Mario Salvadori (1907–1997)

In the Introduction, the author writes: “Like most human bodies, most buildings have full lives, and then they die.” He states that “the accidental death of a building is always due to the failure of its skeleton, the structure. But these are the exceptions, he avers; standing buildings are the norm. So why do they sometimes fall down? The key, he writes, is in understanding structural behavior.

He then discusses specific buildings that either have, or have not, collapsed, and delves into the reasons that explain what happened. In particular, he reviews very interesting cases in which buildings failed because of a lack of understanding of the effects of wind, sand, soil settlement, heat, or snow, to name some common problems. In one example, he offers the fascinating anecdote of how a dome collapsed because of uneven snow loads caused by wind direction and tendency for drifting. He goes into great detail about particular failures that would be well-known to readers, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the catastrophic collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkways in 1981.

This book is much less technical and more interesting that his previous book, “Why Buildings Stand Up.”… (más)

In brief, as the author explains, this book offers the history of some of the great monuments of architecture and an explanation of why they stand up. He describes in detail the challenge of weight distribution, the role different materials play, and equilibrium provided by beams and columns, He then looks at specific types of buildings and how their construction has evolved, from houses to skyscrapers. The next chapters deal with specific structures, including the Eiffel Tower, some famous cathedrals and the domes that characterize them, and some famous bridges. He also deals with “form-resistant” structures. He ends with a discussion of natural disasters and how buildings can (or don’t) withstand them.

The book goes into quite a bit of technical detail, and although it makes for difficult reading, it definitely provides answers to questions you have about, for example, how pyramids and cathedrals could have been constructed without modern equipment, and how bridges could have been erected in water.… (más)