> Initial findings showed that 73 percent of mechanical, electrical and plumbing components observed failed to conform with the developers’ drawings
How is that even legal? Let alone technically possible? How does construction of these monsters work? "Yo, Bert, I need some 5x5 high-elastic steel framing for the 72th floor!" "Sorry man, we ran out of that when we 'redesigned' the elevator shaft, how about you take this plywood we should have used for the 68th floor?"
Most of MEP work is laying out pipes and wires so that the fixtures such as airvents, electric sockets and so on get connected to the system. The MEP contractor's task (overly simplifying) is to punch holes into walls and drag their spans of pipes and whatnot through them.
The designs' intent is to specify the fixtures, and how the perform (airflow etc). The subcontractor basically promises that they make those fixtures do their job - and not that their wiring and whatnot follows any specific plan necessarily.
Modern digital workflows are getting slowly integrated to the process and they may improve the productivity and quality in long term.
I work in an industry that monitors such things and recommends Banks/Lenders not pay if/when these discrepancies arise (Construction Risk Management).
The appropriate party will make revisions and then prove that that change won't affect the overall project.
> Let alone technically possible?
On larger projects, Subcontractors of Subcontractors of Subcontractors can become lazy, use materials not rated for their intended use, someone doesn't double check it since they're lazy, clicks a checkbox and calls it done; out of sight out of mind.
> How does construction of these monsters work?
Preconstruction Due Diligence, Funding via Banks, Approval/Contract Signing, Mobilization to Site, Construction of Building, Final Inspections & Warranties transfered, a Certificate of Occupancy issued, and people move in.
With mega projects, you have so many moving parts that something will fall through the cracks. Some material got substituted, the pent house staircase dimensions are 2-inches off creating a variance approval, but that dimension now affects the elevator machine room, they used Cast Iron Pipe on Floors 1-10 then PVC at 11-40 and there's issues at the different pipe connections; it just cascades. This is the main reason I also work in Building Information Modeling (BIM) to mitigate such problems.
The whole point of my industry is to act as a third party between the Developer & Bank/Lender, opine on the Preconstruction Documents (Contracts, Geotech, Budget, Schedule), document the Construction each month via photos, attend Meetings, review the application for payment, and flag the bank when something changes (No Energy Star appliances suddenly? Variance? Certain brand of vinyl flooring stock low so substitute it with vinyl tile? Change Orders about to deplete the Contingency?)
It becomes such an undertaking after a certain budget size or apartment unit amount. Eventually, people get stretched thing or get lazy, they're over budget, they've gone way past their scheduled completion date and just don't care since their next project is starting up and Permits are taking way longer to get; just happens.
Buildings not exactly matching the architect's original design is so common that there's a term, "as-builts", for the set of drawings the prime contractor prepares and delivers along with the building, showing what was actually built (hence the name) and, by comparison with the originals, what was changed in the course of the build.
I'm not the right kind of engineer to hazard a guess as to whether this is an unusually high variance for this scale of project. We also don't know what "failed to conform" means - the language is as vague as, given the ubiquity of changes at build time, intentionally pejorative. There's really not enough here to judge either the architect or the contractor; it could be a brilliant design badly implemented, or it could be a terrible design the contractor did their best to make work, and no one here or in the NYT article, including its writer, has enough information to say which.
Your example is not that far off, I know of a building where the subcontractor’s subcontractor substituted a less elastic steel and it caused bolts to fail with the potential to drop a few 100m out of the sky and land on the public below. I don’t know the details but the subcontractor could probably only have picked up the defect by hiring a metallurgist to spot check the bolts to verify that it was the right steel they had been supplied with and I’m guessing that wasn’t done.
More generally, what often happens with big projects like this is the design team is not connected with the contractors that build the job. The reason why this happens is because early in the design stage when you speak to a main contractor you don’t get to talk to the actual subcontractors that will build the thing, you are essentially speaking to the salesmen that will eventually get their buying guys to hire subcontractors to do the actual work. If they are brought on early then Contractors typically find ways to use proprietary lock in and cost ratcheting techniques to increase the cost of a build once they have secured the job so to avoid this a fairly common setup for a building of this size is for a design team to prepare drawings and a performance specification to a level of detail that gets you regulatory compliance, but not a full nuts and bolts design with buildability assessed. This is not just the architectural design but also the structures, M&E, security, landscape etc. So, for example, the electrical design might be a block diagram and the loads, but the bus bars might not be sized and the suppliers for all the switchgear wont be selected. At pinch points there may be a more detailed reference design.
At this point there will be a design build contract made between the contractor and the client based on the partially complete design. This design gets handed over to the contractor to complete and the contractor’s engineers take over and complete the details. Sometimes some of the original design team gets novated from the client to the contractor, quite often only the architects but you have to be really sharp in your negotiations if you do this because once they have you hooked there will be huge time and cost pressure to complete the designs for less fees and to find ways to save money.
A rule of thumb I use is that on a A1 sheet’s worth of information takes about 1 person week to complete when you include all the research. Often with consultations with other specialists this work will be stretched over a couple of months. On a big project there will be 10s of thousands of drawings in play. This can’t be rushed if you don’t want any mistakes, but it almost always is and if you are an engineer or an architect working for the contractor at this point there is huge pressure to cut corners. Non-famous architects and engineers are actually not very well paid compared to other professionals and we tend to work very long unpaid hours with workers rights laws regularly flouted, e.g. firing pregnant women etc.
Another issue is that there is corruption in the buying department of the main contractor as well, they have gold watches and get taken on days out to go and ‘bet on horse racing’ by the subcontractors.
So the contractor’s incentive to cut costs and corruption cause a lot of last minute design changes to use a ‘preferred supplier’ or to reduce complexity or use cheaper materials. When coupled with the time pressure, things go wrong.
Everyone will say, ‘oh you architects should design everything properly down to the last detail, there should be PLM models like the aircraft industry’ but the fact is every building is a prototype, a building this large has a much higher margin of safety but it is as complicated as an airliner and airliners cost a lot more money to develop than buildings. No-one is willing to pay for the time input, they would rather let the contractor bodge it on site, often contractors will end up using the reference designs and filling the details themselves on site, e.g. using drawings never intended to be construction information.
Another one is ‘well then you should use more standardisation’ from personal experience in trying to make my own business more profitable, you can try to standardise construction details but there are a lot of high level client influenced design decisions that ripple right through a building down to the 1:2 construction details so this only works up to a point. I’ve managed to break my details down into reusable components, but I’ve not managed to literally reuse the same drawings for multiple projects.
As we’ve seen with the 737 Max debacle the airline industry is not immune from these kind of mistakes, I think ultimately the problem is probably more with project management and construction contracting culture than it is with ‘the Architects are hand wavy artists’ (we’re mostly not)
I get conflicted feelings about this. On the one hand it's highly unlikely anyone in that tower would get a shred of empathy from the common man (and highly unlikely this is even one of their 5 other homes), but on the other it's just a damn shame that some of the most prominent landmarks in the greatest city in the world are crappy places to live at. I'm not of the opinion they're eyesores - the nyc Skyline was stagnant for decades until these needles came in. One way or another progress in that regard is good?
> I'm not of the opinion they're eyesores - the nyc Skyline was stagnant for decades until these needles came in. One way or another progress in that regard is good?
What “good” does a skyline do for society? The enormous costs to build super talls would go much further in myriad other ways, even just by making a few tall or many regular size buildings. Very far from progress if you as me.
Actually, I would take the construction of a novel building just to give views and prestige to less than one hundred families to be evidence of societal regression, since it can be used as a proxy for extreme wealth inequality.
Noise is what turns me off from high rise residential buildings. When you watch the construction, many don’t event have concrete walls between apartments on the same floor, and I am ready to guess the concrete floors are as thin as required to keep the weight of the structure down. Add to that all-glass external walls, and I only heard stories from friends who live there that you hear everything your neighbours do, particularly walking on wooden floor.
Call me crazy but when I rent a condo, I try google street maps and go back in history and if I am lucky I get to see the construction phase. That will give an idea about how thick the concrete and the overall structure is. Another way is to look at the balconies. The floor will be as thick as balconies. The walls are a hit or miss. But if you knock on them and press your ears you can get some idea. Apartments near to a garbage chute or elevator will be noisy if not properly soundproofed.
I’ve lived in high-rise buildings in Seattle where the walls were effectively soundproof. Your neighbors could be as loud as they wanted to be and you never heard them. It took some heavy crashes on the floors above for you to hear the dull thud. Quality of construction matters a lot. Making apartment buildings highly insulated sound-wise is old science, not magic.
The windows there were double glazed (good for heat and noise insulation), and I guess the walls were fairly thick as noise from neighbours was never a problem.
The only significant problem, and specific to that building, was the designers massively underspec-ed the cooling. So on summer days (29C -> ~44C) the air conditioning throughout the whole tower was completely useless. Sweltering hot. :(
The noise, the lack of ventilation design, and if it isn't "bomb" like use of the trash chute it's someone tossing a bag in that gets caught and blocks it.
They may as well be gilded jail cells. Worse, because everyone's stuck as a renter, there's inherently no true sense of community or consideration to neighbors.
I don't know where your friends lived, but I've lived in quite a few high rises (most recently 3 in seattle, built 2015, '17, '19) and the thing that draws me back to them is how I can NEVER hear my neighbors. The '19 has an awful lot of street noise, but the 17 was so silent it was incredible (and has the biggest windows).
I think it's more typical for apartments.. I've only rented a concrete condo once (in Vancouver), and I distinctly remember getting out of the elevator and feeling like I just walked into a heavy metal concert, then getting into my unit next door to the source and hearing... nothing. It was pretty amazing. But the apartments at the same price point had no noise isolation.
This feels like a powerful metaphor for the times we live in; over-promised and under-delivered; the value of image over reality; little emperors everywhere with no clothes. Would make a great film. :)
My first house was a condo in a building which had been built about ~2 years before I moved in; I joined the board as the developer was transitioning out and handing over responsibility to the tenants.
This sounds exactly like what happened with us, just on a grander scale. Things like the post-tensioned concrete construction where the steel post-tensioner cables were left exposed to the elements, severe life-safety issues, electronics and machines which died far too early from being under-spec'd and improperly installed.
The developer, of course, had incorporated a new company just for the building, and it was super easy for them to let it go bankrupt. In the end we managed to recoup some costs, but had to raise everyone's fees to cover the reduced lifetime of some of the major structural elements of the building.
I had a summer job in college with a real estate partnership that consisted entirely of filing unopened bills and liens into four different bins based on the project, each a different company that presumably was about to go bankrupt.
The only time I saw the two owners was when I started and when the take me out to lunch when they abruptly (but not unexpectedly) let me go.
At that meal one of the two was really excited about a new project: some turn-key restaurant idea, and how he'd only hire "hot waitresses".
It’s interesting because I’ve heard from numerous people that work in construction that they would never buy into most of the new construction they worked on. Especially expensive condos in popular urban locations. Bare minimum construction that saves on both material and labor costs.
Buy old and renovate has been something I’ve been told by various people.
I don't understand how anyone would want to live in a high rise. Rational or not, if feels dangerous to live high up in a narrow bottlenecked artificial construct.
Quick rundown of the advantages (I usually live in high-rises):
High rises usually have spectacular shared amenities: grand pools, exercise rooms, party rooms, theaters, etc. One of mine had outdoor grilling areas that you didn't even have to clean up: the apartment had cleaning staff who would scour the grills every day.
High rises usually have 24/7 door staff to sign for & lock up packages, get taxis, handle dry cleaning, store grocery deliveries in a fridge, and let you into your unit if you get locked out. The sheer number of units makes this cost-effective for them because the costs are shared across all tenants.
High rises usually have maintenance staff during business hours and on call after hours to fix issues. Sometimes you can also hire them for handyman duties, too - I've had them install TVs, hang green screens, or paint a wall.
High rises are often the only cost-effective way to live in the core of a really vibrant city like Chicago: we couldn't have afforded a town home, let alone a single family home.
It's a pain having a building that flexes. Everything needs expansion joints, and ordinary building materials aren't designed for that. The steelwork can handle it, but wallboard can't.
for once, a subsection of rich people get a taste of what most regular people go through on a daily basis
just goes to show that this project might have spent more money on marketing and advertising rather than on their engineering and architect departments.
They won't get a taste though. These people are rich enough that at the first sign of a leak in their apartment they'll have people to book them into a luxury hotel before flying off to another apartment, or maybe a little holiday to help them get over the stress they've had to 'endure'.
"Ms. Abramovich and her husband, Mikhail, retired business owners who worked in the oil and gas business" sounds like one of those phrases that legal has spent a couple of days working over.
I wonder if the old guard of mega skyscrapers like the Empire State or Chrysler suffered from these problems too, or it's just inherent to the new skinny towers popping up.
They aren't that tall. 300m buildings are everywhere in China.
Quite ordinary residentials are creeping on 200m.
But 300m+ building all require very special engineering. Glazing designs for <300m building will not suit a 300m+ building.
HVAC, water, and savage systems for supertall skyscrapers are still more or less a case, by case designs.
I lived in a few quite tall 200+ buildings. Leaks seem to be unavoidable with curtain walls, and the only remedy is to have glazing engineers fixing them every year.
Water supply is also finicky, and that's an inherent property of having so much apartments relying on a single pipe run.
Booming noise in ventilation is possible to avoid with extra equipment, or simply solid vent shafts at extra cost, but I experienced it even in buildings with $1m+ apartments. So, I doubt construction companies will bother ever fixing this en masse.
Sound insulation! Yes, there is no trick for it than thicker walls, and bigger gaps in between them, and it costs a lot, really a lot. You don't get it in highrises no matter the cost, unless it's being sold on this specifically.
For this reason, I don't buy new and instead buy in places that have been "burned in" and where I can talk with current and previous inhabitant(s) and read complaints online. If you have "that" kind of money, you can always remodel.
Flipping it around, that due diligence can also result in amazing deals on places that non-engineers are too afraid to touch.
The real juice here for those who want some good "conspiracy theory" level "connections everywhere" reading: CIM group. If you want to know about LA/NY real estate, political subterfuge (including PACs and pension funds), etc from the "how things really work" angle, just give them a search and read a few articles.
Even more fun: try to guess what the name stands for.
I submitted this for just to make another point for my own Reference. Turns out there are enough interest for it to get onto Front page :)
For nearly 7 years, I have been asking the same question, Why Tall and Skinny? How far do the building Sway during High Wind? How do sound insulation work etc? And also the same question to Central Park Tower, Steinway Tower.
SkyScrapper isn't new. But Tall and Skinny top to bottom SkyScrapper is very new ( to me at least ), and to make the matter worst this is Residential. It is one thing to work in such environment during the day, it is completely different having to stay and rest at night in one. The building would sway enough during High Wind and Cyclone you would get sea sick. And that is with the commercial building which tends to have a much larger / thicker base and lots of weight while adding massive damper. Sound / Noise insulation is also problematic because doing any of it would add weight.
Central Park Tower, if I remember correctly, mentioned something about AWS and Cloud Computing meant they could do simulation that couldn't be done before! Technology has improved with better Material Science! And Steinway Tower is famous for its "tuned" mass damper. But again none to these are new.
So whenever I have my own dose of skepticism, I was always met with people calling me idiots; "You think the Billionaires dont do their Due Diligence?"
Having said that this article is only about 432 Park Avenue. Central Park Tower and Steinway Tower are still not completed. So may be they are really better with some "magic" technology improvement. I am just skeptical, and will have to wait and see.
IMHO they make no sense and only seem to exist because either broken local economies or people getting unhealthy obsessed with showing power. I.e. both things which should be fixed without sky scrapers.
I mean sure "small" sky scrapers can make sense but there is a point where the additional cost and safety problems just by far outweigh any real benefits I believe.
I mean (ignoring ground price) it's as far as I know much cheaper to build two 100m sky scrapers then building a single 200m sky scraper.
So I would always prefer a view high but not supper high buildings over one or two super high buildings.
I mean the moment it's no longer rentable to put (non super high end) apartments into most floors of a building it IMHO should generally not be build.
I know a lot of people hate the rich and are happy to see such misery befall them. But for many I think a residence here may have been something like a lifelong dream, and to have their money tied up in a condo that is repeatedly flooded sounds awful. Not to mention the stress and anxiety that comes with such situations. Homeowners with more modest homes will also know the pain and frustration if they have dealt with bad contractors or made a regrettable home purchase.
[+] [-] choeger|5 years ago|reply
How is that even legal? Let alone technically possible? How does construction of these monsters work? "Yo, Bert, I need some 5x5 high-elastic steel framing for the 72th floor!" "Sorry man, we ran out of that when we 'redesigned' the elevator shaft, how about you take this plywood we should have used for the 68th floor?"
[+] [-] uxhacker|5 years ago|reply
The drawings are more for the regulators such as building control than actually for the people working on site.
Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible, leaving it to the constructor to actually make it up on the job.
Somebody said to me that over 30% of construction costs is waste.
It looks like there is an opportunity to implement lean methods in construction. And weirdly implement Alexander’s ideas patterns and anti patterns.
[+] [-] fsloth|5 years ago|reply
Most of MEP work is laying out pipes and wires so that the fixtures such as airvents, electric sockets and so on get connected to the system. The MEP contractor's task (overly simplifying) is to punch holes into walls and drag their spans of pipes and whatnot through them.
The designs' intent is to specify the fixtures, and how the perform (airflow etc). The subcontractor basically promises that they make those fixtures do their job - and not that their wiring and whatnot follows any specific plan necessarily.
Modern digital workflows are getting slowly integrated to the process and they may improve the productivity and quality in long term.
[+] [-] JayPeaEm|5 years ago|reply
It's not legal.
I work in an industry that monitors such things and recommends Banks/Lenders not pay if/when these discrepancies arise (Construction Risk Management).
The appropriate party will make revisions and then prove that that change won't affect the overall project.
> Let alone technically possible?
On larger projects, Subcontractors of Subcontractors of Subcontractors can become lazy, use materials not rated for their intended use, someone doesn't double check it since they're lazy, clicks a checkbox and calls it done; out of sight out of mind.
> How does construction of these monsters work?
Preconstruction Due Diligence, Funding via Banks, Approval/Contract Signing, Mobilization to Site, Construction of Building, Final Inspections & Warranties transfered, a Certificate of Occupancy issued, and people move in.
With mega projects, you have so many moving parts that something will fall through the cracks. Some material got substituted, the pent house staircase dimensions are 2-inches off creating a variance approval, but that dimension now affects the elevator machine room, they used Cast Iron Pipe on Floors 1-10 then PVC at 11-40 and there's issues at the different pipe connections; it just cascades. This is the main reason I also work in Building Information Modeling (BIM) to mitigate such problems.
The whole point of my industry is to act as a third party between the Developer & Bank/Lender, opine on the Preconstruction Documents (Contracts, Geotech, Budget, Schedule), document the Construction each month via photos, attend Meetings, review the application for payment, and flag the bank when something changes (No Energy Star appliances suddenly? Variance? Certain brand of vinyl flooring stock low so substitute it with vinyl tile? Change Orders about to deplete the Contingency?)
It becomes such an undertaking after a certain budget size or apartment unit amount. Eventually, people get stretched thing or get lazy, they're over budget, they've gone way past their scheduled completion date and just don't care since their next project is starting up and Permits are taking way longer to get; just happens.
Hope this gives a little perspective.
[+] [-] throwanem|5 years ago|reply
I'm not the right kind of engineer to hazard a guess as to whether this is an unusually high variance for this scale of project. We also don't know what "failed to conform" means - the language is as vague as, given the ubiquity of changes at build time, intentionally pejorative. There's really not enough here to judge either the architect or the contractor; it could be a brilliant design badly implemented, or it could be a terrible design the contractor did their best to make work, and no one here or in the NYT article, including its writer, has enough information to say which.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|5 years ago|reply
This kind of 'normalization of deviance' is normal in normal construction, but has to be either reworked or formally normalized in critical work.
[+] [-] Tade0|5 years ago|reply
The workers would almost always try to assemble the devices as fast as possible, cutting corners here and there.
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArchitectAnon|5 years ago|reply
More generally, what often happens with big projects like this is the design team is not connected with the contractors that build the job. The reason why this happens is because early in the design stage when you speak to a main contractor you don’t get to talk to the actual subcontractors that will build the thing, you are essentially speaking to the salesmen that will eventually get their buying guys to hire subcontractors to do the actual work. If they are brought on early then Contractors typically find ways to use proprietary lock in and cost ratcheting techniques to increase the cost of a build once they have secured the job so to avoid this a fairly common setup for a building of this size is for a design team to prepare drawings and a performance specification to a level of detail that gets you regulatory compliance, but not a full nuts and bolts design with buildability assessed. This is not just the architectural design but also the structures, M&E, security, landscape etc. So, for example, the electrical design might be a block diagram and the loads, but the bus bars might not be sized and the suppliers for all the switchgear wont be selected. At pinch points there may be a more detailed reference design.
At this point there will be a design build contract made between the contractor and the client based on the partially complete design. This design gets handed over to the contractor to complete and the contractor’s engineers take over and complete the details. Sometimes some of the original design team gets novated from the client to the contractor, quite often only the architects but you have to be really sharp in your negotiations if you do this because once they have you hooked there will be huge time and cost pressure to complete the designs for less fees and to find ways to save money.
A rule of thumb I use is that on a A1 sheet’s worth of information takes about 1 person week to complete when you include all the research. Often with consultations with other specialists this work will be stretched over a couple of months. On a big project there will be 10s of thousands of drawings in play. This can’t be rushed if you don’t want any mistakes, but it almost always is and if you are an engineer or an architect working for the contractor at this point there is huge pressure to cut corners. Non-famous architects and engineers are actually not very well paid compared to other professionals and we tend to work very long unpaid hours with workers rights laws regularly flouted, e.g. firing pregnant women etc.
Another issue is that there is corruption in the buying department of the main contractor as well, they have gold watches and get taken on days out to go and ‘bet on horse racing’ by the subcontractors.
So the contractor’s incentive to cut costs and corruption cause a lot of last minute design changes to use a ‘preferred supplier’ or to reduce complexity or use cheaper materials. When coupled with the time pressure, things go wrong.
Everyone will say, ‘oh you architects should design everything properly down to the last detail, there should be PLM models like the aircraft industry’ but the fact is every building is a prototype, a building this large has a much higher margin of safety but it is as complicated as an airliner and airliners cost a lot more money to develop than buildings. No-one is willing to pay for the time input, they would rather let the contractor bodge it on site, often contractors will end up using the reference designs and filling the details themselves on site, e.g. using drawings never intended to be construction information.
Another one is ‘well then you should use more standardisation’ from personal experience in trying to make my own business more profitable, you can try to standardise construction details but there are a lot of high level client influenced design decisions that ripple right through a building down to the 1:2 construction details so this only works up to a point. I’ve managed to break my details down into reusable components, but I’ve not managed to literally reuse the same drawings for multiple projects.
As we’ve seen with the 737 Max debacle the airline industry is not immune from these kind of mistakes, I think ultimately the problem is probably more with project management and construction contracting culture than it is with ‘the Architects are hand wavy artists’ (we’re mostly not)
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
I suppose an engineer has to sign for it.
[+] [-] ramraj07|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|5 years ago|reply
What “good” does a skyline do for society? The enormous costs to build super talls would go much further in myriad other ways, even just by making a few tall or many regular size buildings. Very far from progress if you as me.
Actually, I would take the construction of a novel building just to give views and prestige to less than one hundred families to be evidence of societal regression, since it can be used as a proxy for extreme wealth inequality.
[+] [-] nradov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomSwirly|5 years ago|reply
This is just consumption for consumption's sake. You shouldn't throw away a building in ten or twenty years just beecause you get tired of it!
Humans have to get over the obsessive consumption if we are to survive the twenty first century.
[+] [-] Razengan|5 years ago|reply
Maybe it's time to embrace the future and replace these with arcologies.
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
> making clear that even multimillion-dollar price tags do not guarantee problem-free living
this reiterates that you can make a living simply catering to wealthy people's problems instead of dismissing them
pick and choose your battles
[+] [-] cm2187|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] S53Vflnr4n|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinclift|5 years ago|reply
In Australia, I used to have an apartment in Eureka Tower:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Tower
The windows there were double glazed (good for heat and noise insulation), and I guess the walls were fairly thick as noise from neighbours was never a problem.
The only significant problem, and specific to that building, was the designers massively underspec-ed the cooling. So on summer days (29C -> ~44C) the air conditioning throughout the whole tower was completely useless. Sweltering hot. :(
[+] [-] katbyte|5 years ago|reply
Live in a condo and never hear anyone on my floor, and once a month maybe? Sorta hear someone above me. Windows closed I head nothing from outside
[+] [-] mjevans|5 years ago|reply
They may as well be gilded jail cells. Worse, because everyone's stuck as a renter, there's inherently no true sense of community or consideration to neighbors.
[+] [-] kenneth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vineyardmike|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sershe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carrozo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yc-kraln|5 years ago|reply
This sounds exactly like what happened with us, just on a grander scale. Things like the post-tensioned concrete construction where the steel post-tensioner cables were left exposed to the elements, severe life-safety issues, electronics and machines which died far too early from being under-spec'd and improperly installed.
The developer, of course, had incorporated a new company just for the building, and it was super easy for them to let it go bankrupt. In the end we managed to recoup some costs, but had to raise everyone's fees to cover the reduced lifetime of some of the major structural elements of the building.
[+] [-] jberryman|5 years ago|reply
The only time I saw the two owners was when I started and when the take me out to lunch when they abruptly (but not unexpectedly) let me go.
At that meal one of the two was really excited about a new project: some turn-key restaurant idea, and how he'd only hire "hot waitresses".
[+] [-] nemo44x|5 years ago|reply
Buy old and renovate has been something I’ve been told by various people.
[+] [-] colordrops|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrentOzar|5 years ago|reply
High rises usually have spectacular shared amenities: grand pools, exercise rooms, party rooms, theaters, etc. One of mine had outdoor grilling areas that you didn't even have to clean up: the apartment had cleaning staff who would scour the grills every day.
High rises usually have 24/7 door staff to sign for & lock up packages, get taxis, handle dry cleaning, store grocery deliveries in a fridge, and let you into your unit if you get locked out. The sheer number of units makes this cost-effective for them because the costs are shared across all tenants.
High rises usually have maintenance staff during business hours and on call after hours to fix issues. Sometimes you can also hire them for handyman duties, too - I've had them install TVs, hang green screens, or paint a wall.
High rises are often the only cost-effective way to live in the core of a really vibrant city like Chicago: we couldn't have afforded a town home, let alone a single family home.
[+] [-] aerovistae|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyst|5 years ago|reply
just goes to show that this project might have spent more money on marketing and advertising rather than on their engineering and architect departments.
[+] [-] indy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sam_bristow|5 years ago|reply
Leeks creeks breeks? Lakes crakes brakes?
[+] [-] mmanfrin|5 years ago|reply
I don't know what the term for it would be, but it's reminding me of 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles'. Rhyme, Rhyme, Schema Deviation.
[+] [-] zimpenfish|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomatotomato37|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|5 years ago|reply
Quite ordinary residentials are creeping on 200m.
But 300m+ building all require very special engineering. Glazing designs for <300m building will not suit a 300m+ building.
HVAC, water, and savage systems for supertall skyscrapers are still more or less a case, by case designs.
I lived in a few quite tall 200+ buildings. Leaks seem to be unavoidable with curtain walls, and the only remedy is to have glazing engineers fixing them every year.
Water supply is also finicky, and that's an inherent property of having so much apartments relying on a single pipe run.
Booming noise in ventilation is possible to avoid with extra equipment, or simply solid vent shafts at extra cost, but I experienced it even in buildings with $1m+ apartments. So, I doubt construction companies will bother ever fixing this en masse.
Sound insulation! Yes, there is no trick for it than thicker walls, and bigger gaps in between them, and it costs a lot, really a lot. You don't get it in highrises no matter the cost, unless it's being sold on this specifically.
[+] [-] asah|5 years ago|reply
Flipping it around, that due diligence can also result in amazing deals on places that non-engineers are too afraid to touch.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tourist_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] napier|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arminiusreturns|5 years ago|reply
Even more fun: try to guess what the name stands for.
[+] [-] ksec|5 years ago|reply
For nearly 7 years, I have been asking the same question, Why Tall and Skinny? How far do the building Sway during High Wind? How do sound insulation work etc? And also the same question to Central Park Tower, Steinway Tower.
SkyScrapper isn't new. But Tall and Skinny top to bottom SkyScrapper is very new ( to me at least ), and to make the matter worst this is Residential. It is one thing to work in such environment during the day, it is completely different having to stay and rest at night in one. The building would sway enough during High Wind and Cyclone you would get sea sick. And that is with the commercial building which tends to have a much larger / thicker base and lots of weight while adding massive damper. Sound / Noise insulation is also problematic because doing any of it would add weight.
Central Park Tower, if I remember correctly, mentioned something about AWS and Cloud Computing meant they could do simulation that couldn't be done before! Technology has improved with better Material Science! And Steinway Tower is famous for its "tuned" mass damper. But again none to these are new.
So whenever I have my own dose of skepticism, I was always met with people calling me idiots; "You think the Billionaires dont do their Due Diligence?"
Having said that this article is only about 432 Park Avenue. Central Park Tower and Steinway Tower are still not completed. So may be they are really better with some "magic" technology improvement. I am just skeptical, and will have to wait and see.
[+] [-] dathinab|5 years ago|reply
IMHO they make no sense and only seem to exist because either broken local economies or people getting unhealthy obsessed with showing power. I.e. both things which should be fixed without sky scrapers.
I mean sure "small" sky scrapers can make sense but there is a point where the additional cost and safety problems just by far outweigh any real benefits I believe.
I mean (ignoring ground price) it's as far as I know much cheaper to build two 100m sky scrapers then building a single 200m sky scraper.
So I would always prefer a view high but not supper high buildings over one or two super high buildings.
I mean the moment it's no longer rentable to put (non super high end) apartments into most floors of a building it IMHO should generally not be build.
[+] [-] throwawaysea|5 years ago|reply