Lessons of 9/11 Alter Skyscraper Design

[DoYouEverWonder]

September 6, 2006

NEW YORK -- For a few months in 2001, architects worried that the era of the super-skyscraper was over.

Even as ash from the World Trade Center still swirled, it was clear that the high floors of the twin towers had been a deadly trap. Experts wondered if anyone would ever build tall again.

The answer was quickly revealed to be an emphatic, "yes." Skyscraper construction has surged globally since the terrorist attacks, prompting architects and engineers to ponder a new question: What should be done to make new towers safer?

That question has been harder to answer.

Architects, engineers and builders have split over the value of several possible safety enhancements, including better fireproofing, wider stairwells, and "hardened" elevator shafts that could be used in evacuations.

"You don't want to go about designing every building as if it were a terrorist target, when the reality is, most aren't," said Ronald O. Hamburger, past president of the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-sept-11-skyscrapers,0,7701551.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines


Interesting that one of the new safety features is a bomb resistant base. Now why would they need that? :sarcasm:

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Hardened elevator shafts

hmmm

Wonder if they will be bomb resistant as well.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. Indeed.

They should have consulted the MIHOP folks first, given their extensive scientific and civil engineering background.

[sofa king]

2. Don't install demolition charges?

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Or run pressurized fuel lines

next to the base of your trusses like they did in WTC 7.

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. One of them cannons offa a wart-hog on the roof outta take care of that .

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[onehandle]

5. Super tall skyscrapers have been planned to be built for decades.

There has been no "surge." They just never stopped building them.

Whatever.