Subject: Re: Specialist in huge hillside signs

From: [email-masked] (Robert Kamins)
Date: 26 Jan 1995 01:08:32 -0800

[email-masked] (Ralf B. Lukner) writes:

>In article <[email-masked]>,
>[email-masked] (Ron Graham) wrote:

>> >A client of mine is looking for an engineering firm to design and build a 
>> >huge hillside sign, and I do mean huge.  This would be on a steep slope 
>> >in California, and the letters should be readable from 10 to 20 miles 
>> >away.  

> If you don't
>want legal battles, you better make this a major attraction rather than
>eyesore ....... I
>would look for a firm that has excellent artistic ability to make the sign
>attractive from several viewpoints and a real landmark for everyone to
>enjoy.  ......<portions deleted>

     i am hard pressed to accept that giant advertising signs on
mountain-tops are ever going to be anything other than an _eyesore_.
what kind of aesthtically depleted world do we live in when we find
landscape attractive with advertising on it?  you could resurrect
michelangelo and have him start carving mt. fuji into a reclined female nude  
savoring a bottle of coca-cola, but i am still going to call 
it wrong.
i don't know why people decry spraypainting "taggers" in the city and then
think that advertising is suddenly a landmark.  even the mt. rushmore and
crazy horse mountain sculpting is nothing more than landscape defilment in
these terms, no matter how great the men depicted were.
but advertising?  that's an eyesore by definition.  
a couple yaers ago there was a plan to launch an advertising sign into
space, orbiting the earth, large enough to be read with the unaided eye
at night.  the plan was technically and financially feasible, but was
fortunately scuttled after a lot of protests.  i don't think any quality
of presentation merits putting signs in the night sky for the whole
planet to see.  people should be careful about what direction this stuff
is going.  
i do not mean any of this post as a slam against the other people talking
about the engineering issues in erecting a sign on a hill, i just felt that
a certain objection needs to be made to the whole undertaking, no matter how
"well" it is done.  more responsibility needs to be shown for the built 
environment.  unless of course that environment is las vegas, i guess.
then anything goes.

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From: [email-masked] (Ralf B. Lukner)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 14:37:37 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Robert

> mountain-tops are ever going to be anything other than an _eyesore_.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  To some people, a skyscraper can
never be esthetically pleasing.  To me, city skylines can be very
attractive, especially if the structures combine art and functionality. 
I'm sure many would object to my opinion.  I would say without a doubt
that a crude billboard essentially nailed to the side of a mountain would
always be an eyesore.  (I really *hate* this huge flashing sign that a
fruit stand in a nearby rural town.  It is overkill beyond anything I have
ever seen and makes you want to kill the owner instead of buying
anything).   However, there might be an usual structure which could be
both a marvel (attraction) of sorts and subtly convey a commerical message
(it might simply be know as Braney's Truck Stop and Inter-Galactic Rest
Stop without having any such lettering on it).  Obviously it should
"match" with its surroundings.

> landscape attractive with advertising on it?

Advertising is here and is here to stay.  Let's try to make it attractive
and as non-disruptive as possible.

> you could resurrect
> savoring a bottle of coca-cola,

An advertisement doesn't need to carry the product banner to advertise. 
For example, the Sears Tower (which has just been sold, I guess)
advertises Sears via an attraction and (world) landmark, not by being
shaped like an S.

--Ralf

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From: [email-masked] ()
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 95 23:50:56 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Daniel P Tasman) writes:
|> [email-masked] (Paula Berinstein) writes...
|> 
|> > A client of mine is looking for an engineering firm to design and build a 
|> > huge hillside sign, and I do mean huge.  This would be on a steep slope 
|> > in California, and the letters should be readable from 10 to 20 miles 
|> > away.  
|> 
|> ... as if 100' tall McDonalds signs at every expressway interchange, 
|> 14'x48' billboards built to last the next few nuclear wars lining 
|> commercial districts across the country, and ugly portable signs dotting 
|> parking lots all over the place don't provide enough visual pollution ...

Let's see here, I can read 1/8 inch tall characters at 3 feet, so how tall
would the characters have to be at 10 mi?

.125*10*5280/3/12= 183 feet high.

At 20 miles it would be 367 feet high to be readable.

Since the slope is steep, why not just paint the hillside?  It's a
lot cheaper than erecting a sign.  Check out just about any US
western town that has a high school and a hillside nearby.  You'll
find the school's initial on the hill, usually large enough to be 
seen from 5-10 miles away.  It's either painted on bare rock or a
collection of rocks brought to the site.

If you work fast, and at night, you might be able to finish 
your sign before the Sierra Club has you drawn and quartered!

---

From: [email-masked] (Daniel P Tasman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 18:09:27 GMT

[email-masked] (Paula Berinstein) writes...

> in California, and the letters should be readable from 10 to 20 miles 

... as if 100' tall McDonalds signs at every expressway interchange, 
14'x48' billboards built to last the next few nuclear wars lining 
commercial districts across the country, and ugly portable signs dotting 
parking lots all over the place don't provide enough visual pollution ...

-- 
 Dan Tasman               SUNY at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning
 [email-masked]                 http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~tasman/
 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 | "I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree.            |
 |  indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all."      |
 |                                        Odgen Nash, Song of the Open Road |
 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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From: [email-masked] (Ralf B. Lukner)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 12:22:08 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>,
[email-masked] (Ron Graham) wrote:

> In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] 
>      (Paula Berinstein) writes...
> 

I'm just guessing, but my impression is that several architectural/civil
engineering and construction firms ought to do be able to do good job with
this.  Your client better have some *very* deep pockets (Fortune 500?) or
you are wasting your time.  Such a sign would probably be extremely
expensive with many hidden costs like special permitting.  If you don't
want legal battles, you better make this a major attraction rather than
eyesore (I can see lawyers licking their chops on this one already).  I
would look for a firm that has excellent artistic ability to make the sign
attractive from several viewpoints and a real landmark for everyone to
enjoy.  Obviously engineering ingenuity will be needed to design a robust
structural framework that doesn't break the bank.  For a list of such
firms, look at civil and architectural engineering trade magazines or
contact your local engineering and/or architectural professional
organizations.

--Ralf

P.S.  I took the liberty to cross-post this to several newsgroups that
might provide better input.

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From: [email-masked] (Patricia Reynolds)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 1995 19:47:27 +0000

Why not choose a chalk hillside and create a giant horse (providing the
client is Phillips, that is ....)
-- 
Patricia Reynolds
[email-masked]