The internet is a beautiful and cluttered sea that renews itself with each wave of commentary and exposition. Amongst the rubble and rabble, the jostling and jockeying for attention, there are curious, eloquent, and inspiring gems to find and to covet. This post is not one of them.
But, if you click through to BLDG BLOG, you may find yourself swept up in Geoff Manaugh’s post about the Taipei 101 building’s inner workings. What starts as hard science quickly swirls off into an imaginative, near-poetic indulgence.
“ … there’s something about discovering a gigantic pendulum inside a skyscraper that makes my imagination reel. It’s as if the whole structure is a grandfather clock, or some kind of avant-garde metronome for a musical form that hasn’t been invented yet … ”
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I can't help but picture the initial architectural design meeting when someone raises the “earthquake” problem, and a wild-eyed genius replies, “I'm thinking…giant…pendulum.”
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And here it is in action:
http://videosift.com/video/Taipei-101s-660ton-quake-damper-in-action
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