James Stewart, author of calculus texts, has a $24 million house. It has lots of curved walls. Problem: find their areas or volumes, by integrating.
Simmons Hall, an MIT dorm opened in 2002, has a lot of oddly shaped rooms. (I found this silly, because the curved walls meant wasted space -- but I didn't live there, I just had friends who did, so it didn't bother me too much.) The story goes that the Cambridge fire department had trouble giving them a certificate of occupancy because they couldn't determine the volume of certain rooms and therefore couldn't determine whether they were adequately ventilated.
(Article from the Wall Street Journal; link from Casting Out Nines.)
Stata has a bunch of non-vertical walls, which also would lead to "wasted" space. But I don't necessarily think that architecture is an issue of maximizing space. (The slanted walls did bother my officemate though).
ReplyDeleteI have to say, we used Stewart's textbooks for single variable and multivariable calculus at my university and I thought I felt ripped off when I bought the books.
ReplyDeleteKnowing that not only did I get gouged at school, but that Stewart amassed $24M really pisses me off :P
I tried not to write but could not help myself:
ReplyDeleteHe had time to write the textbooks and make all those movies?
Instead of measuring the house's size by integrating, one could use Edison's method - fill it with water and then measure the water.
ReplyDeleteI was going to suggest the same thing as Ori. And also point out that this would be particularly easy for the fire department.
ReplyDelete