Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with buildings

What used to be here?

MattMangels — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:38:11 -0800

Does anyone know what used to be next door to the Barnes and Noble in Colma, Ca? The Barnes and Noble in the 280 Metro Center in Colma has a Starbucks cafe that obviously used to be a separate building. Anyone know what that used to be?

Learning how buildings learn

Countess Elena — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:51:36 -0800

I want to have a skill and the skill is this: when examining a building casually, I'd like to be able to tell, within a span of about thirty years, when it was built (or altered). It's just something I try to do to amuse myself. Obviously there's no way to date something precisely, but I can do pretty well by noticing whether there's "built-in everything" (a late '70s-'80s touch), a home intercom ('50s-'60s), or "nipple" type buzzers for servants (pre-50s).

What should I read, observe, or pay attention to in order to help with this? (Note that I'm an American walking around in American buildings, but I have my eyes open when I'm traveling too.)

New industrial architecture

lou — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:28:49 -0800

Looking for examples of creative, modern industrial architecture. When I think industrial buildings, I (and probably most people) imagine gigantic bland boxes, tens or hundreds of thousands square feet large surrounded by parking lots. But it doesn't always have to be that way, right? Zaha Hadid's BMW Central Building in Leipzig comes to mind, but even then, it's just a small piece in a collection of otherwise typical box warehouses.

What else is out there? I'd really like to see:
- Green - I'm thinking along the lines of LEED certification, or some kind of production in green materials.
- Industrial - light or heavy. Blue collar work environments. Nothing that's primarily office space.
- Mixed-use? If you can mix office, retail and residences, is it possible to mix industrial? Perhaps smaller industrial spaces? Does this even exist?
- On a similar vein, high-density is a bonus.
- The exterior environment is really important- It's not just the architecture that should be compelling but also the landscaping.

Alright, now please educate me!

Ice falling from buildings?

Ponderance — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:20:59 -0800

Ice falling from tall buildings filter. Help me lay to rest a question that has plagued my wife. We live in Chicago, with lots of tall buildings. Ice falls off of the buildings from time to time and about once a year, some poor bastard gets mushed. Where in terms of physics and I suppose statistics would be the safest place to walk down the sidewalk: as close to the building as possible? The middle of the sidewalk? The far edge? Does it depend on building height?

Name that building!

jefficator — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:04:13 -0800

What is the building I saw while driving on the beltway around DC? On a recent trip from Alabama to New Jersey, I spent hours stuck in traffic on the beltway surrounding Washington, DC. I distinctly remember a tall, somewhat ornate, stone building to the west--the left as I headed north. I presume this building was in Arlington County, though I could be mistaken.

1) Does anyone know the name of the building?

2) Short of querying the hive mind, how would one find out the name of buildings like this?

Ooh, what's inside there?

sixcolors — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:43:46 -0800

So what's inside areas that are closed off to the public, in buildings? I know places like hospitals have certain areas that are closed off to the public because they are morgues, have hazardous materials inside, or whatever...but there's other places I have trouble guessing why they restrict access.

Some examples:

On my campus, the library, business, and education buildings have areas where students and sometimes faculty aren't allowed. Same thing with the dorms, but it is even weirder. Some of the stairwells are locked. Isn't that a fire hazard? One of the dorms obviously have a fourth floor, yet no one lives up there, and you can't get there from the stairs or elevator.

Not too long ago, I looked at the floor plan of my favorite casino, and noticed that there was at least five rooms that didn't have a number or name.

As for elevators...I sometimes see keyholes instead of buttons on certain floors. It's usually the very top or very bottom floor(s).

I don't know if this is urban legend or not...I heard that the 13th floor in some buildings aren't open to the public. Superstitious much?If that's true, what's there?

Skyscraper living

longsleeves — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:51:47 -0800

Do people still live in The Sears tower in chicago? or any other skyscapers? I remember an article in Time Magazine or something similar about apartments so high up that they would occasionally sway from the force of strong winds, but a search of Chic. listings produced nothing. I am intrigued with the idea of living high above the ground.

Post script: This is a question from a person who is honestly inquiring and means no harm.

ReferenceLibrarianFilter

Countess Elena — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:45:00 -0800

Tell me what to call this topic I'm interested in, so that I know how to research it. It's somewhere within architecture and/or engineering. For a story I'm writing, I need to read up about the engineering, expense and logistics of early 20th century building techniques, as affected by water table levels in the soil.

For example, by the river in the Delta, where I grew up, nobody had basements -- and there were hardly any subterranean levels to buildings -- because the water table in the soil was so high. The cemeteries of New Orleans are built above ground for this same reason. I need to know more about this and about the limitations it has historically posed.

If I could put this in fewer words, I could research it in the library by myself. What should I be looking for?

Appropriate holiday tips for building staff.

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 07:33:04 -0800

New Yorkers, please advise me on appropriate holiday tip amounts for building staff. I am preparing to give out end-of-year tips for the people who work in my apartment building, and I would love to hear how others determine end-of-year cash amounts for their NYC building staff.

I own an apartment in a ~40-unit Manhattan building. There is always a doorman at the lobby desk, but otherwise the building is not at all what one would consider a luxury, full-service building. There is also a non-live-in super. I live alone and don't really require any personal extra effort from the building employees, although I feel sure that if I ever needed anything they would go out of their way to help me. Every member of the staff is friendly and first-rate, so I'd like to err on the generous side of the tip scale. I need to tip my super and each person on the roster of six doormen, who work anywhere from one to six shifts a week.

I've googled and found several articles about what to tip but they didn't seem to be particularly applicable, so I'd love to hear about your personal decision-making processes. How much do you tip your building employees? What is a good way to determine appropriate amounts?

The lobby's in Illinois but the bathroom is in Indiana

SisterHavana — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:02:27 -0800

Besides this, this and these, what are some other examples of buildings that straddle state or international borders? I remember reading an article a few years ago about a gas station/convenience store that straddled the California/Nevada border but I can't remember exactly where that was. Are there any private residences like this? How are taxes, utilities, fire and police services decided - not to mention the mailing address?

steel mill in the sky?

delmoi — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:16:48 -0800

Let's say you want to build an extremely tall really tall building with giant metal rods supporting it. Would it be feasible to "forge" the rods in place with some sort of self-raising crane/steel mill? Also, how thick and tall can metal rods get before they are no longer able to support themselves (and a building I guess)?

Can I get away with recording a band in an abandoned building in SF?

Bappy Lorenzo — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:10:46 -0800

San Franciscans! How safe/legal/easy would it be to record a band in an abandoned building in your city? I asked a band if they would like to make an album for my record label. They live in California, I'll be there for a weekend, I figured why not do something a little different? San Fran seems pretty open to this sort of thing. The band will most definitely be loud, but they don't have huge amps, which would mean easy in/easy out if need be. Will it work?

architecture of the planet of the apes, anyone?

ashbury — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:03:36 -0800

Say something medically catastrophic happened to human beings and most of them were wiped off the earth. The buildings and monuments and such remained, intact but uncared for. How long would the highrise buildings stand and be relatively livable? How long would it take for a building to come down? I ask only about highrises because they tend to be more sealed than the average residential abode. But of course if you have an answer about houses and any other buildings, feel free to chime in.

And yes, this is a pretty vague scenario with lots of unknowns.

Odd buildings purpose?

yellowbkpk — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 13:08:38 -0800

What are these small prefab buildings that I see while traveling on the train (and elsewhere) every once and a while? Recently I've started to take the train up to Minneapolis every once and a while. Along the way, I've noticed quite a few copies of the same, small, prefab buildings sitting on cement blocks along the tracks. I don't have pictures (because my cameraphone sucks), but let me try and describe them:

They are about 20 feet long, 7-10 feet wide, and maybe 8 feet tall. They are made out of what looks like light-brown colored cement, are almost perfectly rectangular, and have metal doors with a short metal staircase on one end of the building. On some of the buildings' doors there are red flammable chemical warning symbols. On the opposite end is usually an air conditioner (but sometimes the AC units are located along the long side of the building). I usually see these buildings in sets of two or three, but sometimes there's just one. They're always behind chain-link, barbed-wire fences and the area inside the fence has gravel (like an electrical sub-station).

Sometimes one or more of the buildings will have a Yagi directional antenna pointing off somewhere, but otherwise I don't see any obvious connection to the outside-of-the-fence world (i.e. they're not cellphone tower support buildings or microwave relays).

As I said, I've seen a lot of these while on the train, but I've seen copies of them elsewhere nowhere near train tracks, so I don't think they have anything to do with the tracks (and they're not the smaller steel buildings that house switching and crossing gear for the tracks).

Any ideas as to what these buildings might be for? As it stands, I'm imagining them as nodes in Google's supercomputer network or something. There's gotta be a better explanation! :)

Name my buildings, help ME win a prize!

clh — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:33:07 -0800

Help me win a meal for two! Name our three office/classroom buildings. Details are I work at a church. We have three bungalow-type buildings that we are doing some construction/refurbishing work on. Currently, they are named with letters of the alphabet (D, E & F if you must know), but the PTB have decided to rename them. Hence, the contest.

Rules are "the names should bear some relation to each other, and there must be some relationship between the names of the buildings and the people housed there or the activities taking place within the buildings."

Buildings D & E will be just offices. Buidling F will be two meeting/classrooms.

Again, I work at a church. Thanks!

Google Earth 3D to SketchUp?

pzarquon — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 12:36:22 -0800

Can I grab the 3-D buildings from Google Earth and play with them in Google SketchUp? Honolulu is one of the cities where someone in Google Earth has gone in and drawn up 3D illustrations of the various buildings in town. Google also bought SketchUp, which is a fantastic 3D tool that I've been obsessed with as of late. I've always wanted to do cool stuff with a 3D interface, and was just about to draw my own downtown before remembering that someone's already done a decent job of it.

Since they're the same company, now, there's gotta be a way to get those wireframes out of Google Earth into SketchUp! Right?

(This earlier question wanted something better than Google Earth, but wasn't SketchUp specific, and frankly, I'd be happy to start with what's in Google Earth if I could manipulate it.)

To dream or not to scream

Neale — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 04:03:08 -0800

Recurring Dreamfilter: I am standing in a tall building - sometimes a hotel with friends or family, sometimes an office building with work colleagues. There is a noise - a shake - and suddenly the building starts to collapse. Before -that event- my recurring dreams were about flying and nuclear detonation. How many others have gained this new dream to their repertoire?

Where can I find a 3D scale model of Manhattan?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 08:10:36 -0800

Where can I find a 3D scale model of Manhattan? I saw a show on Dutch TV today which featured French architect Pierre David providing the viewer with an architectural tour of Manhattan (I think it may have been a French production). On his desk, he seemed to have a model of most major buildings on the island (it was very briefly shown) - perhaps not all buildings but the rough geography and relative heights of most neighbourhoods, plus the very well-known buildings in Midtown and Lower Manhattan in great detail. It was like a much cooler, hardware version of Google Earth's building outlines.

I suspect this may have been a one-off, inaffordable architect's toy, but do you know of anything similar?

Crap in a gap

fandango_matt — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 19:37:36 -0800

Crap in a gap: how can I clean out a 6" wide and ~100' long space between two buildings? Between my building and the one next door is a gap approximately six inches wide, running the length of both buildings--roughly 1/3 of a city block. The gap is accessible from both ends, but is covered with sheetmetal at the top where the two roofs meet. Beer cans, plastic bags, and all kinds of trash--including some furry, four-legged critters--have made the gap their home, and I need to clean all the crap out of there.

I first took two lengths of rope and tied each to one end of a 4x4 block of wood. I then climbed onto the roof and dropped the rope into the gap, so that I could drag the block back-and-forth from one end to another, shoving all the trash to where I could reach it--sort of like flossing between two gigantic teeth, but the block is getting stuck behind all the crap in there. Any ideas?

Sci-Fi Movie Architecture

Neale — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 02:55:03 -0800

I'm looking for a resource - online, book, DVD - that deals specifically in the architectural design from sci-fi films, preferably with lots of pictures. I'd interested in pictures and diagrams of buildings, both inside and out, from movies such as the Aliens series, Blade Runner, Star Wars, Star Trek Minority Report, Dark City, etc. I'm not interested in props, vehicles or weapons, all of which have a ton of resources. I'm looking specifically for buildings, exteriors and interiors. Any ideas where to find them?

San Francisco Architecture

luriete — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:16:40 -0800

San Francisco Metafiltereans: I am looking for recommendations as to particular structures/buildings of importance in terms of modern/modernist architecture & design. I'm trying to put together a good-sized photo essay of under-appreciated or little-known modern sites and structures in the bay area for mocosanfrancisco.com, which I'm nominally editor of now, and if anyone could suggest places off the beaten path I'd be immensely appreciative. Actually, don't just restrict yourself to the city; I'm including Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin Civic Center, of course, so anything across the water in the EB or generally nearby is fair game.

What does it mean for a building in California to be 'on rollers'?

anastasiav — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 12:08:39 -0800

What does it mean for a building in California to be 'on rollers'? Several posters here mention that they are in a building on rollers, but Google doesn't seem to turn up much immediate information on how they work or how they are constructed.