SYMBOL

[John Young]

Yes, Sandy, how do you do that? Sincerely, I'm not being
a wiseass. Some building types have disappeared over
time due to understanding that they don't work any more.
Glorious buildings that once were once seen as absolutely the
best ever. Forts, for example. Gothic cathedrals that failed 
after exceeding the limits of stone construction.

High rise engineers now admittedly design to the limits of 
failure under economic pressure and aesthetic ambition.

One of the best high-rise structural engineers in the world,
often consulted after failures, says that it cannot be known
for sure all the forces that a super-high-rise will face, even
with the best supercomputer modeling (though not at the
capability of Nat Lab nuclear similuations) for each is 
unique, often purposely unique, that each is an experiment,
and there is no testing laboratory except the building itself.

Most mid- and super-high-rises require remedial work
almost immediately, some even during construction, and
sensors are now always installed to provide feedback on
what the modeling says cannot be foretold with certainty.

Those which have undergone remediation in NYC that
I know about are numerous, and most of that has been
kept under wraps with NDAs of those designing the
corrections, to protect property values as well as
reputations and to fend off lawsuits.

The New Yorker a few years ago published one of the
few accounts not in technical journals about high-rise
remediation, in this case about CitiCorp's middling-rise, 
telling of the years-long attempt to avoid culpability 
not only by the original structural engineer but by a host 
of other prominents involved, despite repeated damning 
studies funded by occupant-leaseholders who could hear the 
building pop and creak, feel movement and see cracked 
interior walls.

No big deal, perhaps, for unique large architectural and civil
structures behave in unexpected ways, having no unique
precedent to learn from. The safest high-rises are those
that copy successes, and the successes are few for
super-high-rises, not many are built.

Ok, daring is needed, that is the architect's drug of choice
and sale, but recall the building code of Vitruvius: commodity, 
firmness and delight. The architectural delight drug needs the 
other two or why bother building at all, just take a pill. The 
skyscraper bounty of which is in short supply downtown 
these days. No matter, it will come raging back like a bull 
on Monday, or will that market crash too.