I've attended several of the NIST hearings in NYC and despite
my initial scepticism of a full investigation, NIST is doing a
thorough job, much better than the earlier study by the professional
engineering panel.
I'm an architect with 35 years experience in NYC, with several
years of that in forensic investigations of a variety of building
failures.
So far, to me, NIST is not blowing smoke. What is more disturbing
is the statements made in response to the latest NIST release is
that nothing will be done to improve high-rise safety due to inertia
among design professionals but more importantly because the
real estate industry does not want to pay the added cost.
To be sure, this dilatory response may be due to the expectation,
following the airlines and insurance industry, that the government
will subsidize the added cost of improved safety of high-rises. Call
the bail-out terrorism protection or national defense necessity.
There is no question that WTC 1 and 2 and WTC 7 were not safely
built. That was known at the time of construction among designers,
developers, building officials and financial institutions. However,
this was not an unusual position in urban architecture, particularly
high-rises.
Remember that the main purpose of high-rises is to increase the
value of real estate by increasing occupancy density. All the rest
about their value is fool's gilding nonsense.
Remember also that developers will build buildings no safer than
they are forced to do so, otherwise they would be considered among
their crowd to be lousy businessmen for wasting money unnecessarily.
Remember also that building and public safety officials are subject
to political persuasion, as are national security officials. A corollary
of this is that if there is no risk there is no need for a fabulously
expensive public protection system -- national, state, local whether
government or private.
Slicing public protection thinnly keeps the the taxpayers and investors
happy, the price being periodic disasters when the thinness gives
way, as it did with WTC, airline security, national security and a host
of promises meant to be stretched to the limit of failure.
Then when failure occurs, moan and groan about how much it will
cost to provide absolute protection, that in fact, such protection is
impossible, unrealistic, too expensive, too overkill.
It is the last point which NIST is promoting: that we should not expect
to ever achieve full protection, at least as far as buildings are concerned.
Instead shift that burden to the defense industry, which we know is not
a raging success either, but damned expensively wasteful.
Here is my complaint about NIST: it is not willing to take on the real
estate industry to enforce substantially increased safety of high-rises,
for example, by calling for a moratorium on high-rise construction until
sufficient experience has been developed to assure occupants that
the beasts are trustworthy.
A ban on high-rises might well be the 2x4 that gets the attention
of developers and their all-too-obliging design professionals.
To be sure, it might be godsend for that ban to be extended indefinitely
for high-rises are the battleships of architecture, high prestige, high
profit but really terrible places for most people in them to work. And
dangerous, very dangerous, don't believe the century-old spin about
the piles. Even CEOs within them try to stay out of their eaglic aeries
as much as possible. The spectacular views wear thin after a few days,
not unlike that from an aircraft. The getting to and getting out is what
ruins the magic.
Not to be overlooked is the dinosaurian Pentagon, a really awful piece
of architecture for those encapsulated within it, now more than
ever. It has not been made safer, just more uninhabitable, more
encrusted with chain-ganged memorialization -- the practice being
promoted for homeland security.
Though pre-empted by all-too-hasty reconstruction "coverup" at the
Pentagon, a ban on building at Ground Zero is still a possibility, and
certainly no high-rise should ever go up there for a least a century --
let the hot-air promises blow instead. Liebkind's vapid apologia for
soaring spires in the NY Times recently roil the puketube.
Silverstein's empty rebuilt WTC 7 will stand as a symbol of guilty
reaction, a futile effort to imagine 9/11 never happened. It would
make a swell museum to reflect on what went wrong with high-rise
architecture in the last century when genuine safety was replaced
with ever-ballooning insurance premiums.
9/11 has helped the airlines, insurance and defense industries like
nothing since WW2. Weenie architecture too. Housing is booming,
here, as I've mentioned, all execreable. There's a con going on about
something called "inclusionary housing," which means to include
in project housing for the poor in return for more bloated buildings.
Nobody believes this is anything more than a placebo.
Goldberger's call for a moratorium on high-rises at Ground Zero
and for more housing downtown is comical for its tardiness, actually
trendiness, for several dimbulbs in the critical profession are yarping
this line.
Housing sucks as an architectural concept. Dreadful places to live
have been constructed under that soulles socio-politico-financial
planning rubric. Only numbers count, as developers yarp, the bottomless
bottom line, so to speak.
Awful architecture is paradigmatized in high-rises and housing, both
inventions of the last century. Coupled in death-dealing stacking of
people via the boiling frog method. Pathologies are rife in both
building types, and demolition of high-rises are on humanitarian
grounds are in the offing. WTC collapse is a fascinating precursor
of what that liberation might cost.
Philip Johnson's "density is no sin" is a haunting reminder of what
disengaged minds are capable of imposing on the public, and moreso
on the unthinking designer totally obsessed with getting the job no
matter the consequences. Rockefeller, Trump, Silverstein, the
whole anti-humane architecture cartel are confident there will be
no end of complicitous Leibskinds, SOMs, world-class disengagees.
my initial scepticism of a full investigation, NIST is doing a
thorough job, much better than the earlier study by the professional
engineering panel.
I'm an architect with 35 years experience in NYC, with several
years of that in forensic investigations of a variety of building
failures.
So far, to me, NIST is not blowing smoke. What is more disturbing
is the statements made in response to the latest NIST release is
that nothing will be done to improve high-rise safety due to inertia
among design professionals but more importantly because the
real estate industry does not want to pay the added cost.
To be sure, this dilatory response may be due to the expectation,
following the airlines and insurance industry, that the government
will subsidize the added cost of improved safety of high-rises. Call
the bail-out terrorism protection or national defense necessity.
There is no question that WTC 1 and 2 and WTC 7 were not safely
built. That was known at the time of construction among designers,
developers, building officials and financial institutions. However,
this was not an unusual position in urban architecture, particularly
high-rises.
Remember that the main purpose of high-rises is to increase the
value of real estate by increasing occupancy density. All the rest
about their value is fool's gilding nonsense.
Remember also that developers will build buildings no safer than
they are forced to do so, otherwise they would be considered among
their crowd to be lousy businessmen for wasting money unnecessarily.
Remember also that building and public safety officials are subject
to political persuasion, as are national security officials. A corollary
of this is that if there is no risk there is no need for a fabulously
expensive public protection system -- national, state, local whether
government or private.
Slicing public protection thinnly keeps the the taxpayers and investors
happy, the price being periodic disasters when the thinness gives
way, as it did with WTC, airline security, national security and a host
of promises meant to be stretched to the limit of failure.
Then when failure occurs, moan and groan about how much it will
cost to provide absolute protection, that in fact, such protection is
impossible, unrealistic, too expensive, too overkill.
It is the last point which NIST is promoting: that we should not expect
to ever achieve full protection, at least as far as buildings are concerned.
Instead shift that burden to the defense industry, which we know is not
a raging success either, but damned expensively wasteful.
Here is my complaint about NIST: it is not willing to take on the real
estate industry to enforce substantially increased safety of high-rises,
for example, by calling for a moratorium on high-rise construction until
sufficient experience has been developed to assure occupants that
the beasts are trustworthy.
A ban on high-rises might well be the 2x4 that gets the attention
of developers and their all-too-obliging design professionals.
To be sure, it might be godsend for that ban to be extended indefinitely
for high-rises are the battleships of architecture, high prestige, high
profit but really terrible places for most people in them to work. And
dangerous, very dangerous, don't believe the century-old spin about
the piles. Even CEOs within them try to stay out of their eaglic aeries
as much as possible. The spectacular views wear thin after a few days,
not unlike that from an aircraft. The getting to and getting out is what
ruins the magic.
Not to be overlooked is the dinosaurian Pentagon, a really awful piece
of architecture for those encapsulated within it, now more than
ever. It has not been made safer, just more uninhabitable, more
encrusted with chain-ganged memorialization -- the practice being
promoted for homeland security.
Though pre-empted by all-too-hasty reconstruction "coverup" at the
Pentagon, a ban on building at Ground Zero is still a possibility, and
certainly no high-rise should ever go up there for a least a century --
let the hot-air promises blow instead. Liebkind's vapid apologia for
soaring spires in the NY Times recently roil the puketube.
Silverstein's empty rebuilt WTC 7 will stand as a symbol of guilty
reaction, a futile effort to imagine 9/11 never happened. It would
make a swell museum to reflect on what went wrong with high-rise
architecture in the last century when genuine safety was replaced
with ever-ballooning insurance premiums.
9/11 has helped the airlines, insurance and defense industries like
nothing since WW2. Weenie architecture too. Housing is booming,
here, as I've mentioned, all execreable. There's a con going on about
something called "inclusionary housing," which means to include
in project housing for the poor in return for more bloated buildings.
Nobody believes this is anything more than a placebo.
Goldberger's call for a moratorium on high-rises at Ground Zero
and for more housing downtown is comical for its tardiness, actually
trendiness, for several dimbulbs in the critical profession are yarping
this line.
Housing sucks as an architectural concept. Dreadful places to live
have been constructed under that soulles socio-politico-financial
planning rubric. Only numbers count, as developers yarp, the bottomless
bottom line, so to speak.
Awful architecture is paradigmatized in high-rises and housing, both
inventions of the last century. Coupled in death-dealing stacking of
people via the boiling frog method. Pathologies are rife in both
building types, and demolition of high-rises are on humanitarian
grounds are in the offing. WTC collapse is a fascinating precursor
of what that liberation might cost.
Philip Johnson's "density is no sin" is a haunting reminder of what
disengaged minds are capable of imposing on the public, and moreso
on the unthinking designer totally obsessed with getting the job no
matter the consequences. Rockefeller, Trump, Silverstein, the
whole anti-humane architecture cartel are confident there will be
no end of complicitous Leibskinds, SOMs, world-class disengagees.