Quote:
Originally Posted by ForeverChiefs58
Architectural design trends and artistic tastes. My understanding of it since the bridge itself was designed by famous New York bridge engineer Leon Moisseiff, that it was at the time the call for a certain style of aesthetic architecture. His design was influenced by architecture at the time that was meant to include terms such as graceful, elegant, slender, and lean feminine type of architecture.
This type of design is what influenced the call for minimal girders and contributed to its actual failure. I know architecture and engineering run together a lot in design, and is probably why the footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge callapse is still shown today to architecture, as well as engineering and physics students as a cautionary tale as well as being selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
|
I realize the architect was going for a particular aesthetic approach, however, it was not an architectural failure, but rather an engineering one because of the lack of knowledge in vibrations and resonance due to wind and natural frequencies of the bridge.
The bridge itself could have given the same aesthetics had the engineers altered the natural frequencies (which could have been done numerous ways). This is, literally, a text book example of structural engineering failures and has aided in greatly understanding wind phenomenons and how it effects the structure.
There are definitely some architectural failures in that article... this is not one of them.