In which we ask questions regarding engineering and design

Staircases would actually be easier to engineer/design/build if they didn't have them.

It makes an exception for bleacher-type seating in assembly uses.

A landing is defined as a level at least as as long as the staircase is wide (or 48” max in a straight-run staircase).

I never thought I’d do leisure code research so I could put off doing real code research.

dude, bridges, wtf?

I want to talk about skyscrapers, and why the John Hancock building is Chicago is a minor miracle.

I mean, it's just perfect. Maximizes interior space with an exoskeleton, and the pyramid shape but reduces wind loads and beautifully saves larger bottom floors for retail and smaller top floors for residences. This is one of the best things to come out of the 60's.

Kind of OTM, actually. Though I really like what's going on in Asia. It's from a completely different POV, which may be what I like about it.

Foster's Swiss Re in London and Nouvel's Torre Agbar in Barcelona (and, doubtless, all the rounded conical towers to follow) seem a bit showy and inefficient to me, but that's kind of always been the history of the skyscraper.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of the cutting edge design work in the field of sustainable and ecologically friendly design is being done with skyscrapers, especially in Germany.

ha

Yes indeed. That's at the extreme end. And then (I know I must seem unhealthily obsessed with Chicago) there's the Sears Tower, which accounted for wind loads in its design to the extent that the building could handle them, but paid no attention to whether the people in it could handle them or not. A friend of mine works in it on the 70th floor, and it makes her seasick. People reported this effect from the first day. That's bad design and bad engineering, all at the same time.

It's tall, though. Man, is it ever.

Funny, my Dad visited Chicago recently, and after going through a brief architectural tour of the city and going with me to the top of Hancock Center, standing at the base of it he said, "It's tall. That's the most you can say about it." I said to him, "No, I think you're talking about Sears." And then I launched into a monologue about Hancock which I could tell bored the piss out of him. He doesn't really want architecture, he wants sculpture. He'd be far better off touring New York.

a lot of the cutting edge design work in the field of sustainable and ecologically friendly design is being done with skyscrapers

This doesn't surprise me at all. Skyscrapers have long been the world's greenest buildings. The land usage issue alone is enough to recommend them, but they also make resource distribution and waste management so simple that they make houses seems like a wasteful conceit.

But the ass-end of the Gehry Bandshell is designed, if not to be beautiful, to at least to look like a great ass. Standing behind the Gehry bandshell is not like standing behind any other infrastructure in Chicago. As infrastructure goes, it's clean and well-oiled.