136 SCOOP Commercial Building & Design PEARL RIVER TOWER, CHINA Kym MacCormac, MacCormac Architects We have seen building designs shaped to suit the surrounding natural landscape, and building designs based on sustainability. The remarkable elements of the Pearl River Tower by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) combine both. Incorporating the latest green technology and engineering advancements, the 213,700sqm Pearl River Tower is one of the world’s most energy- efficient skyscrapers. It was developed through an understanding of solar and wind patterns around the site, taking serious advantage of a commodity we have by the truckload in WA – wind. The sculpted body of the south facing 309m-tall tower has been shaped to capitalise on the elements by facing the wind and directing it to a pair of openings at its mechanical floors. Travelling winds then push turbines that generate energy for the building. Photovoltaic panels also ensure heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems remain powered, while rotating, motorised louvres on the facade provide fresh-air ventilation and keep the building cool. Solar panels, a double-skin curtain wall, a chilled ceiling system, under-floor ventilation, and daylight harvesting are a number of additional sustainable elements that warrant the recognition this building deserves for sustainability. Perth is well known as a centre for yachting for very good reason – wind is a natural resource and is available in large amounts for most of the year. With our winter storms and the Fremantle Doctor in the summer afternoons, Perth is in a prime position to benefit from sustainable building elements similar to Pearl River Tower. The city grid is inclined by about 15 degrees off north toward the east, so it would only require a slight deviation from the side boundaries for the southern face of any building to face a sculptured opening into the direction of the dominant wind. This configuration makes a lot of sense if the acoustic concerns can be addressed, which has to be easier to achieve where the turbines are in an enclosed space rather than configured as exposed windmills. PhotographyGuoZhongHua/Shutterstock.com
There are unbelievable fields of lifted graphic on the Singapore servers. And knowing that none is original, the endless variety loses its calculus: there is plainly an end to stolen goods. Enzo has considered this and other thefts, and weighed their payoff per down payment. The larger, gun-toting contrivances are a contradiction to Enzo. It seems to Enzo that a robbery that really hauled big would be easier on his mica-like soul than would, say, a connive, or a fraud.
This is how romance grows between Enzo’s toes: an XTC song, teasing with history but denying the real background. Oh, another smell of past crash pads. Enzo uses Google to fetch information about old girlfriends from data bases that don’t exist, or were closed to memory by a freak death. Homer is there in Google, but not Enzo, or his old friends. And standing on another summer corner with twenty-five others in the misting diesel fuel, Enzo knows that you really cannot be alone in a crowd.
Enzo looks at all of them and recognizes none. No help that they are all strangers, he is not interested in their existential status. They are in the full regalia of hot weather displays today, and Enzo loosens his tie. This is risky – Enzo has also rolled up the sleeves of his yellow shirt. He is not wearing the jacket for this green summer suit, and he would feel half dressed at an opening if one came up suddenly.
He is thinking about how there are some people from his personal mythology that may be real. That he may contact them if he could find them. That he may be amplified, in a Frippertronic way, if he could find those living ripples in the urbi et orbi. And then a man passes, much shorter than Enzo, in a light green summer suit, with the jacket on, in a yellow dress shirt, in ox blood wing tips; this man passes walking faster than Enzo would in this humidity. A dream image, a double, a thief of Enzo.
It is as though he had been grabbed, as though Giant Smelly Man had sat next to him on the R train. Worse than this, worse than dropping fifteen bucks, worse than losing the whole wallet. Enzo is slammed back into his body, into the pinched toes and blood pressure which he swears he can feel. In all the shameful plotting to get more stuff, he had never thought he could rob his own soul. As a rule, Enzo puts himself first among the base, a weird megalomania without the satisfaction of supremacy, and now there is evidence of power.
And this is how the briar grows among the rose bushes; how Enzo has practiced bonsai in his dream life. Alone, he doesn’t know if he is awake or asleep, and walks sometimes somnolently through his work days, and that habit has paid off as a dream image of Enzo walking past. Suspiciously, he looks back to see if there are shiny chips falling away as his soul disintegrates. Enzo is a little freer today, hemmed in on all sides by over-heated New Yorkers, twisted permanently into the romance he imagines from his youth, hauled away by a ghost. Enzo feels his feet and legs walking in the blue sky.
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