That picture may be a bit hard to read. I was looking up a freight elevator shaft in a factory, through the chain-link mesh roof of the elevator cab, to the skylight at the top of the shaft, some six stories above me. There’s a plank sitting on top of the mesh for some reason, …
The Skyscraper Museum has been putting a lot of material up on the web during the Covid-19 lockdown. It was inevitable that they’d get around to me talking about why I disagree with so much of the traditional history of skyscrapers.
I’ve been seeing quite a few articles recently on how Covid-19 will affect architecture, on what lessons we all will learn from this (obviously still on-going) experience. For example, “How Architecture Could Help Us Adapt to the Pandemic” by Kim Tingley; “Blue-sky thinking: how cities can keep air clean after coronavirus” by Jonathan Watts; and …
I’m going to end this series, for now, with arguably the most ordinary ride at Coney Island 120 years ago: Shoot the Chutes. Compared to roller coasters or many other rides, the engineering is almost negligible: the little cars go up the tracks on the right, and then speed, uncontrolled, down the ramp and into …
Construction History: Summer At The Beach, Part 5 Read More »
The picture above is Lucy, an elephant-shaped building in Margate, New Jersey, near Atlantic City. Lucy is one of the few truly odd attractions from the early days of American seaside amusement parks to survive until now, and achieved a second fame over a century after construction. The important, and mildly unbelievable stats: constructed in …
