The faint lines are the cell walls and the bright spots in the middle would be the DNA. I can believe this is what they're going for with a bit of squinting.
>A top-secret handbook takes viewers on an undercover journey to Titanpointe, the site of a hidden partnership. Narrated by Rami Malek and Michelle Williams, and based on classified NSA documents, Project X reveals the inner workings of a windowless skyscraper in downtown Manhattan.
I came across this video from the linked Wikipedia article. It’s a good video but lacks much detail IMO. I was hoping for something longer and more in depth (although it did lead me down a rabbit hole of Field of Vision videos which are all excellent). Does anyone know of more detailed vids about the building? The suggested YouTube videos didn’t offer much.
Whenever I hear about this building I can't help but be reminded of Geoff Manaugh's idea for a Ghostbusters III, where the Ghostbusters discover that the NYNEX telephone system is actually... well, I'll let you read it: http://www.bldgblog.com/tag/ghostbusters-iii/
The 18 foot ceilings accommodated the then standard 11 foot, 6 inch equipment racks, with space overhead for cable racks, bus bars, AC ducts, etc. It was built about the time that the standard was changed to 7 foot racks for the new electronic switching systems.
I've often thought similar things. I think it's because in comparison to many glass modern buildings, Brutalist ones tend to age in way that appears more organic. They also don't tend to have a ton of windows, which is more inline with historical architecture.
I think someone here on HN actually wrote in regards to the post about "facading" (keeping the facade, tearing down the building behind it) that the difference between concrete and stone, and steel and glass, is that stone and concrete invites you to touch it. There's something cold and alien about steel and glass that makes even a concrete wall feel inviting. It's also not transparent, feels more solid, and is much closer to our "mud hut" past than any modern office complex.
Sure, brutalist buildings can look... brutal. But I've always felt that the surrounding area, the colors and the interior design makes more difference than anything. You could definitely make a brutalist neighborhood feel much more alive and inviting if you just paid attention to those things than an ice cold, modern investment bank sky scraper.
There is also no practical reason to have windows in a telephone equipment building. They cannot be opened to cool, they only would light a limited area along the wall. The entire building must be air conditioned, and lighting is only turned on when people are in the equipment aisles.
Warehouses and data centers are the same, except that they don't attract attention since they are low horizontal structures with much more utilitarian cladding.
The most interesting telecom buildings are the ones underground.
This one lacks windows because it was built to withstand a nuclear war.
“But it’s downtown” you say. “No way it would withstand a direct hit.”
Rumor I heard is that they thought for sure they would have SDI protecting Manhattan, and this is only supposed to survive a hit on Queens or Newark or something.
I don't know if this building was intentionally built in the Brutalist style, or ended up that way because of the requirement that it survive a nuclear attack and budget constraints.
All major cities seemed to end up with similar facilities at end of the 1970s to cope with the exponential reach of telecommunications at that point. In Australia, Melbourne has 320 Exhibition Street http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/telstra-exhibition-... and in Sydney, the Kent St Exchange Telstra Kent Telephone Exchange
While just as impressive, that Telstra exchange point is more similar to Verizon's building at 375 Pearl Street [than 33 Thomas] which held local Verizon local switching facilities for many years (f/k/a Bell Atlantic, f/k/a NYNEX, f/k/a New York Telephone).
I find it funny that brutalist buildings always remind me of Nineteen Eighty Four. It is amusing then you find out it may be a hub of mass surveillance.
On the other hand, Roberts Library at U of Toronto is a haven and protectorate for knowledge and rare books. And it looks like a fortress! It’s one of my favourite buildings and one of my first stops in the event of a sci-fi-level zombie Armageddon.
Legend says there is a building of such importance in central London but of course it's officially denied (or at least was) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Tower
You barely get to see the outside of "The Oldest House" in that game. But the interior spaces designed in that game are something else. It's almost entirely white light on concrete, but the mileage they get out of that is amazing.
Is 60 Hudson a notable spying location? I've been inside there and didn't even have to sign in, we just went right up to our cage.
111 8th Avenue has "National Security Agency" on the tenant directory you see when you walk in. Always thought it was weird that Google leased some of its building to the NSA after the Snowden leaks. (When I worked there, one of my pet projects was to remove the access codes for the bathrooms. Eventually it was escalated high enough and they told me that the NSA demanded it. The codes were like 1 3 5 and 2 4 6. I never understood the purpose other than to annoy me.)
The 10th avenue building Google also shares with the FBI (top floor). I've always thought that the FBI taking a floor in E-Corp's building in Mr Robot was a dig at Google because of this.
The building one block north of there is the NYC DEA office.
I’ve had space in 60 hudson, 111 8th, and 32 AoA. Far less mysterious and easy to get into. Although the facility I was in at 32 AoA apparently had a bunch of cross-atlantic fiber terminations via AC-1. I never saw anything ominous.
That building is insane. Apartments are $3000 plus a sqft. There's not that many high rises in downtown Manhattan that command prices like that... Definitely on the high end. Not sure if you'd really want 33 Thomas as your main view though
https://www.flickr.com/photos/whoisstan/49074343638/in/datep...