A few years ago I saw a program (Engineering Catastrophes, maybe) about a condo tower from which the sun radiated in all directions. While the glass helped to reduce interior temperatures in the building, it was at the expense of other structures and parks. One option was to replace all the glass, but doing so was deemed too expensive.
Anyone know if the problem still exists. If not, what was the solution?
Yep.
At least they sorta fixed these two. I understand it’s still quite warm if you’re directly in it, but it sounds like they at least got it to stop damaging other buildings.
I sense an opportunity for locating high-output solar panels, at least.
I hadn’t heard about this case. It’s not like the Vdara (cited above) where the reflective surfaces concentrate the light, focusing it so that plastics melt and fires can even happen (I wrote an article about modern super-shiny surfaces on buildings and sculptures starting fires not that long ago). This is a case where a convex shape on a highly reflective building is reflecting the sunlight everywhere, and the glare is annoying (but not damaging).
I’m surprised there aren’t more such cases – highly reflective mirrored windows are everywhere anymore. As suggested above, a lot of [place use window coatings that reduce the glare or diffuse it.
Then there’s the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, which created heat spots and caused glare depending on which surface the sun hit.
Right – but that’s another case where the building is acting as a concave mirror and focusing light, unlike the building in the OP that is simply reflecting a lot of light.
as U understand it, they did some sandblasting on panels on the Disney building to make it more of a diffuse reflector than a specular one.
You can’t access my article “Fire in the Soul”, but here are some ullustrations from it, showing sculptures that started fires
William H. Whyte’s video “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” which studied the public plazas and parks in New York City back in the late 1970s touched on this. Usually the complaints about highrises involve blocking sunlight, but it was noted that the glass and steel highrises in New York (very much rectangular) would bounce light back and forth into unexpected places that would otherwise be strongly shadowed. This was viewed as a good thing, and I tend to agree, because unlike in concave curves the reflected light would never be more intense than full sun, so it gives a softer more pleasant glow. Nice in the summer too because it’s not as hot. The video is tough to find, but it does pop up from time to time.
The Dallas one was specifically a problem for the Nasher Sculpture Garden and to a lesser extent, the Dallas Museum of Art, both of which have long been situated next door to where the Museum Tower was built many years later.
In college, some friends and I were watching the Sun set behind some buildings on campus… and to our surprise, continued to watch it set even after it passed behind the roofline. We eventually realized that we were watching a double reflection off of the windows of two parallel buildings, leaving the rays going in the same direction as initially, and thus appearing to form an unbroken path with the direct view of the Sun.