The unfinished 37-story Walkie Talkie business center became a major London celebrity in 2013. Reflecting the sun in its glass walls, he suddenly began to melt various objects in the next street: cars, bicycles, furniture in the cafe opposite. For this, the skyscraper has already been nicknamed Walkie Scorchie (from the English scorch - "set on fire").
Many Londoners are amused by this - they jokingly come to warm food on the curbs. The owners of the damaged property are outraged and wonder how it was possible to build, it is not clear what. Architects justify themselves by recalling similar situations in other countries.
A skyscraper on Fanchurch Street in central London, due to be completed next year by developers, has a concave mirrored façade on the south side, mimicking the shape of an ancient mobile walkie-talkie. This architectural concavity catches and reflects the sun's rays so powerfully that the temperature in the concentrated ray reaches a record 69.8 degrees Celsius. This is an absolute record in natural conditions - a hundred years ago, a maximum temperature of 56.7 degrees was recorded in Death Valley.
And such incredible rays in the unusually warm weather of late summer - early autumn every day "fry" a section of about 30 meters in length on Eastchip Street, located a block from Walkie Talkie. The loudest story is, of course, the melted Jaguar, which the unsuspecting owner parked there last Thursday afternoon. When he returned two hours later, he found that one of the mirrors and the emblem of his beloved car had “spread”.
After this sensation, journalists and simply bored public came to Eastchip, who cheerfully began to fry eggs, hamburgers and vegetables right on the sidewalks. It's much less fun for the owners of local cafes and shops, where merciless rays melt everything that gets in their way. So the owner of one of the hairdressers said that plastic bottles from shampoos began to melt on his window and a hole in the doormat was burned. The manager of a nearby Vietnamese cafe said that their food is now cooked not in the oven, but right on the tables. In this case, it turns out "with a smoke" - in the air there is a smell from singed wooden chairs. The Daily Mail publishes amazing photos from the scene.
Promotional video:
Philip Oldfield, professor of architecture at the University of Nottingham, finds it surprising that so many designers still view glass as a "futuristic material," conceptually "stuck in the 1950s." Many Londoners are also not happy with the glass building in London, not wanting it to "turn into Hong Kong." Experts are also surprised that the creators of such an expensive building as Walkie Talkie, whose construction is estimated at £ 200 million, could not calculate such a reflection effect at the modeling and testing stage.
The developers of Walkie Talkie promise compensation to the most affected, but at the same time try to absolve themselves of some of the blame, pointing to force majeure in the form of abnormally hot weather: they say that the mirror facade has been standing for several months and there have been no such incidents, but here by the end of the summer just unexpectedly out of luck. The building's owners are working to fix the problem, promising to build temporary shelters shortly to protect stores. Parking in the "skillet street" has already been banned.
Meanwhile, architecture experts are not particularly impressed, noting that many modern skyscrapers face similar problems, The Telegraph continues. For example, three years ago, guests of the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas (designed, by the way, by the same Rafael Vinoli architecture studio that worked on Walkie Talkie) complained that the rays reflected from the hotel walls melted the plastic cups by the pool. And in Dallas, the 42-story Museum Tower was reflecting so much light into the nearby Nasher Sculpture Center that there were problems with the paintings in the gallery. As a result, the parties litigated for two years.
And here is what they wrote back in 2013:
In London, one of the city's skyscrapers, the facade of which has a parabolic shape, melted down the businessman's car a few days ago. At certain times of the day, in full accordance with the laws of physics, the 160-meter parabola reflects the rays from its surface at one point and a small area on Eastchip becomes a place where you can cook your own lunch right on the sidewalk. Motorists are counting losses, and resourceful pranksters fry eggs in the British sun.
The half-built 37-story building, nicknamed Walkie-Talkie due to its shape, is now called Walkie Scorchie (scorch - to burn). Entrepreneurs complain that in the focal area of a 160-meter architectural quirk, paint has bubbled, tiles crack and fly out on the sidewalk, and the carpet at the entrance to the hairdresser is burnt. The owner of the Jaguar XJ, who had parked his car near the skyscraper, returned two hours later to find that the car's emblem, side mirror and other plastic elements had melted.
The company that ordered the skyscraper apologized to the owner of the car and paid compensation in the amount of £ 946 for the repairs, but the building continues to heat the street, locals nicknamed it the "City Sunbeam of Death" and consider it "too dangerous." The network shows many photos of all kinds of damage, melted bike seats, cracked tiles, burned carpet and even a damaged lemon.
Hairdresser Ali Akay showed a rug for the feet, lit by the "death ray". There is a burnt area on the rug (on the right in the photo).
“We were working and suddenly we saw smoke coming from the rug,” Akai says. - We put out the fire, but the clients who were in the hairdresser all this time were clearly not happy. Fearing a fire, they are now afraid to come to us."
Even the fruit suffered. Lemon was lying by the window in the damaged barber shop.
Land Securities and Canary Wharf, who own the building, say they thought about it and admitted the possibility that a curved building might work like a 'giant magnifying glass,' but didn't see the problem as serious. “Yes, we did solar analysis and simulations., but this was not taken into account. Buildings with a new shape always have this risk."
The Walkie Scorchie phenomenon won't last forever. The beam from the southern concave side of the building became visible last week, when the sun took a certain position in the sky. The building is capable of frying eggs on the street for about two hours a day, and after about three weeks, the phenomenon will stop altogether, as the autumn sun will keep lower and lower over the horizon.
The figure shows how the building, due to its concave shape, collects a large amount of sunlight and reflects it in a focused manner over a small area. This effect lasts approximately 2 hours a day and will continue for another 2-3 weeks until the sun changes its position in the sky.
The operator removes the tiles that have fallen off the cafe building under the influence of sunlight.
Machine after an hour of exposure.
Meanwhile, a year ago a professional 3D artist predicted this effect on the SkyscraperCity forum. “On a bright and hot day in September and October, there can be interesting lighting effects,” he wrote under the nickname Bobdobbs. "I am absolutely confident that the reflected light will be 600% brighter than from nearby buildings."
Light reflection 3D model made by user Bobdobbs.
Philip Oldfield, a skyscraper expert at the University of Nottingham, believes that it was due to the amendments that were made to the original project by the architect Raphael Vignoli: "The original design included small horizontal balconies on the south facade, and now a continuous glass facade is being erected."
Developers are working on a long-term solution so that the "death ray" no longer damages property in its area of / u200b / u200band the company's reputation. In the meantime, three parking lots on Eastchip were closed until the problem was resolved naturally. The Daily Mail writes that this is the second case of a toasted car near 20 Fenchurch Street.
As a temporary solution, developers are currently erecting a protective screen at Eastchip Street level that will minimize exposure to sunlight for the next three weeks.
And finally, a video of frying eggs, a render and some photos of an excellent source of concentrated clean energy:
Meanwhile, a year ago a professional 3D artist predicted this effect on the SkyscraperCity forum. “On a bright and hot day in September and October, there can be interesting lighting effects,” he wrote under the nickname Bobdobbs. "I am absolutely confident that the reflected light will be 600% brighter than from nearby buildings."