Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail

Matthys Levy, Mario Salvadori

W. W. Norton & Company, Mar 5, 2002 - Architecture - 334 pages

Once upon a time, seven wonders of the world stood tall and brilliant and, it must have seemed, would stand forever, impervious to time and gravity. Now only one remains--the pyramid at Khufu, in the Egyptian desert near Cairo. All of the others have fallen down. Modern technologies, computerized designs, and new materials have minimized structural failures nearly to the vanishing point. Even so, we can learn from ancient as well as recent history. Why Buildings Fall Down chronicles the how and why of the most important and interesting structural failures in history and especially in the twentieth century. Not even all of the pyramids are still with us. The Pyramid of Meidum has shed 2,500,000 tons of limestone and continues to disintegrate. Beginning there our authors, both world-renowned structural engineers, take us on a guided tour of enlightening structural failures--buildings of all kinds, from ancient domes like Istanbul's Hagia Sophia to the state of the art Hartford Civic Arena, from the man-caused destruction of the Parthenon to the earthquake damage of 1989 in Armenia and San Francisco, the Connecticut Thruway bridge collapse at Mianus, and one of the most fatal structural disasters in American history: the fall of the Hyatt Regency ballroom walkways in Kansas City. Buildings have fallen throughout history whether made of wood, steel, reinforced concrete, or stone. But these failures do respect the laws of physics. All are the result of static load or dynamic forces, earthquakes, temperature changes, uneven settlements of the soil, or other unforeseen forces. A few are even due to natural phenomena that engineers and scientists are still unable to explain or predict. The stories that make up Why Buildings Fall Down are, finally, very human ones, tales of the interaction of people and nature, of architects, engineers, builders, materials, and natural forces, all coming together in sometimes dramatic and always instructive ways in the places where we live and work and have our lives.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - nbmars - LibraryThing

In the Introduction, the author writes: “Like most human bodies, most buildings have full lives, and then they die.” He states that “the accidental death of a building is always due to the failure of ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - stormdog - LibraryThing

Salvadori's dedication notes that his mother-in-law thought that his book "Why Buildings Stand Up," was nice, but she would be much more interested in why they fall down. She had a good point; I found ...

Contents

• PREFACE: 3
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: 5
• INTRODUCTION: 7
• The First Structural Failure: 11
• Miracle on Thirtyfourth Street: 19
• Will the Pantheon Stand Up Forever?: 25
• For Lack of Redundancy: 49
• Big Bangs: 70
• The Day the Earth Shook: 84
• Galloping Gertie: 103
• When Metals Tire: 115
• Thruways to Eternity: 128
• The Weaknesses of Mother Earth: 143
• Valley of Tears: 155
• The House of Cards: 167
• Structural Dermatology: 177
• OldAge Death: 201
• The Worst Structural Disaster in the United States: 215
• The Politics of Destruction: 225
• The Structure of the Law: 236
• Terror from the Sky: 251
• Conclusion Can We Prevent Future Failures?: 263
• A Loads: 275
• B Stress and Strain: 283
• C Structural Materials: 286
• D Structural Systems: 289
• INDEX: 321

About the author

Matthys P. Levy is a founding Principal and Chairman Emeritus of Weidlinger Associates, Consulting Engineers. Born in Switzerland and a graduate of the City College of New York, Mr. Levy received his MS and CE degrees from Columbia University. He has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University and a Distinguished Professor at Pratt Institute and a lecturer at universities throughout the world.

Mario G. Salvadori was a structural engineer and professor of both civil engineering and architecture at Columbia University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail; Norton - Library of Congress visual sourcebooks in architecture, design, and engineering; Norton Paperback : Architecture
• Authors: Matthys Levy, Mario Salvadori
• Illustrated by: Kevin Woest
• Contributor: Mario Salvadori
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, reissue, revised
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002
• ISBN: 039331152X, 9780393311525
• Length: 334 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Study & Teaching