According to this story in the Huffington Post Quebec, builders of a condo complex in Spain originally designed it with twenty stories. The height was doubled to forty storeys, and the somehow forgot to include the elevators…
Translation:
“At its origin, this building project, which was to be finished in December 2013, was planned to have only twenty storeys, according to [website] VieImmo.com. The architects had evidently included elevators. It was only after twenty more storeys were added to the project that the building professionals made the error of not reviewing their plans…”
I should have known it would already be on the Dope… the HuffPo Québec article showed up in my Facebook feed this evening. Maybe the threads can be merged?
The article in Spanish reports mostly on the economic problems which have plagued the construction of those buildings and that when they are 83% completed the original architects have withdrawn from the project. Also some technical problems and it mentions, by the way and without going into any depth.
This means the elevator shafts in the project would be adequate to serve a 20 story building but insufficient for a 47 story building. According to what sources or what regulations or calculations it does not say. Maybe this is just someone’s opinion. It does not say. It is not the focus of the article.
It does not say or mean the elevators only reach the 20th floor.
It does not say or mean anywhere that “They forgot to build a lift.”.
It does not say anywhere anything like “The towers were originally designed to be only 20 floors high, but ambitious developers decided to double the scale of the project midway through.” which to anyone with a modicum of critical thinking sounds like highly implausible. Or do you really think you can more than double the height of a building just by adding floors above? This is rubbish.
The reporters were clearly incompetent but where were the editors?
There are a lot of credulous gits out there who will believe the most unlikely things of they read it on the Internet because they trust the editors of their sources to be critical and check their facts but if the professional media sink to this level of reporting then they are worse than worthless by disseminating and endorsing rubbish.
There is plenty of information about this project which can be easily found and double-checked on the Internet and the reporters could have easily done a good job.
It seems the collapse of the real estate market in Spain led to the bankruptcy of the builders and the resignation of the architects and project management firms in charge of the construction because of tightening budgets. That is the focus of the article in El Pais. Just one more boring story similar to many others in Spain these days.
Regarding the “lift only goes up to the 20th floor” story I have to admit “si non e vero e ben trovato” (even if it’s not true it’s still a good story). Maybe you should label it as fiction though.
Too late to edit. I meant to post this in the other thread on the same topic. I see this story has now been repeated over and over from one news site to another gaining with each transcription and each translation. I love me a good game of telegraph.
I believe this is the same building where two children disappeared and it turns out they were swallowed whole by a Bi-Coloured-Horror-Python-Rock-Snake originally taken from the the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees (thanks R.K.). Two days later the snake vomited the kids whole two floors below and you could never tell they had been inside a snake for two days. Except for being dead they looked just great. true story.
From a quickie search, it seems as if the norm most commonly used in Spain to calculate how many lifts would be needed and their motors is UNE/EN 81-2, which has replaced the former NTEs (Normas Técnicas de Edificación, “technical building standards”). It’s mainly a function of occupation (i.e., how many people are expected to need to use the lift, both throughout the day and at peak times) and of building height.
Well, bother. Looks like I posted something of less-than-clear quality. I apologize. I thought the original HuffPo article was somewhat unclear, but I went with it anyways.
What sailor already reported. El País (which he cited) is one of Spain’s biggest papers; this isn’t a subject on which the factual reporting from different ones will vary a lot. Even editorials, well: “big building project collapses due to bubble going bust. Btw there were some design issues (which anybody familiar with how construction works here won’t be particularly surprised about, and with construction having been such a large part of our economy for a decade, anybody should be familiar with it)”
Next in the news: Pope Paco wears white, bears shit in woods, politicians take bribes.
Fair enough. I was just curious because a lot of times if you read say… CNN’s coverage of something in Houston, and then read the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of the same event, you’ll come out with a markedly different interpretation and level of detail.
So I figured that maybe there was some local knowledge that we in the English-speaking world weren’t getting yet.
Yeah but even if I happen to be the most prolific of the Spanish posters I promise I’m not the only one, and in this particular case the “local knowledge” had already been provided by another one.
I’m not sure what they mean in this quote from the english version:
In January 2012, there was a new surprise: the elevator shaft had not been taken into account, as the promotional designs clearly show. “The space was calculated for a 20-storey building,” said the same sources. Then, in May, the architects directing the project resigned.
There appeared to be 3 elevator shafts if I read Mr. Downtowns 2nd link correctly. Is that not enough for 47 stories?
3 elevators? For a 47-story residential building? No way; not enough by a wide margin. The building where I grew up in Spain is only 15 stories tall, has 4 elevators, and at “rush hour” they are not really enough.
The building I live in is seven stories, has about 19 apartments per floor (although there are fewer apartments on the ground floor) and it has two elevators. So I’d expect at least four or six in a 47-story building, although perhaps some can express to the higher floors. This is a five-year-old article from The New Yorker about a man who was trapped in a New York City office building elevator for 47 hours. It describes something about how elevators are designed.
Another article, this time from the Wall Street Journal (and therefore behind a paywall) about an elevator designer at Otis Elevator.
As I read the plans, there are only three units per floor in this building, so 147 units, served by two elevators and a freight elevator. In addition, it’s a resort area where many of the units will not be occupied year-round.
Spanish code may indeed require more elevators than were provided, but the situation doesn’t seem laughable by any means. My 250-unit building is served very well by three elevators.
The volume is not calculated for “yearly average” but for “peak times”. In this case, if anything there should be more lifts than in a normal town: in a town, peak times do not include beach umbrellas, coolers, folding chairs and the whole family (mom, dad, 2-3 kids, grandma, possibly grandpa, possibly one or two dogs) trying to fit into a single trip…
My mother’s 10-storey (11 in the US), 29-unit home has a single lift which in theory is rated for 4 75kg people; in reality neighbors measure it carefully before choosing a baby stroller. Neighbor’s hours are varied enough that it’s rare to have to wait for it to do more than one other trip before you catch it, but I’ve been in locations with less units where peak times were a nightmare as everybody had the same hours.
Without knowing the elevator study it is impossible to know if this is adequately served with the elevators. And is it (4) elevators and (2) freight elevators–(2) passenger elevators and (1) freight in each leg of the tower if I am reading the plans correctly.
I just finished a 24 story building that has (2) elevators servicing it and it functions exactly as the elevator consultant stated it would. These are high speed elevators and their is never a wait for an elevator more than a minute or two.