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Post by Kristopher Crook, RAI on Sept 4, 2008 21:30:53 GMT -5
Looks like our old town is now joining the ranks of the majors. I just got in last night and already I have heard the name and seen the colors of the new NBA team, the Thunder, and learned of Devon Energy's gigantic investment in downtown, The investment takes the form of the Devon Tower, topping out at 54 floors and 925 feet above street level - 425 feet taller than the current tallest building here. That would make it the fifth-tallest building in the west, barely eclipsed (by less than 100 feet) only by two in Houston, one in Seattle, and one in Los Angeles. Notice I didn't mention Dallas? That;s because the Devon Tower will be taller than anything there... I thought there was absolutely no chance of a major high-rise being built downtown anytime soon (and, well, it will be the frist since 1984) - I'm pleasantly amazed by the feeling here. The town finally believes in itself and isn't going to be a bridesmaid to the others in the region any more. With the brand-new, and now easily my favorite, airport in terms of ease of use, everything about OKC says that the city is poised to become the country's next major city. An amazing time. Still not moving back anytime soon, I love Chicago too much, but it's nice to come "home" and see all the changes for the better, instead of "for sale" signs and desolate streets like it was when I was in high school.
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Post by Kristopher Crook, RAI on Sept 5, 2008 2:10:28 GMT -5
You have to forgive me, I'm not in the most lucid of mindsets, having gone through very difficult emergency abdominal surgery two weeks ago. My sleep cycles and thoughts are not always as they should be. feel free to remove the topic if you wish, I have no problems with that.
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Post by Adrian Wainer on Sept 5, 2008 5:25:21 GMT -5
Hi Kristopher sorry to hear you weren't too well, hope you are getting better. Where is the building you are talking about? Anyway no problem with the thread, Tom only has to shift it to the chat section, as for Col7777 doubt he meant it like it sounds, ( a general problem with the internet is that ), .
Well best regards
Adrian Wainer
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Post by jesse on Sept 5, 2008 7:38:10 GMT -5
Adrian, the city refered to is Oklahoma City, the capitol of Oklahoma. It has been progressing slowly in the past, but now it looks like it will blossom out.
Jesse
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Post by Adrian Wainer on Sept 5, 2008 8:58:37 GMT -5
Hi Jesse, thanx for the update, if this is good news for the city and sounds like it is I wish it every success. On the other hand the 9/11 tragedy pretty much sickened me about tall buildings. Nobody could have known when it was built some maniac would deliberately crash an aircraft in to it, but the Twin Towers were situated in a major city with several large airports close by and how the building would cope with being hit accidently by say a Douglas DC-8 or Boeing 707 does not seem to have entered in to the equation at all, in fact it is my understanding the building recieved an exemption that allowed it to be built without complying to New York building codes. It is not I am against tall buildings per se, e.g. Empire State is a magnificent achievement but my view is that if people want to put up really tall buildings, it has to be with the best technology and materiels available or you are just asking for trouble in that it is a nightmare to fight a fire at above 100 feet as that is as high as a fire brigade high ladder reaches. Best and Warm Regards Adrian Wainer www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1E8UsvlAag |
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Sept 5, 2008 9:39:14 GMT -5
Hi, I've moved the topic.  |
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Post by jesse on Sept 5, 2008 12:42:33 GMT -5
Good Move....Adrian, the Empire State building was not exempt from being hit by aircraft. In 1945 during WWII, a B-25 was enroute to Newark in bad wx. The B-25 hit the Empire State at the 79th floor. Seventeen people including the three crew members were killed. The plane left a big hole in the side of the building, and the resulting fire was really bad.  |
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Post by Kristopher Crook, RAI on Sept 5, 2008 17:31:58 GMT -5
Hi Jesse, thanx for the update, if this is good news for the city and sounds like it is I wish it every success. On the other hand the 9/11 tragedy pretty much sickened me about tall buildings. Nobody could have known when it was built some maniac would deliberately crash an aircraft in to it, but the Twin Towers were situated in a major city with several large airports close by and how the building would cope with being hit accidently by say a Douglas DC-8 or Boeing 707 does not seem to have entered in to the equation at all, in fact it is my understanding the building recieved an exemption that allowed it to be built without complying to New York building codes. It is not I am against tall buildings per se, e.g. Empire State is a magnificent achievement but my view is that if people want to put up really tall buildings, it has to be with the best technology and materiels available or you are just asking for trouble in that it is a nightmare to fight a fire at above 100 feet as that is as high as a fire brigade high ladder reaches. Best and Warm Regards Adrian Wainer www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1E8UsvlAag I agree regarding fire supression, and 9/11, like we've seen in aviation, is frankly "Tombstone Technology" - we learn from our mistakes and build new features into new structures that hopefully correct the errors of the past. I've broached this subject in other venues, and there is a lot more to consider about tall buildings than their height. The WTC was built using a type of structure that Minaro Yamasaki had used in lower-height buildings, but never in a skyscraper. It was an unproven design, and it did withstand the impact of the aircraft, as it was designed to do. What was not factored in was the fire element - the design studies of the WTC and its resilience to an aircraft impact were based upon the idea of a plane lost on approach to New York (IOW, one probably low on fuel) that accidentally hit the building, not one fully-laden that was deliberately flown into it. The structure of the WTC, which utilized a central core with floor trusses cantilevered to the external load-bearing wall was unheard of in its time. In fact, only one other high-rise was ever built by Yamasaki using this design, and it's the building that also happens to be the tallest in Oklahoma right now - Tulsa's Bank of Oklahoma Tower, which is 667 feet tall, not quite half the height of the WTC. The designs of other "supertall" buildings do not use this sort of structure. The Sears Tower, for example, is really nine tubes of traditional steel-frame construction that create one building - it is far more a reslilient structure than the WTC was. I can't help but wonder if the 9/11 masterminds did not study in great detail the structure of the WTC and picked out that it was a very weak structure. Either that, or they were really lucky and managed to Forrest Gump their way into hitting the one supertall structure that was the most vulnerable. Oklahoma City's Devon Tower is only going to be 925 feet, 75 feet from being considered a "supertall" structure - and it's going to stick out like a sore thumb because the current tallest building in OKC is 500 feet tall, almost half the projected height of the Devon. That is my issue with it - it will be asthetically unbalanced. But then, Milwaukee has an unbalanced skyline as well, and it grows on you. I might add that 9/11 put no damper on construction in Chicago. The Donald's hotel and condo tower is nearing completion and is already the second-tallest building in North America. The Waterview Tower, which will climb to around 1,100 feet is about 1/4 built. But eclipsing them all is the Chicago Spire, whose caissons have already been dug on the Ogden Slip. Upon completion in 2011, the Spire will reach 2,000 feet, only the Burj Dubai in the UAE will be taller, assuming nobody builds anything in the interim. And those are just the three climbing above 1,000 feet - there are about a dozen with in 300 feet of that level, such as Museum Park (750 feet), Aqua (800 feet) - those are nearing completion and go along with the Sears, John Hancock, and Aon towers, all over 1,000. The AT&T World Center is over 1,000 feet if you include the spires, Two Prue is also just short of 1,000 feet. From the 700 foot and above level, Chicago probably has twenty or more buildings of that height. I always found the paranoia about tall buildings post-9/11 kind of funny - did we forget that the same bunch of maniacs also took a chunk out of a low -rise building and intended to hit one even shorter? |
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Post by capflyer on Sept 6, 2008 7:51:59 GMT -5
Kris, Very good posts (I'm happy to see another nearby rival for the Mavericks. ). As to your question about studying the design of the WTC, that was a factor in their planning, but they never thought that the fire would be sufficiently hot to topple the buildings. The primary reason for selecting the WTC was that they knew it was an international symbol of NYC. The Empire State Building had been hit in the past by planes, so they didn't think that it would be as much of an "impact", plus the WTC had been attacked unsuccessfully previously, and there was a desire to "complete the mission". The 9/11 Commission Report actually went into some depth about that as several of the planners have been interrogated since and ther were several messages released (video and audio) that said much the same thing that they weren't expecting to topple the buildings. The funny thing is that the design is what saved the WTC in the original parking garage attack. Because the center core was where the majority of the strength lie, the bomb set off more to the periphery had no chance of affecting enough structural members to cause any lasting damage to the overhead structure despite trashing all of the sub-surface levels. |
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Post by Kristopher Crook, RAI on Sept 6, 2008 17:22:57 GMT -5
Kris, Very good posts (I'm happy to see another nearby rival for the Mavericks. ). As to your question about studying the design of the WTC, that was a factor in their planning, but they never thought that the fire would be sufficiently hot to topple the buildings. The primary reason for selecting the WTC was that they knew it was an international symbol of NYC. The Empire State Building had been hit in the past by planes, so they didn't think that it would be as much of an "impact", plus the WTC had been attacked unsuccessfully previously, and there was a desire to "complete the mission". The 9/11 Commission Report actually went into some depth about that as several of the planners have been interrogated since and ther were several messages released (video and audio) that said much the same thing that they weren't expecting to topple the buildings. The funny thing is that the design is what saved the WTC in the original parking garage attack. Because the center core was where the majority of the strength lie, the bomb set off more to the periphery had no chance of affecting enough structural members to cause any lasting damage to the overhead structure despite trashing all of the sub-surface levels. You know, Mark Cuban was one of two NbA owners that voted against the Sonics' move to Oklahoma City - apparently, he did not want another close-by rival, and probably not one whose star played for the University of Texas. Paul Allen also voted against the move, as took away Portland's natural rival, but Seattle will get another team once they get that arena situation taken care of. And, heck, the Oklahoma City-based ownership of the former Sonics, now Thunder, DID leave the WNBA team there that they got in the deal...that ought to be good for, oh, at least 200 people a game at Key Arena... ;D Thanks for your addition regarding the WTC, I knew that it was obviously a symbol of New York and always believed that they had looked at the design. I did no know about the fire considerations, but then, I don't think anyone really did. I knew there were concerns with the fire-proofing on the floor trusses long before the attack, but I don't think anyone ever calculated how dangerous it could be. After all, before 9/11, who thought about the possibility of fuel-filled jumbo jets being flown into buildings on purpose? Architects and engineers do now do now - which is why I believe that the current generation of tall skyscrapers are being built with such factors in mind. I've watched the Trump Tower going up in Chicago - there is a lot of steel and reinforced concrete behind the glass fascia. In a way, it is actually built as three individual buildings,starting at the ground and then at the two setbacks, which is why the hotel, which comprises the first 16 floors, opened last winter, when the rest of the tower is still under construction. It's totally self-contained, as will be the other two sections. And the use of concrete reinforcement, something the WTC did not have, is a far more fire-resistant construction. The Burj Dubai, based on the construction photos I have seen, is using a lot of concrete in the floor structures. And, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia are totally built of steel-reinfoced concrete. I think the construction method needs to be looked at when rendering an opinion on whether or not a tall building should be built - the WTC was unique, only one ofther high-rise shares its exact construction method. It's kind of like saying don't buy an economy car because Yugos broke down a lot... |
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