rileyuk.co.uk

This photo shows the 7 World Trade Center building seemingly disappearing into the beautiful blue NY sky!

There's a little article here to go with it.

*Edit* Seemingly the NYTimes site doesn't like hotlinking images, so I had to put a link in as opposed to the photo!

There I was expecting a real jellyfish type see-through building. I demand you design one!

Still, shows that the architect's visions are occasionally mirrored in real life, if only for about one day a year.

Transparent buildings the architects greatest conceit. I have never really subscribed to the whole transparent building thing. Yes a large glazed facade can act as a mirror for the sky giving the appearance that the building is transparent. Unfortunately building programme invariable requires a certain amount of solidity within the building. Floors, lifts, columns and walls are all generally opaque. The idea of dissolving buildings at the top is another thing that ties in with this and almost never works.

I am frequently frustraited by the way glazed buildings are visualised, especially in early stages excessive efforts seem to be made to emphasise their transparncy. At the end of the day there is no way of hiding the constructed mass and in my opinion it should be celebrated.

The other fundamental flaw with fully glazed building is the way we use them, people like to put things against walls. Evidence of this can be seen in every fully glazed buling ever. little piles of life's flotsom and jetsom stacked against the glazing, the underside of desk, backs of computers or tvs.

Oh yeah. They over heat in summer, loose lots of heat in winter. If its a residential/ hotel function it becomes a mass of yellowed curtains at night. and if the glass is fritted you may aswall live in a microwave.

Dezeen are showing a New York residential tower that has been designed under the supervision of Rem Koolhaus and Shohei Shigematsu. Office Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) are the firm involved and they are only providing 18 dwellings over the whole of the 24 storeys! Impressive will these dwellings be!

Herzog and DeMeuron have started construction on a 56 storey residentail development in New York. It is an interesting shape (though I am surprised that they are building it in the current climate especially in the US of A) and a neat design. I do wonder how much they have had to spend on insulating all those external cantilevered floors and roofs. I imagine the heat loss is massive. Oh well, I wonder if they will regret that one in a world of ever increasing energy bills. Great views over NYC though.