
don't know him, and sometimes even if you do. He seems more interested in what
the process of caring for the poor does to people than in absolute increase in
worldwide living standards. More interested in what being and seeing a martyr
does to people than in saving his devoted servants from the flames. More
interested in HOW the problems of this world are overcome -- us AND him, not
just one or the other -- than in how fast they are overcome.

That doesn't excuse expensive cathedrals, but it may help explain why the
argument about them isn't straightforward. Things are complicated, and not
always what they appear. I know "God works in mysterious ways" can be seen as
an excuse not to explain _anything_ , but honestly, just the documented ways
we already know he's worked are much, much weirder than building something
beautiful to inspire key people.

If that all sounds like sophistry, I can't disagree that it kind of is. I
myself am critical of robes and trappings and cathedrals. It smells a bit too
much like materialism for me, just as icons smell a bit too much like
idolatry. I know, Catholics would say it isn't, but I'm still suspicious. I
know, God might have his reasons, and he can tell you to do anything he likes,
but I still wonder. Are they acting on words of prophecy, or just habits and
best intentions?

And then there's the issue of appearances. When the world looks at a $190
million church, do you think they see love for God, a tribute to holiness? I
guarantee you they see greed and pride. That's not something to take lightly.

So yeah, I don't approve either . . . but it's complicated.

~~~
icebraining
Well, the divine part is lost on me, but when I think of the churches,
cathedrals and convents of my country (Portugal), I can't help but be glad
that our kings did decide to pay for their construction; they're just
fantastic works of art.

And in a way, it protects them from destruction; even as we become less
religious (and we are), we still pay a lot to conserve and restore them, which
I doubt would happen if they were just four blank walls and a cross.

That said, I have some doubts the above mentioned cathedral will be regarded
anywhere near our Manueline monasteries in centuries to come.

------
adrow
Apparently someone also predicted this would happen a year ago using a
computer model.

[http://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/04/cgi-artist-predicted-
walkie...](http://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/04/cgi-artist-predicted-walkie-
scorchie-effect-a-year-ago/)

------
willyt
I'm an Architect and I have worked on large projects in London, although not
this one thankfully[0], so I thought people might like to know how the process
of designing a building like this works.

A developer hires an international 'starchitect' like Viñoly to design them an
office block because the architects reputation for design helps them to get
away with a larger building on the site and therefore get more net lettable
area for their investment in land.

I don't know anyone who works for Vinoly, I've no idea what it's like to work
for him, but I know other people who have worked in similar 'gesture
architecture' practices and this is how it usually plays out:

The big boss will do a nice sketch of how he thinks a walkie talkie shaped
skyscraper (or whatever shape is in fashion in the office) will fit on the
site and then hand it off to a more junior member of staff to solve all the
real problems. Meanwhile, he will have to go back to the international
lecture/meet/greet circuit that pulls in the jobs and maintains their
reputation for world class architecture.

The project team will then usually have a very tight deadline to produce the
initial design, probably mostly drawn up by a team of recent architecture
graduates who would be pretty low paid[1], and who will almost always end up
working very long hours and weekends unpaid overtime to meet the deadline.
Where the lead architectural practice is not based in the UK there will also
be a local architect who will advise on local regulations, prepare the
submissions for planning permission and generally deal with other regulatory
authorities.

There will also be a large consultant team on a project of this scale.
Probably consisting of two teams of civil engineers; one for superstructure
and one for substructure. A geotechnical expert for the foundation design. A
whole spread of HVAC engineers, probably separate mechanical, electrical,
drainage and ventilation specialists. A facade engineer who specialises in
problems specifically to do with the design of the glass cladding system. A
fire engineer to design the fire escape strategy and help negotiate the fire
fighting strategy with the local fire brigade. A vertical circulation engineer
to design the lift and escalator strategy. A bomb blast engineer to model the
effects of various bomb attack scenarios on the cladding and structure. A
security consultant to advise on how defendable the building is and to design
the cctv, active tramp deterrent systems :-( etc. Finally a quantity surveyor
will advise on how much this will all cost.

All of these people will have been consulted briefly, probably mostly by video
conference, across a couple of time zones, before the planning permission
submission[2]. All their requirements have to be juggled between the different
disciplines by the architect. As an architect who has done services
coordination on skyscrapers and international airports, I can tell you it's
not easy. One of the most frustrating things is that engineers from different
disciplines don't talk to each other, even if they are working for the same
firm. On top of this, the time allowed to prepare the planning submission will
be a few months at most, and a lot of the effort will be spent on optimising
the design and more importantly the presentation strategy to get through the
planning permission process.

Once the planning permission submission has been approved, the overall shape
of the scheme is fixed and hence the parabola shape can no longer be designed
out. Therefore, if no-one notices a problem like this until after the planning
submission, or perhaps fails to get someone higher up to take it seriously
enough to change the concept design, then they will have to remedy it by using
special anti glare coatings or just plain hoping it wont be too bad. This is
for a couple of reasons: because the developer will be exerting large pressure
to speed up construction as they will be paying a large amount of interest on
the loan for the cost of the land, because consultancy fees to redo the design
would be in the order of millions at this point and because getting planning
permission for a scheme like this is very politically controversial so you
don't risk doing it twice if you can avoid it.

So, you can probably see how something like this could easily have happened.

[0] Because it's pug ugly, not because of the solar death ray thing, that's
quite amusing really. [1] Something like £20k per year in London, which is a
crap salary after 6 years in University. [2] In the UK this is a semi-
democratic consultation process which occurs at local government level and
involves publicly presenting the designs to local councillors to give
residents of the area a chance to raise a formal objection.

~~~
lambda
> A developer hires an international 'starchitect' like Viñoly to design them
> an office block because the architects reputation for design helps them to
> get away with a larger building on the site and therefore get more net
> lettable area for their investment in land.

Ah. I've always wondered why people pay "starchitects" to design horrible,
hideous, poorly designed buildings. I've always figured that they were paying
more to get something of worse quality, but figured that people were paying
the premium just to be in vogue.

The reputation allowing them to get away with a bigger building on the same
plot of land is a new explanation to me, and makes lots of sense.

~~~
dsuth
>Ah. I've always wondered why people pay "starchitects" to design horrible,
hideous, poorly designed buildings. I've always figured that they were paying
more to get something of worse quality, but figured that people were paying
the premium just to be in vogue.

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every 6
months" \-- Oscar Wilde

~~~
ballard
That explains my grandparents remodeled their bathrooms every 6 months. (Yup,
I guess that makes 'em hipsters.)

The way around hipster discontent is to stop caring; the only person you have
to impress is yourself.

------
undoware
It's not just sunlight. A building that widens as it goes up will also focus
wind. The effects are a bit more 'wave' than 'particle' \- no beams, just
constructive interference - but the principle is the same.

This reminds me so much of University of Illinois at Chicago. Most of the
humanities are housed in this gigantic concrete monolith that widens as it
went up, supposedly to represent the 'city of broad shoulders'. But
ironically, it better captured the 'windy city' \-- we'd fight yard-long
patches of gale-force wind that would appear out of nowhere and steal your
papers. "The architecture ate my homework" was a not unheard-of excuse -- and
one that as a TA I actually honored on one occasion.

------
eksith
Did none of the architects, or even construction people, ever stop to consider
that they're essentially building two giant, parabolic, solar death rays?

This ties into another pet peeve I have; bloody trees and grass in
architectural drawings. It's nice to think you can grow anything at that
height and wind, but physics has a tendency not to cooperate with idealized
visions.

~~~
scott_s
Article and discussion on that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5436614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5436614)

~~~
eksith
Thank you! No I feel better about it. ;)

I have no drawing/structural experience whatsoever, but I'm planning to build
a small cabin with a side structure that may have a cool-roof/grass top, but
obviously mine will only be 10-12 feet off the ground. While researching for
it, I came across all these fantastical designs with no basis on reality. I
feel vindicated that the author of the original article has design experience.

I know engineers and architects will never quite see eye-to-eye on how much of
their vision can become reality, but they should at least get some practical
knowledge before doing these things.

------
rachelbythebay
55 S. Almaden Blvd in San Jose used to have some nice scorch marks in the
grass you could easily see in aerial imagery. Now, you have to get clever with
the "45 degree" angle stuff, and swing around to a non-default view, but it
looks like you can still see it.

Edit: found the original pic:
[http://blog.collins.net.pr/2007_08_01_archive.html](http://blog.collins.net.pr/2007_08_01_archive.html)

~~~
Blahah
egads, that's a crappy website. For others who just want to see the photo:
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jmYevHrBr6M/Rr3BvETpHbI/AAAAAAAAAO...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jmYevHrBr6M/Rr3BvETpHbI/AAAAAAAAAOw/hqpZBjX7030/s1600-h/Picture200708100844401.jpg)

~~~
m0tive
and on google maps: [http://goo.gl/maps/FqFdf](http://goo.gl/maps/FqFdf)

------
biot
Obviously the designer hasn't read Arthur C. Clarke's "Stroke of the Sun"
short story (also known as "A Slight Case of Sunstroke"). It's well worth the
five minute read:

[http://www.archive.org/stream/Galaxy_Magazine_Volume_16_Numb...](http://www.archive.org/stream/Galaxy_Magazine_Volume_16_Number_5_/IA_Galaxy_Magazine_Volume_16_Number_5_#page/n71/mode/2up)

~~~
tallpapab
Ha! Great story. My favorite line: "It's hard nowadays to find an honest man
who stays bought."

------
belorn
Mythbusters can now finally lay to rest the Archimedes death ray myth and
super size the experiment. Aiming is going to be a bit hard through.

~~~
shabble
Although originally envisioned in a naval-defence role, I could see it serving
as a powerful weapon indeed in the hands of the buccaneers of _The Crimson
Permanent Assurance_ [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crimson_Permanent_Assuranc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crimson_Permanent_Assurance)

------
ianstallings
This is bad architecture, plain and simple. They are paid to account for
everything because buildings can't be moved or updated easily without major
headaches and expense. The idea that it was an oversight is ridiculous. Not
accounting for sunlight in architecture? Unbelievable.

~~~
wmeredith
This is the second time this architect has done this:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/architect-behind-the-
walkie-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/architect-behind-the-walkie-
talkie-building-2013-9)

------
corobo
"In our defence we never thought Britain would get enough sun for it to be a
problem"

~~~
TomGullen
Reasonable defence

~~~
MartinCron
Which actually makes me wonder, will some structures become dangerous as the
climate changes? I do realize that the angle and intensity of the sunglight
will not change, but if a place changes from mostly overcast during a
particular time of year to mostly sunny during that same particular kind of
year...

------
javajosh
People get so incensed that they can't see the silver-lining: build some solar
panel covering on the side walk, with a charging station where people can
charge up their mobile devices. Alternatively, some enterprising street vendor
(do they have those in london?) can focus the light further and sell people
solar cooked food.

------
pnathan
This is your reminder that buildings and software are not that dissimilar.
Remember this news article whenever you hear someone blathering about how
building software should be more like civil engineering.

~~~
acomjean
As a former Civil Engineer, I can say that software is not anything like Civil
Engineering. The consequences of software failure are (usually) significantly
less and oddly you can't practice Civil Engineering in the US without a
license.

There are some similarities as they both are designing a building stuff.
Software is significantly easier to test however.

~~~
pnathan
Okay, I defer to you. :-)

So there's this meme floating around that software "engineering" needs to be
more like "real engineering". "Real Engineering" doesn't make mistakes, has
everything planned, is on time, is reliable, etc (don't laugh, OK? This is the
meme, not the truth). It's fairly foolish, and I want to point out the
reality.

N.b., I _personally_ don't think writing software is engineering (no laws of
physics, no experimental results, no materials, no models of behavior - I can
go considerably more in depth if someone cares enough to email me); I see it
as a craft.

~~~
Dwolb
Software is definitely engineering for real time and safety applications.
Consider aerospace software that keeps planes flying, drive-by-wire systems,
and power plant software

~~~
pnathan
I've done SW for real-time & safety critical systems. Things are heavily
tilted towards "Quality" in the "quality fast cheap" triangle there, but at
the end of the day, it's still:

\- unit tests

\- functional tests

\- code reviews

\- automated analysis tools

I have a real hard time saying that this is engineering when it can be done by
anyone who has the internal discipline to do it carefully.

More pertinently, I don't believe that there's any experimental basis to
demonstrate software's correctness for a task a priori. E.g., I (or actually a
more competent mechanical engineer) can develop a model for a table and
demonstrate that given x,y,z constraints the table will hold; attaining x,y,z
constraints requires using a,b,c kinds of materials. This all before the table
has been built, based on fundamental laws of physics and observed qualities of
materials from the field of material science. Computer science research (in
broad strokes) is generally devoted to determining existence or other
qualities of algorithms for tasks, _or_ demonstrating really spiffy and
unthought capabilities of computers given extant algorithms and hardware. This
does not generate the basis for building materials for programs: this
generates tools and other capabilities to shape the software. I am not
knocking CS research - it's valuable when done well. But I have a hard time
seeing how CS research provides the same type of foundation that, say,
chemistry research provides.

What I think I am saying is that formal sciences don't lead to engineering the
same way natural sciences do: the application is qualitatively and distinctly
different, and not simply in degree or seriousness.

Disagreements are invited.

------
moron4hire
Seems to me, if you're building a building primarily out of glass, you'd want
to study the impact of the glare. There is a hotel in Las Vegas that has a
similar problem. How can these building projects get approved, through so many
people, and nobody once stops to think about the glare problem?

~~~
jameshart
It's less of a systemic problem with architects in general, more of a specific
issue for one architect in particular: Rafael Viñoly
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Vi%C3%B1oly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Vi%C3%B1oly)).
He designed the Vdara hotel in Vegas that had a concave facade which melted
sunloungers; and he's also responsible for the "Walkie Talkie" building in
London which we're discussing here. It's almost as if he has a blindspot when
it comes to this problem. Maybe he looked at one of his own buildings too
long.

~~~
gaius
No, it is a systemic problem. If a civil engineer routinely designed building
that bits fell off and destroyed parked cars, he'd lose his license to
practice! Where's the Guild of Architects when you need them?

~~~
willyt
What, you mean like the civil engineer who designed the wobbly bridge? [0]
Even though the phenomenon of synchronised footsteps causing large
oscillations due to positive feedback is well enough known that there is
another bridge in London built over 150 years earlier which has a sign on it
saying 'Soldiers marching across this bridge must break step'.

I don't like the 'walkie talkie' and I'm not a fan of gesture architects like
Vinoly, Libeskind, Ghery etc. But, there are plenty of other far less obtuse
critiques of this kind of architecture than 'GOD you forgot to model the solar
rays on the 3rd of September 2013, you IDIOT!!!'.

People do make mistakes, including engineers. And, by the way, the engineer
who designed the wobbly bridge is still very highly regarded in the
profession.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London)

Edit: corrected grammar and moved sentence to clarify.

~~~
etler
Making the mistake once is forgivable, but twice? After all the press from his
previous parabolic building, you'd think he'd give it a second thought!

------
mhartl
A similar thing happened at Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Concert_Hall#Reflec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Concert_Hall#Reflection_problems)

They fixed it by lightly sanding the reflective surfaces in question.

~~~
tarice
And in Dallas with a new(ish) building:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Tower_%28Dallas%29#Confl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Tower_%28Dallas%29#Conflict_with_the_Nasher)

Has yet to be fixed.

------
yaw
This principle is being used to generate power in Souther Spain. The system is
described as a Concentrated Solar Thermal Power plus Molten Salt Storage
(CSP+)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemasolar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemasolar)

------
mrcharles
My favorite part of these things is that they highlight the odd things that
can go wrong, even when they are considered and planned for. I haven't read
this book yet, but the NYT summary makes me feel it would have a lot of info
about the crazy things that happen with some engineering and unforeseen
issues:

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/20/design-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/20/design-
collapse-and-crash/)

~~~
ianstallings
The thing is light is a _huge_ part of architecture. The idea that an
architect didn't account for this possibility is insane.

------
troymc
One fix would be to replace some of the building's windows with a less-
reflective material. That means that they'll absorb more light, which would
probably mean higher air conditioning costs inside the building.

Another possible fix would be to keep the same windows but to change their
normal vectors into a different pattern (random or artistic). This might even
look neat, if they do it right.

~~~
DanBC
They could have an extra layer. The outside layer would absorb light, heating
the air between in the middle, causing a chimney effect. Put turbines in and
they're generating some energy.

This might be stupid, but I'm off-the-cuffing after hearing about seawater
greenhouses.
([http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/02/alternati...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/02/alternativeenergy.solarpower))

------
retube
The cityam newspaper measured 70C on Eastcheap. Apparently shop doors are
burning, carpets spontaneosly combusting and roof tiles exploding.

[http://www.cityam.com/article/1378168692/exclusive-few-
solut...](http://www.cityam.com/article/1378168692/exclusive-few-solutions-
beam-hits-70-c)

------
michaelwww
My first thought was that the mysterious WIFI outage that the London stock
exchange suffers once a day and this building were somehow connected, but
they're a mile apart so I don't see how.

Link (I'm not a subscriber)
[http://www.economist.com/news/international/21582288-satelli...](http://www.economist.com/news/international/21582288-satellite-
positioning-data-are-vitalbut-signal-surprisingly-easy-disrupt-
out?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/outofsight)

Discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6123535](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6123535)

------
NAFV_P
How about harnessing the energy from this 'fryscraper'; Set up a fast food
joint right where those restricted parking spaces are and you don't need an
external power source to fry burgers.

------
acomjean
My former cube neighbor had a house built into the lot next to hers, really
close to her house. The new windows were reflecting the light onto her house
and melting the siding. I was skeptical that there was enough energy but it
does happen.

The builder ended up replacing some of the windows with somewhat less efficent
ones (not Argon Filled).

The windows are designed to reflect heat and UV. [http://www.nachi.org/low-e-
windows.htm](http://www.nachi.org/low-e-windows.htm)

I can't imagine what a slightly focused light beam would do.

------
JonnieCache
While this has been on HN before, there are some alarming new details:

 _Angry local shopkeepers also say the so-called "death ray" has blistered
their paintwork, singed holes in doormats and caused their tiles to smash._

Blimey. Surely britain's ever-enterprising shopkeepers can harness this power
though? Solar oven anyone?

Also:

 _They later said a temporary scaffold screen would be erected at street level
within 24 hours._

Are they going to have to make that out of some special ceramic or something?
Or will it be OK as it will sit far from the focal length of the "lens?"

~~~
unwind
I understood it to mean that the scaffolding will block incoming light
_before_ it reaches the lens of the building's facade. It will, of course also
block reflected light, but the main benefit ought to be blocking it before it
becomes focused.

~~~
JonnieCache
I guess I was imagining the light coming down almost vertically (hard to
block) and then being reflected into the street, but I suppose that's not
really how light works is it, no matter how oddly shaped your building is.
Thanks for the correction.

------
shavenwarthog2
Steward Brand has a documentary and book on "How Buildings Learn". A building
isn't made for architects, it's for people to use, and people over time are
going to use their building for different, often very different things. Even
such trivial things like "roof shouldn't leak" can be handwaved around.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0)

------
joering2
> The developers said the phenomenon was caused by "the current elevation of
> the sun in the sky".

Brilliant developer! Blame the sun. But one wonders: if they would have
designed this building just like billion other buildings around the world, you
know, straight vertical walls, then maybe, maybe the problem wouldn't exist at
the first place.

Not sure if I am the only one but buildings designed to show off don't excite
me at all.

------
tallpapab
So I had this clever little comment worked out. I was going to say that a
formula for designing a unique building - and, hence, gaining a star
reputation - would be to pick a design that everyone else knows has a fatal
flaw. That way no others like it would have been built. But, reading the
comments I see that this exact mistake has been made more than once. So much
for theory.

------
MJR
There was a similar story in NC with energy efficient windows melting vinyl
siding on homes: [http://www.wncn.com/story/22737381/homeowners-frustrated-
by-...](http://www.wncn.com/story/22737381/homeowners-frustrated-by-melting-
siding-as-manufaturers-search-for-solution)

------
cafard
Then there's the Museum Tower in Dallas:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/arts/design/renzo-
pianos-n...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/arts/design/renzo-pianos-
nasher-museum-in-dallas-has-sunburn-problem.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

------
balabaster
I dunno why they don't just put some solar panels down there in that parking
space and use the free energy and stop bitching about it... I mean come on
people. If a building has the energy to melt a car... could we not somehow use
this somehow?

~~~
mark-r
Wouldn't be worth it for the few days a year it's focused on that one
particular spot. If the solar panels could move with the sun, then you'd have
something.

------
bjz_
Sixty symbols has just published a video discussing the physics behind this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ1Hgzi2ElQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ1Hgzi2ElQ)

------
jenius
_As a crowd of sweating journalists and photographers gathered outside the
skyscraper on Tuesday, a reporter even managed to cook an egg simply by
placing the frying pan in direct sunlight._

Brilliant hah

~~~
Someone
Actually not that good of a demo. Egg white coagulates at around 65 degrees
centigrade, yolk at around 70. On a sunny day, you can easily reach those
temperatures without using a mirror to intensify sunlight.

[That temperature difference makes it 'easy' to hard-boil an egg while keeping
the yolk fluid. Photos at [http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-
vide.html#Figure_4.1](http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-
vide.html#Figure_4.1), some science at
[http://www.sousvidedash.com/2011/12/the-perfect-fast-cook-
so...](http://www.sousvidedash.com/2011/12/the-perfect-fast-cook-sous-vide-
egg/) (quote: _" It’s interesting because it illustrates just how critical it
is to accurately measure your eggs for this technique. I use a plastic pocket
caliper to measure mine."_)]

------
otikik
This is clearly fake as the Sun never shines in London.

------
ccozan
Same thing happens also for the GSK building near London. (
[http://goo.gl/p8UCit](http://goo.gl/p8UCit) )

~~~
ccozan
Don't understand the downvoting!

The concave part of the GSK's right building can focus in a relatively small
area quite a lot of sun. It is actually impossible to sit in that area in a
sunny day, starting May. I got cought while eating a sandwich so I know from
my own experience.

------
yashg
Don't blame the building developers, Tata who own Jaguar might be using parts
from Nano in Jaguar :)

------
jcromartie
"We are taking the issue of light reflecting from 20 Fenchurch Street
seriously"

------
dreen
All this time I thought that building is going to be The Shard built upside-
down.

------
verandaguy
How long until buildings like this are retrofitted into crowd control weapons?

~~~
VLM
They already are crowd control weapons. Just not controlled. You probably
meant to write aimable weapons.

Not kidding about this either. For example there are ways to design the facade
of a building to make wind intensely uncomfortable for pedestrians, thus
repelling homeless from the building. This actually works pretty well for a
"car culture" building.

Perhaps the goal was merely to make it intensely uncomfortable for
pedestrians, to eliminate undesirable foot traffic, panhandlers, etc, but it
went a bit too far...

~~~
unimpressive
>Not kidding about this either. For example there are ways to design the
facade of a building to make wind intensely uncomfortable for pedestrians,
thus repelling homeless from the building. This actually works pretty well for
a "car culture" building.

Remind me to get this feature for my evil lair.

Considering that this apparently isn't the first time that the Architect has
made this mistake, I have to assume either extreme incompetence, or that he
got a little _too_ much enjoyment out of burning ants with a magnifying glass
as a kid.

------
po84
Two words: Torchwood Tower

------
thoughtsimple
Where's Elon? Just put a Tesla solar charging station there.

------
tehwalrus
saw the story about the Jag yesterday, "fryscraper" made me chuckle though :)

------
orblivion
What are they doing just hanging around frying an egg? They're going to get
skin cancer or something.

