Why buildings fall down
by Matthys Levy, Mario George Salvadori · first published 1992
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
An accessible case-study tour of famous structural collapses and their causes, written so non-specialists can follow. Suited to curious general readers and engineers interested in failure analysis.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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 interesting structural failures in history and especially in the twentieth cent
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For anyone interested in this sort of thing "Why Buildings Fall Down" [1] is a good related book. I did civil engineering at university and you'd be surprised how many beautiful and interesting buildings only ended up that way because of constraints forced on the engineers…
on “The Bug in the Physical Building” ↗The book Why Buildings Fall Down is full of significant historical collapses and pretty much every one boils down to a lack of redundancy, a single point of failure. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Why-Buildings-Fall-Down/ Lessons…
on “Genoa Bridge Collapse: The Road to Tragedy” ↗I wish the author had referenced "Why Buildings Fall Down," the book that first made me aware of the Citicorp Building problem: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Buildings-Fall-Down-Structures/dp/...
on “The Design Flaw That Almost Wiped Out an NYC Skyscraper” ↗…for those that are not structural engineers or however working in the field or familiar with it - these two (by now "classics") by Mario Salvadori: Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail
on “Structural engineers are unsung heroes” ↗…is interested in how/why buildings/structures stand up or collapse, there are a couple great books by Mario Salvadori: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Salvadori Why Buildings Stand Up (1980) and Why Buildings Fall Down (1992) that are elementary enough to be read by anyone, without being at all superficial.
on “The Dark Side of Expertise” ↗Other books I’ve much enjoyed, when your interest is in structural or other failures: Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori, a wide ranging history of structural failures of various kinds, and their causes. Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants…
on “Artemis II is not safe to fly” ↗…It’s essential a series of post-mortems of specific events. I have zero formal architectural or civil engineering experience — just an inquisitive disposition. For anyone interested, the book is called ”Why Buildings Fall Down.”
on “Cloudflare outage caused by bad software deploy” ↗Thank for the recommendation! If you're into that sort of thing, you might also enjoy Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down. Why Buildings Fall Down includes a case study on a seemingly minor change during construction that caused a walkway to collapse once it was put in use. At the risk of stating the obvious, these are…
on “Structural engineers are unsung heroes” ↗