Pearl River Tower now a Warehouse download

[Plainview]

Greetings all, just wanted to tell you about the Pearl River Tower model I posted to Google 3D Warehouse. I had been researching tall buildings for my website

www.plainview3d.com

when I came across some excellent 3D Warehouse models of sustainable design buildings such as the Commerzbank and the Messeturm in Frankfurt and the Gherkin in London. I talk about them on my page on Tall and Green architecture:

http://www.plainview3d.com/Sustainab...enAndTall.html

It was then I noticed no one had yet contributed a model of the Pearl River Tower so I thought I’d give it a try. I found it to be one of the most seductive and unique building shapes I’ve ever seen. Of course my model only captures the footprint and elevation I pulled from the Skidmore, Owings & Merril’s website but it still gives you a good idea. As you may know, this building is set to become the first zero energy tall building ever, a watershed event in the history of architecture.

Here’s a direct link to the Warehouse download:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...6d&prevstart=0

You can also find a link on my website beneath the Pearl River Tower picture of my model.

Comments welcome.

Peter Tocco

[Aleks]

You should post some pictures on this site. So you like green towers?

Me too but I'm more into green housing (towers, houses, condo's)rather than green office towers.

[Plainview]

Here's an image of a concept city where I tried to show what might happen if someone tried to develop a tall city out in the middle of nowhere. You can also see this on my webpage. This is my first image post so I hope it works:



By the way, the background image is by a guy in Finland named balsamia. The model is a Google Warehouse model of the MesseTurm in Frankfurt which I freely modified, making it a much taller quad with sky bridges and platforms.

[Plainview]

Here's an image of my model. This was my first model of a tall building and only took a few hours. I dressed it up in Photoshop but obviously could have spent a little more time with it. Unfortunately the way I modeled it, using a mesh created from lines, I was not able to simply paste a nice jpg onto it, as it had too many fragmented planes or whatever. The next tall building I do will use the simple jpg method of texturing like all the nicer tall building models in Warehouse.

[Austin55]

Originally Posted by Plainview

By the way, the background image is by a guy in Finland named balsamia. The model is a Google Warehouse model of the MesseTurm in Frankfurt which I freely modified, making it a much taller quad with sky bridges and platforms.

Cool,but The model is of Commerzbank,not messeturm intersting concept,i thin we all can picture this but i doubt it would ever happen in the near future.

you just need a link when photocrediting,or a name.

It all looks nice,but im a little confused about what youre doing. I understand the river tower,but not everthing else

[Aleks]

I think he's just trying to show us some ideas on how to make a sky city later in time with designs we have now. And he's also modeling some towers that are Earth Friendly which most of us don't pay much attention to.

I like your model of the Pearl River Tower. I'm not sure about the Commerzbank Tower design though. It's too tall for the wing design and it wouldn't have enough support. And if it did have support, the cores would take up much of the floors square footage. The bridges would have to be extra strong to support it's weight since the bridges are flat rather than arched. Have you done any designs that came to your mind?

Still, I like that you're thinking about making sky cities. And you're pretty good at SU seeing that you made that model of the Pearl Rover Tower. When I started all I modeled were plain white boxes.

[Plainview]

Both of the last two comments were right. The Commerzbank, not MesseTurm. I confuse the two. Also, the Commerzbank is really a lightweight building not able to support a heavy load as shown in the quad structure. The floorplans of all the tall buildings are rather sparse, many able to fit inside 100x100'. For a large quad tower you would have to dedicate a reinforced structural core. But think about it: All that space that could be gained by joining four towers. The boxlike structure would be very strong, much more than a single or double tower. Yes, this is off in the future, only because it will take a while for people to realize this will work.

Here's a pdf download of the stat sheet.

http://www.plainview3d.com/Sustainab...Wilderness.pdf


Yes, this is fantasy. But wait till rising oceans and hurricaines force the evacuation of coastal cities. Then these aerial pod cities will start to look really attractive.

[Aleks]

No, it's not a bad idea. I always think about that too. All these people complaint about how the Earth will die off soon but if 1 out of every 3 people bought a condo in a city and the city planned a transportation system that worked in harmony, then millions of million of trees would be saved.

I think Tokyo should start doing massive residential complexes to make more green space. I watched that special on the Nat Geo Channel 6 Degrees Could Change the World and yeah, ocean tides will rise in the next 100 years. In 50 or so years the North Pole will be ocean, not an Ice cap.

The only problem with all these concepts is that they cost too much to build and no single company will want to build at this time with the U.S. Real Estate Crisis. If the U.S. can't do it, no one else can. It's a sad truth.

[Plainview]

The US is no longer the only place for tall buildings as we know. In fact it's falling way behind in new construction. So Dubai or China might be where these experiments will happen. As for expensive, I'm no expert but I have to question that. My concept has 10,000 people living on 28 acres. That's a huge savings in land investment right there. Green field development has lots of potential for this type of thing because the land is cheap to start with. And maybe the more concrete that can be used as opposed to steel, the cost can be kept down? Or if it's ammortized over a long time by a city government. Look at the biggest cost to local governments today: roads. This compact city doesn't need cars and has few roads. A project like this would probably start out with a county government wanting to try something new. When you realize that fiber optics will make distance practically irrelevant with telepresence some day, I can see a lot of people wanting to build an aerial city in a pristine environment, especially as things deteriorate as they might.

[Aleks]

I would want to live there. I would just feel like the government was getting ready to blow up cities and I was chosen to be experimented on.

China and Dubai do have a lot of money but the thing is that their economy will never be as good as the U.S'. Almost all major countries with modern trading economies depend on the US. Concrete would bring the cost down a bit but it's too heavy and wouldn't work too well at high altitudes. And although we think alike, not everyone else does. It would be hard to sell the housing, rent the offices, and fill the whole building. If it was built in a large city it might have a bit more chances of working. The only thing that would stop a project like this in a big city is again the money mostly. Then the government, height limits, people not wanting to build over forests, and people who won't want to give up their land to the construction company. Finally it would again be people, if it's built in a big city then people will want to drive to their favorite places and it would create a HUGE traffic mess.

The point is that although we like the idea, a lot of people won't, too much money, when it comes to money people will rather let 10 kids starve than loosing it all. It's a sad truth. Still, I think it would be nice to have one of these cities when we find a way of keeping everyone happy. Wow, this is turning into an economic/environmental/city discussion rather than to talk about Sketchup designs. It's kinda fun.

[Mocholate]

Sweet as ! I too am a fan of the Green concept .
Must say that you can expect something like that here over the next decade , Our economy is booming @ 91 c / U.S dollar and the gov. is very focused on a sustainable future .

Not likely !

We have 24 % of the worlds Uranium - We will make no effort to go green until this is all sold and why should we in this world of global dominance ?