structures and why things don t fall down

The collapse of L’Ambience Plaza is just one of the many case studies contained in “Why Buildings Fall Down,” a book that Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori wrote in 1992. It was April 23, 1987, and what was once going to be a luxury apartment building called L’Ambience Plaza in Bridgeport, Connecticut lay pancaked into the ground, entombing the bodies of 28 construction workers. Where there had been columns stretching nine stories into the city sky with concrete slabs lined up ready to be jacked up into their final positions, there was just an enormous hole in the ground with a ghastly gray cloud of concrete dust rising from it. I was fascinated by this because every time I passed by the floors were in a different position, spreading out vertically as the building grew.Īnd then one day, it just wasn’t there anymore. Rather than putting together a steel frame, laying out decking, and covering each floor with concrete, the workers seemed to be fabricating each floor at ground level and then jacking them up on the vertical steel columns.

One project I loved to watch back in the 80s was a new high-rise going in right next to the highway, which fascinated me because of the construction method. One trick I used to use was keeping mental track of the various construction projects I’d pass by on my way to work, noticing which piers on a new highway overpass were nearing completion, or watching steelworkers put together the complex rebar endoskeletons of a new stretch of roadway. People with long commutes usually come up with tricks to stay focused and alert and avoid the dangerous tendency to zone out during the drive.

Structures and why things don t fall down