This is not the story I thought it would be based on that title!
"The “crack” in the façade, which covers 10 storeys, is a reference to Colorado’s dramatic mountain scenery." So it's designed to look like it has this crazy crack in it. I wonder what that'll look like in real life, the renders are... interesting.
I figured this was another building that's in danger of falling like San Francisco’s slowly cracking up Millennium Tower.
Reading the headline and seeing the image for the first time, I legitimately thought the building was cracked and broken in real life and doomed. Looks pretty neat once I realized what it really was.
Disappointed that there were atleast two in Richmond and I never saw the interesting one.
There was a Best right down the street and it was my favorite store as a kid to explore, but it was in a generic strip mall. Spent a lot of time there playing the Sega Genesis display.
> … An order was written up and turned into one of the service desks and sent to the warehouse in a plastic tube "shot" through a pneumatic line. The tube was opened by an order picker who read the catalog numbers on the order slip which told the picker where the merchandise was located in the warehouse. It was picked, the slip was attached to the product, it was sent down a roller belt where a carbon copy of the order slip was given to a cashier who paiged the shopper to the register. The transaction was completed and the customer took the receipt to the pick up area and received their product when they were ready to leave the store. Seems like alot of work, but the entire process was done in less than five minutes time. …
We had stores like that in NL, the 'Kijkshop' concept, they went bust a while ago. Limited selection of marginal quality goods. But no shoplifting and no broken stuff on display.
Sadly the Prague pneumatic post system was damaged by the 2002 floods and hasn't been repaired since. Otherwise there's a chance that it still would have been operating on a city scale. That one could send money between banks.
There was a store with a similar concept in the Chicago area (and perhaps elsewhere) called Service Merchandise. I mostly remember playing with the music keyboards and typewriters they had on display, but I think maybe my parents bought some things there?
The trees and greenery make for a beautiful render, but I'm reminded of this article from 2013, "Can we please stop drawing trees on top of skyscrapers?"
None of the depicted trees appear to be native to the region either. Tropical looking vegetation will look very out of place in Denver, and will be resource and time intensive to maintain, assuming it can actually survive exposed. This building looks like it was designed for Singapore, and doesn't do anything to aesthetically connect to the region.
The finished building will look nothing like the renders. The "crack" that's shown in all the renders as filled with lush greenery faces north. It will be in permanent shade. If they actually do plant all those trees, they'll be dead within months.
If you hike in temperate, mountainous areas, you'll find the greenest areas are on the north slopes (in the northern hemisphere—in other words, the shady side). Maybe not with the plants in the renders, but making it green shouldn't be a problem.
In dry areas like Colorado, that's because snow on the north facing slopes melt much later and provides water later in the season. So while the soil on the other sides are already dry when the sunlight is the strongest, the north slope soil still has water left.
It's also ferns and moss that can't grow in direct sunlight and high temperatures (120+F ground under sunlight). You'll see this phenomenon even in areas where there's little or no snowpack, e.g. the Diablo range in California.
There are plenty of tree and plant choices that don't need direct sunlight. Denver is a sunny city, with the right choices it will be green and thrive.
Nah, the river is on the other side of the traintracks further to the north. To the south is the Cole and Five Points neighborhoods, which are in early stages of redevelopment
The weight of the soil and water isn't negligible, but it's not that bad. Most plants will grow happily in a tiny fraction of their root volume in nature, as long as precise irrigation delivers water (or fertilizer solution) just as it's needed. The practical root volume is probably chosen mostly based on the longest expected fault in the irrigation system.
The tiny root system also provides a very weak attachment to the building. Bosco Verticale strapped each tree to a vertical steel cable, plus various additional restraints.
I live outside of Denver, and I find this concept to be extremely exciting at an architectural level.
That being said, it will be interesting to see how well the greenery in the "crack" will hold up to the extremely dry climate, as well as the extreme temperature swings in the area. I'm assuming they will use native species, which are amazingly hardy. Ponderosa pines and other tree species (Colorado Blue Spruce, etc) are known world-wide in the bonsai community for their extreme hardiness. I can drive 5 minutes west from my house and find excellent yamadori without walking more than 5 minutes from where I parked my car. Based on my experience with the extreme winds we get, especially on exposed, elevated building facades, I don't think anything other than native species will survive.
I'm really looking forward to seeing this, although it's not clear I'll be able to get into the building, lol.
Trees don't easily grow in the Denver climate so yeah I wonder how well the trees will do, too. I live like 15 minutes south of downtown and none of the trees around me look particularly healthy. If I drive east towards Brighton or Elizabeth I'll see like 1 random tree growing out of a creek but otherwise it's all shrubs
I'm curious as to why more high rise buildings don't incorporate "park floors" or large balconies. The walls are non-structural after all so you could push them further into the building and have an open air space. You could add extra headroom by making those floor taller as well.
Is it simply a cost issue? Everyone is just trying to maximize "livable area" at the expense of not making the structure itself more livable?
Cost, and also practicality. Most of the "green building" plans that you see come from artists with no knowledge of construction or engineering working in 3D programs where everything is weightless, and all building materials are free and have infinite strength.
Trees are heavy. Assuming a fairly mature tree with a 10-inch diameter trunk and around 20 feet of height, the wood alone weighs around 800 pounds, and that's before you consider the soil that the tree sits in (100 lbs per cubic foot, so at least a ton for the whole planter) or the water that it needs (100 gallons per week ~800 pounds)
Floor plate loading is 50-250lbs/sqft over the entire area, with hotspots far greater. If what you really wanted was trees you could put them in there. I think he may have meant more just an open green area.
Yes, just a cost issue. The park floors is a really good idea, especially for very high density city developments.
I had some ideas in similar thrust to yours, I think it's worth following up on.
One of the cooler things you could do is space the floor plates so that you give people berths in a building. They then install walls and possibly a subfloor and run utilities. If they want to leave the space open they can, if they want to cut it up into rooms they can.
My building has this, and so do two others in my neighborhood in the unfashionable East Bay. These are all buildings that are 20+ floors. There’s a outdoor space on the top “parking” decks. Then the actual towers are set back on a smaller floor plate. Then there’s outdoor space on the roof deck of the tower.
Not sure what the value to residents in shaded mid-floor outdoor space, vs having sun-filled decks in places that make structural sense. Mid floor parks are just an aesthetic embellishment for people outside the building.
The HN title makes no sense.
It should be either "Work begins on MAD Architects’ cracked Denver residential tower" or "Work begins on cracked Denver residential tower"
they're going to have to pump in stupendous amounts of water to keep that much plant life green, 6 to 16 stories up off the ground, in colorado. hopefully they can at least use the building's own greywater or something.
I wish there'd be more architects avoiding using full-glass facade. This design looks interesting, but (at least to me) somewhat disturbing. Yes, they make the "artistic" statement, but we're not talking about a picture in a gallery, this is going to be visible by a lot of people and for a long time. The urban environment is affecting people, so I think they should be more careful with these experiments...
https://geneticsofdesign.com/2019/07/27/how-bostons-glassy-s...
In the surrounding sea of glass (including three large spaces on the same building) the crack looks really out of place, and draws the attention too much, It's also not regular, which fights against our desire for uniformity. Just feels very out of place, at least to me. Interesting nonetheless, but I wouldn't want to look at it every day for years... :)
I must admit, I do like the design, but why don't we get buildings where the crack style extends to the whole structure? I can think of 1000's of artist renders of what the architecture of the future will look like (eg. https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2020/04/25979...), but I can't think of one building when I've seen it put into practice. I've seen much less feasible designs engineering wise made into reality. Why are these "utopic" buildings left to fiction?
it’s the Frank Lloyd Wright curse: his houses are beautiful but maintenance nightmares - the first time you build a new design, it’s going to leak. as soon as you get creative, you’ll get seams that settle and crack in unpredictable ways.
cubes are not the strongest form (rhombic dodecahedrons are better) but it’s not the weakest form either, you start playing with acute and obtuse angles you might come up with something fragile. best to stick with right angles.
I turn my nose up at rectangular buildings as much as the next guy (my house, at least, is an octagon) but we’ve become very skilled at building rectangles that don’t leak / collapse.
Because they're dramatically more expensive than standard rectangular prisms for comparatively little benefit and significantly less usable/sellable square feet per acre.
Granted, but there are also countries in the UAE that throw billions at these sorts of projects as little more than a side hobby it seems. I'm not asking why aren't all buildings like that, I know full well. I'm curious why there are NO buildings like tis.
I find it hilarious how public figures criticising the tower talk around the fact it looks like a giant penis. I also can't believe it was seriously proposed. I mean, look at it!
Looks good, but always when I see stuff like this I just think functionally it's just for show. I'm function over form every time.
What's it going to look it in 10/20 years. I feel the "inspired by nature" bit is non-sense. There's better ways of "surrounding yourself by nature" that is more functional and not as gimmicky.
Denver winters are not exactly harsh, there's still plenty of sunshine in the winter months. Flora grows back in the spring, every other park survives the winter.
This kind of architecture is absolutely cringe-y. The architects basically out themselves as detached sociopaths, and the patrons out themselves as gullible idiots.
A building like this is a shtick. "Cool" for about 5 minutes. It will not age gracefully. The people behind this project confuse architecture with sculpture.
That's exactly my point. Buildings should not look "cool", they should look timeless. A good building needs to last centuries. What looks cool now, will look stupid 5 years from now. It's fine if a building looks off its time, it's not fine if a building looks like a joke.
When the only assessment we can make about a creative work, e.g. a building (but fine arts just as well), is that it looks "cool", or "interesting", or "contemporary", or "futuristic", what that really means is that we are hesitant to say it looks "beautiful", "attractive", "timeless". Strong assessments like the latter are axiomatic and require a confidence in your aesthetic sensibilities. That these sensibilities are globally shared, that you are empathetic enough to step outside of your own head and look at it as an older person, as a child, as somebody who won't be born until a century from now.
Modern spectacle architecture (like that Bangkok tower) today does not inspire that confidence. It defies being called beautiful, because innately we experience it as not that. It might look "cool", or futuristic, but that's about it. A building like that is infantile branding, it looks like a tetris-game because the kind of people who design and finance this are childish, confusing technological prowess with worth and beauty.
Once upon a time, even having a skyscraper at was "cool" and stood out. Now I'm sure you laud those early buildings as "timeless".
Once upon a time, that all-glass skyscraper was "cool" and stood out, even among the other skyscrapers. Now, we don't blink twice at such towers being stood up.
My point being that architecture as a field and as an art form both progress forward in society. Right now buildings like the MahaNakhon stand out. In the future, they may just be the first instances of the next "timeless" trend.
Also, there's plenty of beauty to find in the MahaNakhon, especially at night... And I'll talk for myself in saying that I find beauty in the execution of technological prowess. The same way I see beauty in well-laid masonry or tile design. They're just using different material.
Architecture which does not fetishize the engineering aesthetic, which is mindful of its impact on the public realm, and which does not consider the building-proper as an artistic expression in and of itself.
Basically, anything before modernism, before WW1 is generally good. Or really, anything before cars. The rise of car culture and the decline of architecture are directly correlated.
Wow, everything you list as bad is everything I consider good. Nothing is worse for a neighborhood than the tyranny of ordinances requiring homogenized, historic designs.
It's a good thing there's more than one building in the world. Everyone should be able to live, work, and design spaces they like, within the local scale (so no 80 floor highrises next to houses if they don't want it, but props to the houses if they do want the highrise). That means you might end up with a glass box next to a pre-WW1 stone box. That's a good thing -- there's no reason a long-passed generation should have the final say in architecture at the expense of the present.
My first thought upon seeing the rendering: a giant jagged gash in a building reminds me of September 11th. Not the kind of thing I would want to see every day...
"The “crack” in the façade, which covers 10 storeys, is a reference to Colorado’s dramatic mountain scenery." So it's designed to look like it has this crazy crack in it. I wonder what that'll look like in real life, the renders are... interesting.
I figured this was another building that's in danger of falling like San Francisco’s slowly cracking up Millennium Tower.