Big Buildings - Dirty Secrets

The CTBUH uses the term "vanity spires" to describe tops of buildings where a ton of extra height is added, even though that space isn't used for people.

The List: how big buildings are cleaned - How big buildings are cleaned – from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to the Empire State Building in New York. This week, a specialist team ascended London’s Houses of Parliament to clean the clock faces of the Elizabeth Tower – home to the famous Big Ben bell. The hands on each of the clock’s four faces were frozen for the week-long task but its chimes still rang out and the workers on the 96m-tall tower wore ear defenders to protect their hearing. Kasia Delgado reveals how four other big buildings around the world are cleaned.

1. Burj Khalifa, Dubai

The 24,830 windows of the world’s tallest building are made from a million sq ft of glass. When the 830m tower was cleaned in 2012 a team of 36 people needed three months to wash them. They started from the top floor and worked down, standing on specially designed machines that emerged from cavities in the skyscraper and moved along rails skirting its curved towers. The project manager at Grako, the cleaning company that took on the task, said that coping with the height was “all about mindset”.

2. Empire State Building, New York

Window-washers at the 6,500-window Manhattan landmark have reported how, in winter, food and drink thrown out of windows of high-up floors often freezes on glass lower down – and that frozen coffee and yoghurt, for example, can be particularly difficult to scrub off. This is, of course, far from the only problem when cleaning a New York skyscraper. Richard Hart, head of the Empire State window-washing team in 1937, remarked casually that, “I’ll be working away, and a gust of wind will come screaming up from 34th Street and for a moment I’ll be doing a tap dance on nothing. Anyway, it keeps me interested.”

3. Petronas Towers, Malaysia

When the Petronas Towers were opened in Kuala Lumpur in 1996 there was a dispute over whether they were taller than the Sears building in Chicago (now called the Willis Tower) – the world’s tallest when it was completed in 1973. What is not in doubt is the cleanliness of the skyscrapers’ glass. The two towers are fitted with a total of 11 cranes that allow cleaners to move up and down between the 32,000 windows. It takes workers a month to clean the panes on each tower and, when they finish, they go back to the top and begin again.

4. Hearst Tower, New York

It took engineers three years to build a machine that would enable cleaners to wash Norman Foster’s 182m tall skyscraper, which opened in 2006. The windows, made up of concave diamond shapes, were impossible to access using ordinary means so a rectangular steel box the size of a small car was designed to move around the roof of the tower on an elevated steel track. The project’s construction manager described the car as “like a ride at Disneyland”.

The 10 Tallest Vanity Spires - click to enlarge.

The World's Tallest Skyscrapers Have A Dirty Little Secret - The Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Bank of America tower in New York count among the worst offenders: Supertall skyscrapers aren't necessarily built to fit as many people inside as possible, sometimes they're just aiming to be, well, really tall. Large portions of these buildings are designed to increase height, but remain unoccupied. Wasteful!

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), a not for profit organization that tracks the world's skyscrapers, just released some data on that subject. Surprise! Some really tall buildings don't need to be so tall. The CTBUH uses the term "vanity spires" to describe tops of buildings where a ton of extra height is added, even though that space isn't used for people. By unused height, above are the 10 buildings with the most ridiculous spires (click to enlarge picture).

So the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the World at nearly 830 meters, has 244 meters of unoccupied space. To put that in context, as the CTBUH does, if that 244 meters were itself a building, it would be the 11th tallest in Europe. Pretty crazy, right? But it's also not new. Think about classic skyscrapers like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, which were similarly designed with big spires. You might notice that the skyscrapers with the largest vanity spires were all built fairly recently (the oldest is from 1999) but there are also just more supertall buildings being erected. It would take a little more math to say buildings like this are on the rise, so to speak.

It's also not clear how these spires change the buildings' environmental footprints, although we know at least one of them listed above, the Bank of America Tower in New York, has some pretty serious efficiency issues. One of the study's authors, CTBUH's Daniel Safarik, wrote in an email to PopularScience that "we did not explicitly look at how vanity height affects environmental footprint for this study, but that is clearly one of the most vital issues implied by the findings." Just having the title of "tallest" is a draw for a building, he says, it matters less what all that space is used for. So what to do? "If [a tallest building] criteria were based on 'highest occupied floor,' in theory, there would be less of an incentive to have the 'vanity height,'" Safarik writes.

Until that changes, more buildings may add vanity height just to top other structures. Or maybe we can keep things the way they are, and just have a skyscraper where you can't go above the lobby.

So the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at nearly 830 meters, has 244 meters of unoccupied space. To put that in context, as the CTBUH does, if that 244 meters were itself a building, it would be the 11th tallest in Europe. Here, meanwhile, are those buildings broken down geographically. Click to enlarge.

Window Washing Is Safer Than Driving a Taxi

"The platform itself is designed to fold into 90 degrees so it can wrap around the corners," Bright says. The workers on the platform yesterday were maintenance workers, he explained, who were there to fix an earlier problem identified with the platform not straightening.

Don't Forget, Window Washing Is a Lot Safer Than Driving a Taxi - Some elevated scaffolding failed at New York's Hearst Tower Wednesday afternoon, resulting in two workers being left stranded, 40 stories up, for over an hour. So should we be worrying about the high-altitude workers who maintain the world's skyscrapers?
 

Not really, says Stefan Bright, the safety director for the International Window Cleaning Association. "It's pretty rare that anybody gets killed in one of these permanent platforms," Bright says. The full technical name of the type of platform that failed on the Hearst Tower is a "permanently installed powered platform," and of the 500 to 700 of them currently in use across the United States, a whopping 70 to 80 percent of them are in New York City. They're typically designed for buildings over 300 feet.
 

Back in February, The New Yorker published a lengthy article on window-washers (which these two workers yesterday were not, although they were on a window-washing apparatus), noting that "the work of washing windows in the United States is significantly safer than driving a cab." Bright says that in fact there was one fatality in the entire national window-washing industry last year, and two the year before that. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2010, the most recent year with clear definitions on these categories, confirm that fatality rates due to falls for window-washers, janitors, and cleaners are indeed quite low.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data 2002 till 2010, click to enlarge.

The specific platform on the Hearst Tower is a little tricky, as it's designed to bend around the peculiar angles of the building. The same New Yorker piece highlighted this $3-million system on the Hearst Tower, installed in 2005, and designed and built by Toronto-based Tractel-Swingstage:

Designing and building the machine took a team of Tractel engineers three years. The result, a rectangular steel box the size of a Smart car, supporting a forty-foot mast and a hydraulic boom arm attached by six strands of wire rope to a telescopic cleaning basket, houses a computer that monitors sixty-seven electromechanical safety sensors and switches, and runs around the roof of the Hearst Tower on four hundred and twenty feet of elevated steel track.

"The platform itself is designed to fold into 90 degrees so it can wrap around the corners," Bright says. The workers on the platform yesterday were maintenance workers, he explained, who were there to fix an earlier problem identified with the platform not straightening. While he isn't clear on the sequence of events between the problem being discovered and the maintenance workers getting struck on the platform, it appeared the raising and lowering element stopped working. There are also reports that a motor failed in the device. The state's Department of Labor and New York City's Department of Buildings will be investigating yesterday's failure.
 

But these devices just get stuck every once in a while, according to Bright. He pointed out an incident in May, when two window-washers in San Diego were stranded on a building for over an hour before being rescued.
 

News outlets are also drawing links to another incident in New York City back in 2007, when two window washers fell 47 stories after the scaffolding collapsed. Miraculously, one of the men survived. NBC New York reports that the same company that designed the Hearst Tower's device, Tractel, helped maintain the Upper East Side window washing scaffold that fell in 2007. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued Tractel three citations following that incident.

Someone decided to abbreviate “assistant” — with embarrassing results.

NYC station’s abbreviation results in embarrassing new title - WPIX-TV made quite an a… — err, shall we say fool — of itself yesterday with a lower third error. The station was, along with the other New York City stations, covering a scaffolding collapse at the Hearst Tower in Manhattan  when it aired the graphic above. The station managed to track down a window cleaning assistant named Stefan Bright. But someone decided to abbreviate “assistant” — with embarrassing results.

New York Window Washers Rescued - 46th Floor Hearst Tower

Two window washers are stuck outside the 46th floor of the skyscraper as rescuers stuggle to save them.

Window washers dangling outside 46th floor of legendary Hearst building - Window washers hung out to dry: 2 workers hang perilously above Midtown Manhattan after scaffolding collapses as rescuers race to their aid. Two window washers were dangling from outside the 46th story of a midtown skyscraper Wednesday afternoon, after their scaffolding suddenly collapsed, authorities said.

Firefighters were still trying to rescue the trapped workers after they were called to the Hearst building on W. 57th St. and Eighth Ave. about 2:45 p.m., said authorities. The workers were cleaning windows on the side of the building, officials said. It was not immediately clear what may have caused the accident.

The two were cleaning windows when their scaffolding gave way.

Scaffold Collapses On Hearst Tower In Midtown - 2 Window Washers Trapped About 45 Stories Above The Ground (NEW YORK) – Two window washers are trapped on a collapsed scaffold high above the streets of Midtown Manhattan. The window washers are trapped near the 45th floor of the Hearst Tower at 57th Street and 8th Avenue. The long, metallic scaffold appears to have buckled in the middle, creating a “V”-shape. The window washers appear to be on either side of the site of the buckling. They seem to be resting comfortably and communicating with firefighters above. Footage from the scene showed the two men wearing harnesses on the scaffold and firefighters nearby at the top of the building, which is 46 stories tall. Firefighters have stretched a safety line to at least one of the workers. Two firefighters can be seen lying on their stomachs at the top of the tower, observing the situation below. The collapse began at around 2:40 p.m.

Dozens of firefighters responded to the scene to try to rescue the men, who are conscious and communicating with responders. Firefighters could be seen on the roof of the tower as well as behind the windows on a floor level with the platform. Both men are wearing safety harnesses. The first responders have lowered additional lines to them.

The FDNY has responded and is undertaking a “high angle rescue.” Firefighters are opening a window on the 44th floor to bring the workers to safety, the FDNY said via Twitter. Wind gusts are a significant factor for effecting the rescue. Wind gusts were at least 25-30 mph at street level, CBS 2′s Vanessa Murdock reported. Gusts at 46 stories are expected to be stronger. 57th Street is closed eastbound from 8th to 9th Avenue and westbound from 7th to 9th Avenue. The Hearst Building is famous for its unusual triangular framing pattern. The framing required a different type of window washing apparatus, manufactured by Tractel-Swingstage, according to a published report. The apparatus is suspended by six wire ropes to the anchoring mechanism above, according to the report. The scaffolding is monitored by a series of dozens of sensors, according to the report.

Life At The Top - Hearst Tower

For many years, being a window cleaner in Manhattan was regarded as one of the most dangerous occupations in the world.

Life at the Top - What a window washer sees (by Adam Higginbotham) - Abstract: Our local correspondents about window washers in Manhattan. When the architect Norman Foster initially presented sketches for the Hearst Tower, the first skyscraper approved for construction in Manhattan after September 11th, one of the questions the building’s prospective owners asked was: How are we going to clean those windows?

In early 2002, Foster + Partners’ associate architects approached Tractel-Swingstage, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of scaffolds and window-washing platforms, to provide a solution. The result, a rectangular steel box the size of a Smart car, supporting a forty-foot mast and a hydraulic boom arm attached by six strands of wire rope to a telescopic cleaning basket, houses a computer that monitors sixty-seven electromechanical safety sensors and switches, and runs around the roof of the Tower on four hundred and twenty feet of elevated steel track.

The commercial window-washing industry in New York emerged with the rise of the skyscraper, at the end of the nineteenth-century, after one Polish immigrant organized a team of expert window cleaners whom he let out on contract. By 1931, when the Empire State Building was completed, there were between two and three thousand unionized window cleaners in New York. The size of any building cleaned by scaffold is measured in drops. Every three floors, Bob Menzer and his team at the Hearst Tower anchor the wire ropes from which they’re suspended to steel buttons on the façade, to prevent the basket from being pulled away from the building by the wind.

Every three floors, Menzer and his team at the Hearst Tower anchor the wire ropes from which they’re suspended to steel buttons on the façade, to prevent the basket from being pulled away from the building by the wind.

Once the glass has been wet down with a sponge or a wand, the water is wiped away with a squeegee. Given good weather, it takes a month to clean the whole tower from top to bottom. For many years, being a window cleaner in Manhattan was regarded as one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. Today, the work of washing windows in the United States is significantly safer than driving a cab. Most injuries on the job are the result of falls (from elevation). The culture of the trade has gradually changed. Many veteran window washers no longer expect their children to pursue the occupation.

Adam Higginbotham looks at the evolution of the commercial window-washing industry, as New York City has become “a crystal garden of geometric forms and irregular shapes,” owing to advances in technology that allow for more intricately designed architecture. Since the rise of the skyscraper, at the end of the nineteenth century, when window washers simply stood outside on a window ledge and gripped the frame, the profession has become less dangerous and more efficient. Modern-day buildings such as the Hearst Tower, which features “curtain walls of glass and stainless steel hung in a diagonal grid . . . known as ‘bird’s mouths’ by the architects,” require advanced window-washing technology.

Hearst Tower’s distinctive facetted silhouette rises dramatically above Joseph Urban’s existing six-storey Art Deco building, its main spatial event a vast internal plaza, occupying the entire shell of the historic base. Designed to consume significantly less energy than a conventional New York office building, it is a model of sustainable office design.

The rig that cleans the Hearst Tower, “a rectangular steel box the size of a Smart car,” took three years to design and was finally installed at a cost of three million dollars. When Higginbotham joined the window-cleaning crew to descend the tower, “a frigid wind scythed down across Columbus Circle, humming in the rigging overhead, and each time I shifted my weight the narrow platform swayed sickeningly, like the world’s most appalling fairground ride,” he writes. Although “the work of washing windows in the United States is significantly safer than driving a cab,” Higginbotham writes, “deaths persist.”

Hearst Tower is the first building to receive a Gold LEED certified rating for core and shell and interiors in New York City. In 2012, Hearst Tower earned a Platinum LEED Rating for Existing Buildings, becoming the first building to receive both Gold and Platinum certifications.

The window washers’ union has prided itself on its safety record, due in part to its apprentice-training program, which requires all new union window cleaners to take two hundred and sixteen hours of classroom instruction, followed by three thousand hours of accredited time with an employer. But a growing number of non-union workers aren’t held to the same standards, and they “were involved in roughly two hundred accidents, more than seventy of them fatal,” between 1983 and 2008. One widow, whose husband fell from a window at 40 Fifth Avenue, said, “People don’t realize . . . being married to a window cleaner is very much like being married to a fireman or a policeman.”

But the culture of the trade has also changed. “The recession has led to less frequent cleaning cycles on the big buildings, smaller permanent crews, and layoffs,” Higginbotham writes. “Yet the work of the men with buckets apparently remains just beyond the reach of technology,” Higginbotham writes. Although a glass manufacturer has developed windows with a self-cleaning coating catalyzed by sunlight, and scientists in Germany and Japan have built a series of costly façade-cleaning robots, “neither has yet gained a foothold in New York.”

The Hearst Tower is a building located at 300 West 57th Street, 959 8th Avenue, near Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York. It is the world headquarters of the Hearst Corporation, bringing together for the first time their numerous publications and communications companies under one roof, including, among others, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping and Seventeen.

Six Facts About Cleaning New York City Skyscraper Windows: The current issue of The New Yorker has a fascinating (and, sadly, subscription-only) article about how the windows of NYC's skyscrapers get washed. It turns out newfangled skyscraper architecture can make it difficult to use conventional window-washing methods—and that's just one of many fun facts we learned from the story. Here are five more:

1) The Empire State Building is particularly tough to clean because tenants on higher floors often throw things out of the windows. "One time," says one building window cleaner, "they threw, like, twenty gallons of strawberry preserves—and it went through ten floors, all over the windows. And it was the winter, so it froze on there and we couldn't get it off."

2) Designing a cleaning rig that could that clean the Hearst Tower took the engineers at Tractel-Swingstage three years (and around $3 million); the company's vice-president of engineering had never seen anything like what Foster and Partners' called the building's "bird's mouths."

3) A building's size is measured, for cleaning, in "drops"—"a single vertical section of the facade running from the roof to the lowest point the basket can descend." That lowest point might be a setback or other architectural feature, or it might be the ground.

4) The city's first scaffolding for window cleaning was built in 1952 and used to clean Park Avenue's Lever House.

5) Because of the way they move, most window cleaners will end up leaving a "signature" on the window glass.

6) Cleaning the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers takes a long time: "One days' work on an average drop takes around four hours; given good wather it, it takes a month to clean the whole [Hearst] tower from top to bottom. Work on larger skyscrapers in the city takes much longer: a single cleaning cycle on the eighty-story black glass curtain walls of the Time Warner Center, where the central 'canyon drop' alone descends seven hundred feet, from the roof to the fourth-floor setback, can take six men four months."