China gives new twist to world's second tallest building

Yahoo – AFP, Bill Savadove, 21 June 2015

The under-construction Shanghai Tower (bottom C), the Shanghai World 

Financial Center (L) and the Jin Mao Tower (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

Shanghai (AFP) - The world's second tallest building, Shanghai Tower, will soon open in the Chinese financial capital with a twist -- a 120-degree twist, to be exact.

A softened triangular "outer skin" is literally twisted around a circular core, sending the glass and steel tower spiralling 632 metres (2,086 feet) into the grey sky above the city.

State-backed developer Shanghai Tower Construction and Development Co. views the modern design as a symbol of China's future, a super-tall building in the city's gleaming Pudong financial district, which did not even exist 25 years ago.

The under-construction Shanghai 

Tower, will soon open in the Chinese 

financial capital with a twist (AFP

Photo/Johannes Eisele)

People involved with the project said the building will open this summer, with office tenants moving in first, but the developer declined to comment.

"This twist is an iconic symbol of looking forward for the Chinese people," said Grant Uhlir, practice area leader and principal for Gensler, the US architecture firm whose design was chosen for the building which broke ground in 2008.

"It's been referred to as a strand of DNA. It's also been referred to a place where the ground connects with the sky," he said.

Although still dwarfed by the reigning champion Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stands at 828 metres (2,732 feet), and with new challengers under construction, the $2.4 billion Shanghai Tower can still lay claim to a host of superlatives.

Besides being the tallest double-facade building, the world's fastest elevators travelling 18 metres per second will whisk people up and down while the globe's second highest hotel will be located on the 84th to 110th floors.

An estimated 16,000 to 18,000 people will pass through the Shanghai Tower every day. The building will sway up to a metre (three feet) in high winds, with a 1,000-tonne "damper" weight near the top reducing the effect.

'It has to be unique'

"When you do these iconic, super-tall buildings, it can't be a copy of something else. It has to be unique," said American chief architect Marshall Strabala, who participated in the project while at Gensler.

Now the head of his own firm, he spent part of his three-decade career working on some of the world's tallest buildings including the Burj Khalifa.

He said the double skin plays other roles besides pure design, providing insulation to keep the building cool in summer and warm in winter and reducing wind stress.

"This building is a giant Thermos bottle, that's all it is," he said.

But the vacuum flask metaphor masks the mind-numbing complexity involved in balancing the design, safety requirements, building codes and client demands that shaped the tower.

Marshall Strabala, the chief architect of the Shanghai Tower, poses next 

to a three-metre model of the tower (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

Despite the futuristic look, concepts owing to Chinese culture are present.

A golden canopy at the base of the building was originally meant to be green, the colour of weathered copper, but the developer rejected the idea because in Chinese, the expression "wearing a green hat" means being a cuckold.

"It's not a good thing. Gold is a colour of prosperity," Strabala said.

A white stone structure dubbed the "River Wall" on the lower floors conceptually cuts the building into west and east, like Shanghai itself is divided into Puxi and Pudong on either side of the Huangpu River.

"Pudong side is business, Puxi side is fun. The retail, restaurants (in the building) are on the fun Puxi side," Strabala said.

The developer is expected to shun using floor numbers with the number four, which sounds like the Chinese word for death.

Gensler says the building has 121 "occupied" floors, while the total number has been given as 127 or 128 storeys depending on how they are counted.

'Curse' of tall buildings

Office space will take up much of the 573,000-square-metre (6.2-million-square-foot) building, while the retail space is small compared to a shopping mall -- just four floors.

The building's arrival on the Shanghai office market could potentially pull down rents and drive up the vacancy rate, analysts said.

An empty office space in the Shanghai 

Tower, which is still under construction

(AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

"It remains to be seen whether the pool of tenants currently in Pudong is large enough to fill the building or whether Shanghai Tower will need to start offering discounts to attract others," said Michael Stacy, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield's tenant advisory group in China.

Property agents are quoting rental rates in a range of 9 to 16 yuan ($1.45 to $2.56) per square metre a day depending on location, but they say the developer is offering rent-free periods.

Strabala believes the prestige of the address will draw tenants though he jokes about the "curse" of tall buildings, which seems to follow economic strife.

Workers broke ground on Shanghai Tower in November 2008, just weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which helped spark the global financial crisis, and it will open at a time when China's economy is slowing.

Strabala, however, is not worried, stressing that recognition of the building as the world's second tallest will attract tenants.

"This building will fill up because people will want to be here," he said.

Moroccan villagers harvest fog for water supply

Yahoo – AFP, Zakaria Choukrallah, 19 June 2015

A Moroccan inspects fog fences in a hamlet on the outskirts of the southern

coastal city of Sidi Ifni, on June 7, 2015 (AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

Sidi Ifni (Morocco) (AFP) - Green technology to turn fog into fresh water straight from the tap has put an end to exhausting daily treks to distant wells by village women in southwest Morocco.

Families in five highland Berber communities have begun to benefit from "fog harvesting", a technique devised in Chile two decades ago and since taken up in countries from Peru to Namibia and South Africa.

On the summit of a mountain named Boutmezguida, which looms over the villages at 1,225 metres (4,019 feet), thick fog shrouds about 40 finely meshed panels designed to trap water and relay it to a network of pipes.

A Moroccan woman uses water collected 

on fog fences to wash her hands in a 

hamlet on the outskirts of the southern

 coastal city of Sidi Ifni, on June 7, 2015

(AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

To have water running from a faucet at home is a "revolution" for inhabitants of the semi-arid mountains known as the Anti-Atlas, says Aissa Derhem, the chairman of an active regional association called Dar Si Hmad for Development, Education and Culture (DSH).

DSH prides itself on building "the world's largest fog-collection and distribution system" and helping locals in the Sidi Ifni region -- Derhem's birthplace -- to learn to operate it, after repeated droughts and scarce rain.

"Our rain here is the fog," Derhem adds.

Tiny droplets are caught on the mesh while fog wafts through panels. The harvesters mix all they catch with more water derived from drilling, then supply the villages on the lower slopes.

Derhem first heard about fog harvesting 20 years ago. A few years later on returning to Sidi Ifni, he realised that the local climate was similar to that of the Andes in South America.

DSH joined forces with Fog Quest, a Canadian charity whose volunteers work in a range of developing countries. North Africa's first pilot project became operational after almost a decade's work refining techniques.

'An imitation of nature'

The valves were opened at Sidi Ifni for the first time to mark World Water Day, March 22. Ever since, "92 households, or nearly 400 people," have enjoyed running water at home, says Mounir Abbar, the project's technical manager.

Aissa Derhem, the president of the "Dar Si Hamed for development, education

 and culture" association touches a fog fence in a hamlet on the outskirts of the

southern coastal city of Sidi Ifni, on June 7, 2015 (AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

"Morocco has a lot of fog because of three phenomena: the presence of an anticyclone from the Azores (north Atlantic islands), a cold air current and a mountainous obstacle," Derhem says.

The mesh that traps water is "merely an imitation of nature," he adds, pointing out how spiders have always caught minute droplets of water in their webs.

"This is ecological and enables us to look after the regional water table, which we have been emptying away," Derhem says.

The scheme will be extended to other villages and, in time, advocates hope, to other parts of the country.

In the village of Douar Id Achour, residents are proud of their new taps, for good reason. Women and children used to spend an average of four hours a day on a round trip to a well, even longer in dry summer.

"I filled two 20-litre (5.3-gallon) containers four times a day," says Massouda Boukhalfa, 47. "But even those 160 litres wasn't enough for us, because we have cattle as well."

'Ready for export'

During droughts, water was carried in by tanker trunk. "That took a fortnight and cost 150 dirhams (13.7 euros), $15.6) for 5,000 litres on average," young resident Houcine Soussane recalls.

According to Dar Si Hmad, 7,000 litres of fog water cost three times less than before, even with a fee of 20 dirhams to each household for the right to a counter.

Thick fog is trapped by finely meshed panels and relayed it to a network of pipes

(AFP Photo/Fadel Senna)

Villagers today have more time to collect the nutty fruit of argan trees and extract its prized and potentially lucrative oil, used in cooking, skin care and easing arthritis. Reputed as an anti-ageing product, argan oil has been taken up abroad as an ingredient in high-end cosmetics.

"Our women and daughters no longer wear themselves out. They go to school and are safe," 54 year-old villager Lahcen Hammou Ali sums up. "With the time saved, we can pay for water all year by producing a bottle of argan oil."

DSH next wants to supply fog water to as many villages as possible in the area. It also plans to replace mesh in the panels with a new variety that can resist wind speeds of 120 kilometres per hour (75 mph).

The panels were perfected on Moroccan soil with help from the German charity Wasserstiftung, and successfully passed the testing phase.

"The nets are now ready for export to other towns in Morocco, in all the mountainous regions and along the seafront," Derham says, hopeful they can be deployed in all highland areas where fogbanks are frequent.

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Robot to 3D-print steel canal bridge in Amsterdam

Yahoo – AFP, 16 June 2015

An artist’s visualisation of the 3D bridge which a Dutch company is planning
to print across an Amsterdam canal (AFP Photo/Joris Laarman)

The Hague (AFP) - A Dutch startup has unveiled plans to build the world's first 3D-printed bridge across an Amsterdam canal, a technique that could become standard on future construction sites.

Using robotic printers "that can 'draw' steel structures in 3D, we will print a (pedestrian) bridge over water in the centre of Amsterdam," engineering startup company MX3D said in a statement, hoping to kick off the project by September.

The plan involves robotic arm printers 'walking' across the canal as it slides along the bridge's edges, essentially printing its own support structure out of thin air as it moves along.

Specially-designed robotic arms heat the metal to a searing 1,500 degrees Celsius (around 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit) to painstakingly weld the structure drop-by-drop, using a computer programme to plot the sophisticated design.

"The underlying principle is very simple. We have connected an advanced welding machine to an industrial robot arm," said the bridge's designer Joris Laarman.

"We now use our own intelligent software to operate these machines so they can print very complex metal shapes which can differ each time," Laarman said of the project also involving the Heijmans construction company and Autodesk software.

So far, the robotic arm has been used to print smaller metal structures, but the bridge will be the first ever large-scale deployment of the technology, MX3D spokeswoman Eva James told AFP.

It is hoped that the bridge will be a first step towards seeing the technique used on construction sites, especially those involving dangerous tasks such as on high buildings, she said.

The technique also removes the need for scaffolding as the robot arms use the very structure they print as support.

The designers are now in talks with the Amsterdam city council to find a site for the project which they hope will be completed by mid-2017.

"I strongly believe in the future of digital manufacturing and local production," said Laarman. "It's a new form of craftsmanship."

"This bridge can show how 3D printing has finally entered the world of large-scale functional objects and sustainable materials," he said.

Amsterdam city council spokeswoman Charlene Verweij told AFP the Dutch capital was supporting the project.

"We are still in negotiations as to where exactly the bridge will be built," she said.

Government to Install Solar Panels at DPR, Presidential Palace

JakartaGlobe, Dion Bisara, Jun 15, 2015

The government plans to install solar panels at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta,
Bogor Palace, the House of Representatives and the office of the Coordinating
Ministry of Economic Affairs. (AFP Photo/Cesar Manso)

Jakarta. The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources plans to auction Rp 34 billion ($2.6 million) worth of rooftop solar panels for government and public buildings this year.

The ministry is conducting a study on several buildings and airports in order to determine the demand for electricity and the layout of the solar panels, said Maritje Hutapea, director of renewable energy at the ministry over the weekend.

The government plans to install solar panels at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta, Bogor Palace, the House of Representatives and the office of the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Solar panels will also be installed at several airports, including Tambulaka, Maumere and Labuan Bajo, all of which are in East Nusa Tenggara. Surabaya city government has also expressed an interest in installing solar panels on the roof of its building.

State utility company Perusahaan Listrik Negara will buy any excess electricity from the solar panels, Maritje said.

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