[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
Ummmmmmmmmmm…architects are responsible for the provision of bins in toilet areas? I very much doubt there’s anything that specific in what Foster provided. Likewise a lot of the other things, such as ‘no soft surfaces’ in the atrium. Don’t they tend to be things like seats, rather than walls and floors and glass? And isn’t poor plumbing most likely the fault of the, errrrr, plumbers?
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If someone gets paid millions for a design going out with his name on the top which totally fails to provide space for a receptacle to throw things away in (no space to accommodate a trashcan of any kind unless it’s bought from Argos and put in the middle of the floor as an afterthought), it’s his fault. And when I say ‘soft surfaces’ I mean things like wood, plastic, etc.
[QUOTE=The High Grand Poo-Bah’s Own Website]
A six-storey high drum containing six circular lecture theatres based on the interactive Harvard Business School model rises from the Forum. The drum will be clad with 12mm diameter stainless-steel tubes, acting as an acoustic baffle. The spaces between the tubes also act as vents for the lecture theatres.
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Because in Mr Foster’s world a six-storey high box of concrete, glass and stainless steel is a perfect acoustic environment, presumably because no-one speaks to him other than in hushed tones of awe.
I mean, who puts in hundreds of square metres of stainless steel tube to quieten things down? AND its filthy - it can’t be cleaned so it’s massively dusty, which is great because that’s where the air is pumped through so the people in the cafeteria can filter it with their lungs :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
I would be interested to know, however, if plans were made available for consultation to the people who would be using the building. If not, then it’s certainly a design fault. If a flawed design of a room for specialised use was accepted by the specialists themselves, however, then who would be to blame?
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Well, allegedly it was good enough for HBS so it must be good enough for everyone else :rolleyes:. Although I suspect that if HBS used this exact same layout, the only people who liked it are those who comissioned it. I note that e.g. this is allegedly also built to the HBS style - not the positioning of the doors and the built-in flipcharts. And the lighting, which actually looks like it could keep people awake for a few hours. So I think the Tanaka implementation was just screwed because someone decided the key consideration was to fit the theatres into a posh circular column, rather than to make them useable. There is actually one theatre under the main entrance, which is squarer, has the entrance at the back and is much more useable (although the air con and lighting is still poor). And lecture theatres aren’t exactly specialist - there are thousands of them around and probably the equivalent of a Lecture Theatre Design for Dummies book.
As I said earlier, my feeling is that the people who comission these things just want a ‘statement’ building and an ego-stroke from having comissioned a big name to do their building. If people like Foster are happy to give them what they they want (i.e. a well-polished diamante-encrusted turd) in exchange for being showered with money then I think it’s only fair that they get showered with abuse by the poor saps who have to use the building.
He’s onto a real winner with Imperial, though. In the case of this building, on a windy day the wind gusts underneath that deck to the left with enough force to make the whole thing vibrate and emit an eerie howl.
