As
I noted, Frankfurt is a commercial and financial center, and many of
the very modern structures are built by and for those companies. One of
the nicknames for Frankfurt, taking into account both the many tall modern
buildings and the Main River than runs through the center is
“Main-Hattan."
It
is also the headquarters for the European Central Bank whose new headquarters
is being built here. The emblem of the bank on that sign doesn’t
correlate with the official emblem shown on their website although in both
cases they show 12 stars, considerably less than the number of countries in the
Eurozone. I have no explanation.
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| European Central Bank |
Near
our hotel was a shopping center (Skyline Plaza) where there was an unusual use
of various colors, always on just one side of the metal columns on the exterior
of the buildings.
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| Skyline Plaza - Yellow to Red |
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| Skyline Plaza - Red |
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| Skyline Plaza - Green |
This
building should be the headquarters of an Apfelwein producer and, while that is
not the case, it is known colloquially as the Apfelwein building.
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| "Apfelwein" Building |
And
in a wonderful example of form over function, as well as the doctrine of
unintended consequences, is this building:
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| Half-Crown Building |
After
this building was built it was discovered that ice collected on the
crown in winter and pieces would melt off and create a potentially dangerous
situation. So, they provided heat to the crown which meant that ice
wouldn’t form on it. Problem solved. Except that birds discovered
the wonderful heat in the crown and wouldn’t fly south for the winter since it
was warm there. We never did learn how that problem was solved — if it
was.
Our hotel is in the Frankfurt Messe (Frankfurt trade fair) area. Here is a large (21 meters tall if
Wikipedia is to be believed) kinetic sculpture called the Hammering Man.
It is one of 11 such sculptures throughout the world, second in height
among them (the one in Seoul is 22 meters). The artist, Jonathan
Borofsky, says, “At its heart, society reveres the worker. The Hammering
Man is the worker in all of us.” This is a 15 second video of the Hammering Man in action.
(Technical note: I don't know if those of you getting the blog via email are able to see the video in action but, if not, then just go to the blog itself where you can see it.)
1. Re the half-crown bldg: do you know which is more dangerous: falling ice or bird bombs?
ReplyDelete2. Is hammering man a relative of burning man?
Falling ice is definitely more dangerous -- especially since it is hard and can be quite large. Although not as disgusting.
ReplyDeleteSince we're all relatives if we go back far enough, hammering man must be a relative of burning man. However, I think the relationship is tenuous at best. And I don't think metal burns very well.
(Just what you wanted, I'm sure -- serious answers to not-so-serious questions.)