ChiefsPlanet - Life 5 Shocking Architectural Failures

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5 Shocking Architectural Failures (https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=249667)

5 more from their extensive 10 Major Architectural Failures list

Aon Center

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...n_Building.jpg

The Aon Center is the third-tallest building in Chicago. It was completed in 1973 and was originally named the Standard Oil Building. When it was completed, the building was a visual wonder to behold, thanks to the decision to sheath the entire structure in Italian Carrara marble. The building looked great, but its fetching exterior came at a very high price.

Carrara marble is much thinner than building materials normally used to clad buildings, and in 1974 one of the slabs detached from the building and crashed into the roof of the neighboring Prudential Center. An investigation revealed the completely unsuitable marble was cracking and bowing all over the exterior. Ultimately, the building was refaced with granite at a cost of more than $80 million .

John Hancock Tower

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...ock_Center.jpg

The John Hancock Tower is a 60-story skyscraper in Boston that was designed by the I.M. Pei & Partners architectural firm and unveiled in 1976. Its striking, minimalist appearance won it accolades from the architectural community, but it was famously plagued with problems.

One major issue the building encountered concerned its windows: They were falling out and crashing to the pavement hundreds of feet below. In the 1992 book "Why Buildings Fall Down," authors Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori explained that this was due to unanticipated, repeated thermal stresses to the panels. Ultimately, all 10,000 windows would be replaced at a cost of $5 million.

The John Hancock Tower encountered one other major problem. Skyscrapers are meant to sway in order to absorb strong gusts of wind, though the sway is normally not felt by the building’s residents. The John Hancock Tower, however, swayed so dramatically that it gave the occupants of its upper floors motion sickness. The problem was finally solved by Cambridge engineer William LeMessurier .

Ray and Maria Stata Center

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...Center_MIT.jpg

The Ray and Maria Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was designed by award-winning architect Frank Gehry. It opened in 2004 and houses the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. It was hailed for its logic-defying angles and walls that challenged the laws of physics.

Three years after it opened, MIT filed a negligence suit against Gehry, claiming design flaws in the $300 million building had caused major structural problems. Drainage issues had caused cracks in the walls. Icicle daggers hung pendulously from the roof like deadly sash weights. Mold grew on the building’s brick exterior.

The school paid more than $1.5 million for repairs. A spokesman for the construction company, Skanska USA Building, claimed the company had tried to warn Gehry of problems with the design on numerous occasions, and had made repeated requests to use more suitable material. "We were told to proceed with the original design," the spokesman said . "It was difficult to make the original design work."

W.E.B. Du Bois Library

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...is_Library.jpg

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is home to three distinguished libraries, which include the Music Reserve Lab and the Science and Engineering Library. However, the best known is the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, a 26-story structure that is the tallest library in the U.S .

Within two months of its opening, the building began shedding brick chips, a phenomenon known as spalling. There are various urban legends that persist about its causes, the most popular of which is that the architect who designed the building failed to take into account the weight of the books to be housed inside it.

While no official cause of the spalling was given, 60,000 books had to be moved out of the building. It was later discovered the building was sinking into the pond-saturated ground on which it was built. However, YouMass, a helpful guide to life on the UMass Amherst campus, says this claim is overblown and describes the degree to which the building is sinking as “ not so much .”

CNA Center

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...CNA_Center.jpg

The CNA Center is a high-rise building in Chicago that opened in 1972. The 44-story building was designed by the firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White. It’s painted bright red, making it impossible not to notice.

In 1999, a large piece of a window came loose from the 29th floor of the building and plunged to the ground, causing one fatality. The culprit was thermal expansion , and after an $18 million settlement every one of the building’s windows was replaced. Each window is still checked on a monthly basis to this day.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brock (Post 7889381)

Nope. The architecture firm okayed what they did.

To clarify... it was a combination of structural engineering failure, relying on computer modeling too much and a deviation from the original design by the contractor.

Of all places... wikipedia has it accurate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_R...lkway_collapse

Quote:

Three days after the disaster, Wayne Lischka, a structural engineer hired by The Kansas City Star newspaper, discovered a significant change of the original design of the walkways. Reportage of the event later earned the Star and its associated publication the Kansas City Times a Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting during 1982.[12] (Radio station KJLA-AM won a National Associated Press award for its reporting during the night of the disaster.)

The two walkways were suspended from a set of 1.25 inch diameter[13] steel tie rods, with the second floor walkway hanging directly under the fourth floor walkway. The fourth floor walkway platform was supported on 3 cross-beams suspended by steel rods retained by nuts. The cross-beams were box girders made from C-channel strips welded together lengthwise, with a hollow space between them. The original design by Jack D. Gillum and Associates specified three pairs of rods running from the second floor to the ceiling. Investigators determined eventually that this design supported only 60 percent of the minimum load required by Kansas City building codes.[14]

Havens Steel Company, the contractor responsible for manufacturing the rods, objected to the original plan of Jack D. Gillum and Associates, since it required the whole of the rod below the fourth floor to be screw threaded in order to screw on the nuts to hold the fourth floor walkway in place. These threads would probably have been damaged and rendered unusable as the structure for the fourth floor was hoisted into position with the rods in place. Havens therefore proposed an alternate plan in which two separate sets of tie rods would be used: one connecting the fourth floor walkway to the ceiling, and the other connecting the second floor walkway to the fourth floor walkway.[3]

This design change would prove fatal. In the original design, the beams of the fourth floor walkway had to support only the weight of the fourth floor walkway itself, with the weight of the second floor walkway supported completely by the rods. In the revised design, however, the fourth floor beams were required to support both the fourth floor walkway and the second floor walkway hanging from it. With the load on the fourth-floor beams doubled, Havens' proposed design could bear only 30 percent of the mandated minimum load (as opposed to 60 percent for the original design).

The serious flaws of the revised design were compounded by the fact that both designs placed the bolts directly through a welded joint connecting two C-channels, the weakest structural point in the box beams. Photographs of the wreckage show excessive deformations of the cross-section.[15] During the failure the box beams split along the weld and the nut supporting them slipped through the resulting gap between the two C-channels which had been welded together.

Investigators concluded that the basic problem was a lack of proper communication between Jack D. Gillum and Associates and Havens Steel. In particular, the drawings prepared by Jack D. Gillum and Associates were only preliminary sketches but were interpreted by Havens as finalized drawings. Jack D. Gillum and Associates failed to review the initial design thoroughly, and accepted Havens' proposed plan without performing basic calculations that would have revealed its serious intrinsic flaws — in particular, the doubling of the load on the fourth-floor beams.[

Quote:

Originally Posted by cdcox (Post 7889398)

Someone needs to learn the difference between an engineer and an architect.

An architect draws a pretty picture of a bridge or a building. It's up to the engineer to make it work or to tell the architect to get real. These are all engineering failures. But cutting edge designs and the resulting failures is one of the ways that engineering knowledge advances.

Thank you for saying it so I don't have to.

Quote:

Most parents who take their children to the playground know the drill. Before putting their kids into a swing, they touch it first to make sure the seat, which has been sitting in the sun all day, isn’t too hot. However, the designers of the playground at Pier One in New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park managed to overlook this principle when they designed three play structures for children to climb on, and built them out of steel.

The domed structures regularly became too hot to touch, much less climb. Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Park Advocates, measured their temperature at more than 127 degrees, and parent Roula Fokas observed, “You can fry an egg on them." In July 2010, The New York Post reported the domes would be replaced with new equipment which, presumably, could be touched by anyone, at any time of year.

LMAO Really?

"Metal playground equipment gets hot" makes the list?

Quote:

Originally Posted by cdcox (Post 7889398)

errr....no. Architects need to understand load capacity and all that sciency-building stuff too.

EDIT: Let me qualify my statement -- I understand that architects are not PEs and do not have the same degree of knowledge as, say, a Civil Engineer would have for building materials, etc. But they are supposed to have some knowledge on these matters as well in order to create realistic designs. Some of the examples given -- in particular the bridge in Tacoma, would seem to be more of an engineer failing than an architectural one, definitely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amnorix (Post 7889580)

Uhh... not really. They need to understand very, very basic engineering fundamentals, but that is only really used to gather if what they are conceiving is even remotely feasible. Most of the time they draw on their experience from other jobs and rules of thumb. Actually, never have I seen one do a calculation of any kind.

Architects rely on the engineers to make their buildings safe and code compliant (except for fire codes and egress). Most of the time if there is a "building" failure it is due to engineering/construction... not architects.

Of the 10 above I would say that three are possibly architectural failures: Vdara Hotel & Spa, Las Vegas, NV; Playground at Pier One, Brooklyn Bridge Park, NY; and Ray and Maria Stata Center.

The rest are either structural or geotechnical in nature.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amnorix (Post 7889580)

errr....no. Architects need to understand load capacity and all that sciency-building stuff too.

They don't NEED to. The good ones do, but there are plenty that don't, and still have a stamp.

Quote:

Originally Posted by epitome1170 (Post 7889589)

Since you're a CivE as I recall, I'll definitely defer to you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rageeumr (Post 7889602)

They don't NEED to. The good ones do, but there are plenty that don't, and still have a stamp.

err... wrong. To get a stamp they have to pass a test in each discipline which makes them learn the basics. (And it is the basics because I have taught some of the structural portions to a few architect friends to prepare them for that test... which is supposedly the hardest one they take.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amnorix (Post 7889606)

Since you're a CivE as I recall, I'll definitely defer to you.

:thumb:

Just trying to teach the world the finer points of my industry.

I gotta say, there is often nothing more inspiring than a monumental building symbolizing the achievements of human industrial and commercial aptitude.

And I'm amazed at some of the road systems people put together. The clover highways, underpasses, ramps, molding together to create the grid we rely on for transportation in commerce and leisure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by epitome1170 (Post 7889611)

I feel like we're arguing the same point. I was saying that structural knowledge is not required to have an AIA stamp, but the "good" architects have a pretty decent understanding of structural requirements and constructability. They're obviously not going to be sizing structural members, but they can allow for structure in preliminary sketches, instead of handing over a pretty picture and saying "ok, figure out how to make this stand up"

Let me elaborate on what epitome1170 has said.

I am the lead academic advisor in our department. A few students every year do a dual degree in architecture and civil engineering. We give architects credit for about 5 hours of structural engineering. Our undergrads that do not specialize in structural engineering take least 3 additional hours in structures. So an engineer who has no interest at all in structures will know more about what makes a building stand up or fall down than an architect. Students who graduate with some specialization in structural engineering at the BS level will take at least 9 more hours than an architecture student. But to really know structural engineering, you would get an MS degree and take additional 30 hours of structural engineering classes, beyond the BS level. At that point you are comparing a lawyer to someone who has take a business law class.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rageeumr (Post 7889631)

I guess what I am saying that in order to get the AIA stamp they have to have some decent knowledge of the structural requirements and constructability (at least for a short time... their test), but as we both know many people take the cram and purge approach to tests... (god, I hated physics)