the sexy curves?
look at this walkway that is right in the middle of this picture!! i mean, just look at it. what's the first thing that comes to your mind?
damn right - why the *hell* is it all so curvy?
what was the 'designer' (or whatever the term for the guy who designs these things is!!) thinking? let me take a guess . . .
"hmm. let's see now . . . where do i want this trail to go? oh i know i know, i'll make it go straight into this building on the right."
after laying the first part, (s)he changes his/her mind . . .
"wait. naaah. this building's too boring. i'll make this trail lead the 'walkers' to that white cylindrical cool-looking rocket like thingy behind those trees. then people walking on this will feel as if they're walking towards a rocket launch pad. yep - that'd be soooooooo cool!!"
after laying another section, (s)he's like . . .
"wait wait! the building's better. this way, people who're like totally busy will simply follow the walk and not even see where they're headed to and bang their heads against the building and fall down on the ground. hee hee hee. that would be sooooooo coooool for all the college kids to watch professors walk into walls everyday"
after laying yet another section towards the building, . . .
"duh, what was i thinking? my devious ploy would never work. i mean, it might work once or twice for sure. but then word would spread among the 'busy clan' about this misleading walkway. i should just merge this into that one there"
and that is how it was done!!
or maybe the 'designers' were being fired one after another and each new one was taking it in his/her own direction?
seriously, why on earth (or elsewhere too) would an engineer draw this layout? maybe the trees were already there and (s)he didn't want to have them cut down? noble, but i can still see a (thousand) straight lines connecting the end points of the path without touching any tree. this is a waste of the raw material used to lay these paths, waste of time and effort, more lights are needed along the length of this curved path, more turns for the poor bicyclists, and what not! the only thing this is 'saving' is the amount of grass by reducing the area of growth, which, again, is bad!!
reason, i want a reason for this. is it curvy because that is more efficient in some weird civil engineery way that i don't understand? is it curvy because curvy is sexy and appealing? is it curvy because, when seen from high above, it happens to be part of a larger figure like the mystic nazca lines?
give me one good reason why this might have been done the way it is. this is a call to all the readers of this blog (all both of you :D . . . . maybe three) to quench my thirst for wisdom. apart from good reasons, funny reasons are welcome in large numbers.
-wiz "the inquisitive" kid
posted by -w at 22:16
3 Comments:
Here I am, with an excerpt from Fountainhead, a book which deals mostly with architectural brilliance. This should help comprehending the circles, arcs, whatever. The description is about a filling station built extraordinarily.
"It was a study in circles; there were no angles and no straight lines; it looked like shapes caught in a flow, held still at the moment of being poured, at the precise moment when they formed a harmony that seemed too perfect to be intentional. It looked like a cluster of bubbles hanging low over the ground, not quite touching it, to be swept aside in an instant on a wind of speed; it looked gay, with the hard, bracing gaiety of efficiency, like a powerful airplane engine."
So dear inq"wiz"itive kid, architecture is not about efficient-shortest-path-straight-lines. It is beyond it - things more beautiful, more aesthetic, I guess :)
Quote: "seriously, why on earth (or elsewhere too) would an engineer draw this layout?"
I winced a little when I read this. Where did you get the idea that Civil Engineers design anything? An architect designs. Tells an engineer what to do. An engineer makes sure that the design "works" and proceeds to build (or break down the work further for others to handle). Obviously practices will vary from country to country, but generally architects have a better say than engineers (Source: Difference between architects and engineers).
So engineers cannot try to advise any architect about the best way to connect two points. What do we know? So any responses to your question from a non-architect are automatically disqualified as answers. happy inquisition.
mmmm well, in my field, the same guy is capable of and is allowed to do everything from designing till maintenance right? so i assumed the same guy does everything in other fields as well :)
my arrogance!!
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