h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Try http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/

Will lok at it when I get a chance, along with the Austrian dictionary Tav sent me - now I have to concentrate on exams.

Good luck with them. Thank God I finished that game years ago.

It's only physics tomorrow, not much of a problem, but our semester project is due Wednesday, and I've only just noticed where to put the beam so it won't interfere with the windows...

Dont usually put beams on top of windows????

No, I have a big truss that goes over 50m, so it's about 5m high... But if I put it behind the windows, I can just use it to hang the glass on as well, I'll just have to change the facade slightly at that point.

In Nigeria I had a similar problem - I has a glass wall and all sorts of structure behind it. I devised a way of fixing (bolting) the glass directly to the steel. Everybody told me that it was impossible but I got my way and it worked. Now it is an everyday detail. Pity I didn't patent the idea.

yes, I just saw something very similar in the last "Detail" which is what gave me the idea. I could let some S-shaped frames run the other way, but then I'd not have a smooth ceiling and my supports would have to be a lot thicker to take the torsion, but this way the only "price" is a few diagonals in the facade, which are not really visible anyway.

Which structure did you devise? The single-point supports, or the linear ones?

They were 3mx1.5m (I think) sheets of structural glass. A hole in each corner (the galss has to be made with the holes - you can't drill em afterwards), square stainless steel plates back and front and a bot through the middle, neoprene washers and a rubber washer at the back to allow for the differential movement. The holes in the glass also have rubber (probably something far more sophistcated these days but this was Lagos in 1979). Crude and simple but it works.

Perhaps you should have my e-mail address:
[email protected]

Yes, that sounds like the one I was thinking of using, except that the pins in the holes now seem to have a plastic bit in for thermic seperation. And of course silicone in the joins. But it sounds like the same system, although we were told sheets that wwise were unfeasible. germany is backwards in glass technology anyway, neither glass load-bearing structures nor structural glazing facades are permitted...

Sheets that wide, I mean - I read 5m. , read twice, post once in future!

Yes technology has advanced a lot. However the factory is still standing and I gather has had no problems - with the structure. One thing I flatly refuse to EVER do is stick the glass to the structure. I was asked to do this on a 15 storey building in Dubai. I refused. Generally when reps come into my office with the latest all-singing-all-dancing-you-can't-bend-it material I ask them to come back when they can show me a building wher it has been used and lasted for 50 years.

Yes, when the glues suddenly fails from old age, it generally doesn't drop you a note first, unlike bolts, which generally show the wear and don't age spontaneously...

Exactly - and when you qualify you will find that your professional indemnity premiums reflect all the mistakes other clever architects have made.

Great prospects then! I don't plan on doing anything mind-bogglingly new unless it's clearly functional and practical, innovation for its own sake fails to appeal to me. Why reinvent the wheel if the one you have is already perfectly suited?

I agree completely.

I actually have pretty good job chances, about 80% of my semester want to specialise in the "draw a pretty shape and let someone else do the thinking" line, as long as I don't do that, it should be ok!

That is what is wrong with architecture today. Here in Morocco it is a disaster and I make money out of sorting the mess out. The outside of a building is a function of what happens inside - not the other way round. If you look at the headquarters for RasGas at Ras Lafan in Qatar (one of my better efforts) the first questions were:
What's the biggest beam you need? (SE)
What's the biggest duct you need? (ME)
What's the biggest light fitting? (EE)

"Right you have that space, you have that and you have that. Don't come and tell me that you want to make a hole through a beam." The rest of the design went like a dream. Making the building look good came a long time afterwards but has had its share of praise as one of the most elegant buildings in Qatar.

"Form follows function" and "function follows form" both are too old-fashioned for my profs, and they don't like "form allows function" - their blobs are more "f*** form and function"!

One of them now has plans to cover the entire downtown in glass, after being asked to design a bus stop

Yes - one of my senior tutors was famed for being the only architect ever to have a design for a rural telephone exchange (basically a box 2.4m square) turned down by the (then) GPO. I should add that I did manage to get thrown out of two universities three times. Almost everything I have learnt has been from builders plus a couple of brilliant people I have worked for. Uni was a complete waste of time and I totally disagree with the way that architecture is taught. First -learn to build.