Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Aqua Tower

CC Image Courtesy of joevare on Flickr

Chicago is a very windy place. In fact, it's nickname is "The Windy City." And living in a windy place can be really frustrating because it's annoying to spend time outside when it's so stinking windy! Luckily, recent MacArthur Genius Grant winner Jeanne Gang came up with a solution.

Before we go any further, the genius grant . . . The John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation selects around 20 people each year and gives them $500,000, just because they are geniuses. Or rather, in the words of the foundation, "The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." Recipients are given $500,000, just for being geniuses!

So how did Jeanne Gang win her award? Well, she's an architect. And among other things, she has designed the Aqua Tower in Chicago. It's the building you see here in the picture. And the cool thing about this building is that the unique way in which she has designed the balconies actually "confuses" the wind. The outcome is that all over the building, even on the windiest Chicago day, people can sit out on their balconies and enjoy themselves in relatively calm, windless peace.

How would you win your MacArthur Genius Grant?

by Mr. Andrews Bashan

13 comments:

  1. Does it really work? If it does that would be awesome!

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  2. I heard of a guy in Chicago who designed a wind turbine specialized to urban areas, this two geniuses could work together t make a building that generates as much energy as it uses.

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  3. If anything i would rather be in chicago when its windy because during the summer the temperature is like up to a million bajilion degrees hot

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  4. I would probably invent a motorized version of those ladders in big libraries. I think that would be cool but not as cool as confusing the wind I'm still not sure how someone does that.

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  5. That building is really cool! I would love to live in Chicago. I really like it there. But it's really windy! That building looks like if it came from a science fiction movie. It would be awesome to have something like that here in Guatemala.

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  6. I am curious about how Jeanne Gang's balcony confuses the wind.
    And if i could win the MacArtuer Genius Grant, I would make a machine that finds lost items for the owners. It might be useful for people who often lose their stuffs.

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  7. Gabo, that's BRILLIANT! I think you and Ki Joon should join forces and create really awesome self powered buildings.

    Ji Ye, here's an explanation of how the design of the building confuses the wind from an article published in the New Yorker:
    "The landscape of rolling hills and valleys created by the balconies effectively confuses the heavy Chicago winds, giving them no clear path. The wind is broken up so much that the building didn’t require a device known as a “tuned mass damper”—a mass weighing hundreds of tons that engineers place at the top of tall buildings to stabilize them against the vibrations and sway caused by the force of wind. And using the curves to dissipate the wind gave Gang a bonus: she was able to put balconies on every floor, all the way up. Usually, condominiums sixty or seventy floors above the street don’t have balconies, because it’s just too windy up there to go outside."

    Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/skyline/2010/02/01/100201crsk_skyline_goldberger#ixzz1YeOZ8w2W

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  8. Good job, Gabriel!
    I think you chose a really interesting topic to talk about on the blog. And by the way, the picture of the building absolutely tells me how awesome and architecturally great it is. I have a question for you: Do you know why this building is called the Aqua Tower?

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  9. I have seen many shows that talk about all these types of buildings that have all these type of accesories that make the building aerodynamic, or makes it a renewable resource to itself. i think that this building has the advantage of its shape and this is, in my opinion, what makes it "good" or special.

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  10. I think it's called the Aqua Tower because the shape of the balcony surface resembles water.

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  11. It would be pretty sweet if I won the genius grant for my eco-friendly, self sufficient, gourmet peanut butter sandwich/New Mexican food selling restaurant that is going to be in Jalapa. It's going to grow it's own food on-site and have a room full of beanie bags where people can hang out. People who want to could help me garden, and every Tuesday would be free food days. I'll also have a library, trampolines, and swimming pools.

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  12. Now that I've thought about it maybe a motorized ladder isn't the way to go. So I could invent a machine that converts what your saying into typed words. I discussed this with Josh yesterday and we both think it save people hours typing.

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  13. That's so awesome! The designer has a lot of imagination and he is so brilliant because he made this building to looks so real. Thumbs up to the guy how create this building.

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