都市拾见11-经典是这样练成的
作者:urbanus 日期:2009-03-25
在当代建筑史上,能够与毕尔巴鄂古根海姆美术馆这样达到雅俗共赏和城市地标的建筑当属著名的悉尼歌剧院。如今没有人会质疑悉尼歌剧院的建筑魅力以及它对于悉尼乃至澳大利亚国家形象的提升作用。2007年,悉尼歌剧院被联合国教科文组织列入世界文化遗产,成为20世纪世界上最经典的建筑之一。
悉尼歌剧院历时13年建成,建设过程充满了曲折。工程费用超过预算几倍,几乎沦为烂尾,几度成为政治力量角力的焦点,起初其造型也不是人人叫好。它成了悉尼人的一块心病。问题的关键是出在那8个壳体结构上。原来设计时想得简单,两块薄壳合在一起就能立起来。然而事实却没有那么简单。1950年代没有电脑辅助设计的条件,结构计算和三维软件都没有出现的时候,这样的设计是相当复杂的。设计师们最后发现按照设计的曲率是无法用壳体方式实现的。最后的选择是用单根的肋支撑然后用再用钢骨连起来形成壳面。就像扇子一样的方式。吞噬了无数的追加投资之后,悉尼歌剧院这支“澳洲之花”在1973年终于绽放。30多年来它给澳洲带来的无形价值,旅游名胜带来的回报证明了这笔钱砸得值。
其实更有戏剧性的故事还发生在更早。1956年悉尼作为州府决定建设一座歌剧院,开始向全世界征集设计方案。评委之一是当时如日中天的建筑名师小沙里宁。当他来到评审会的时候,面对的是一批从三百多件提案中初选出来的方案。评委们评来评去,找不到一个满意的方案。无奈中小沙里宁回到被淘汰的方案里去翻看。忽然他被一个方案所吸引,推荐到评审会,结果这个伍重的提案被选为中标方案。
伍重的方案表达得非常草率,只有几张草图。连张像样的透视图都没有。这个纯属废标的东西却被小沙里宁“违规操作”回来最终成为经典,被传为佳话。
最近我参加了几次设计评审,看到我们的组织方以公正的名义设置好多莫名其妙的门槛和规定,曾经以一个标书上的与方案毫无关系的小节问题要求作为废标处理。这种情形使我十分担忧。设计投标与工程投标不同,唯一的目的是要评选好的设计,应该让建筑师把精力集中在设计的研究上。同时重要的竞赛要选择好的评审委员。深圳冠着设计之都的名号,攥着大把的银子,可如果没有一个好的选择机制,我们离创造建筑遗产恐怕还要等很多年。
都市拾见10-城市动员
作者:urbanus 日期:2009-03-22
上个周六是我记忆里深圳天气最好的一天。华侨城创意文化园每月一次的艺术集市照例开张。花花绿绿琳琅满目的街市,80后的青春气息与沁凉的空气扑面而来,令人心境大好。在街角的室外咖啡座里坐着第一次来深圳的美国建筑师柯瑞,安静地复习着他的汉语课。他说他住的旁边新开张的“Hip hotel”(时尚酒店)城市客栈很舒服,这个创意园也很有味道…。我说,这里是设计之都的火山一角啊。
在深圳生活了十年,真正真实的感受到城市发展所带来的变化。小时候宣传大好形势都喜欢用“一日千里”、“日新月异”这些个词,只有在这几年才体验出来。其实深圳是个幸运的城市,一不留神便在当代世界城市发展史上留下了重要的一笔。30年在人类历史上就是一瞬间,而一个千万人口的超大城市就平地而起,不能不说是一个奇迹。
近年接触到不少国际知名的学者到深圳来交流和访问。众多的城市问题研究的学者纷纷将目光投向深圳和它周圈的珠三角地区。当代世界建筑设计界的教父级大腕人物雷姆·库哈斯很早发现了深圳现象(Ram Koolhaas,荷兰OMA掌门人,北京CCTV大楼和深圳未来的深交所总部大楼为其作品)。他在1995年出了一本非常有影响力的书叫做《S,M,X,XL》,其后又出版名为《大跃进》的书,大篇幅的讨论深圳城市现象,甚至将红岭路口的邓小平画像作为书底的扉页。
库氏理论将深圳这类极端人工化的快速生成的典型的亚洲城市称为“一般性城市”(Generic City)。这类城市没有特殊的历史,没有确切的文化含义,只有高速变化的城市风景是最切实的参照。紧张忙碌的人们顾不上多想就被从一个场景抛入另一个场景之中。然而,当深入城市的各个角落,满眼看到的却是不完美的现实。几乎人人都在这个盘根错节的都市丛林里面挣扎着。太多问题是这个“一夜城市”(Instant City)的副产品。所以说深圳的城市缺乏文化的厚度和层次是自然的,而今城市已到了需要建设这些微观层面的时候。
晚上,与09深圳城市建筑双年展的策展人欧宁讨论展览的主题和框架。十几个设计界同仁聊得热火朝天。双年展对于深圳这样的寻求在国际中的定位的大城市是有如名片性质的意义的,至今它已经成功举办了两届。如果说第一届强调学术,是阳春白雪的确定档次,第二届是国际互动,新潮炫目地造势,那么今年12月开幕的这第三“板斧”就显得十分重要了。本届的主题“城市动员”很是契合深圳的现状,在设计之都的名号下也搞出一个轰轰烈烈来,是动员政府、企业和市民共同加入到展览的过程里来。对于我,最有意义的应当是动员全深圳的市民都来关心城市和设计,建筑用金钱无法砌筑的内心花园。
都市拾见09 一个神话,与建筑有关
作者:urbanus 日期:2009-03-12

5月的马德里阳光明媚,带着亲睹委拉斯凯兹画作后的满足,我的注意力集中到下一个目的地,西班牙北部的毕尔巴鄂(Bilbao)。不为别的,就是去看弗兰克·盖里(Frank O.Gehry)设计的古根海姆博物馆。即使由于疏忽安排了通常是博物馆闭馆日的周一前往,我依旧是一夜火车,晃到了小城。
从火车站出来,冒着小雨一路向河边走去,像是看一部被告知过情节的电影,我只是处在一个不断印证的过程里。毕尔巴鄂,曾经的重要工业城市,几经兴衰到上世纪70年代已是尽显颓势。眼前是一座温馨古城,窄窄的街道两侧全是小店铺,人来人往,典型的旅游城市。这一切都得益于90年代初市政府进行的城市复兴计划。其中最重要的一笔就是与古根海姆基金会共同兴建博物馆。他们选择了美国加州的建筑大师弗兰克·盖里担纲设计。新博物馆于1997年落成。老盖里不负众望,推出了一个让全世界惊喜的设计。借助古根海姆基金会的雄厚基础和运作能力,该博物馆在几年之内便成为欧洲的博物馆新贵。来自世界各地的参观者每年超过了百万,由此带动毕尔巴鄂经济又兴旺了起来。成就了一座建筑救活一个城市的现代神话…
离博物馆只有几个街区远了,从暗红色的街道的尽头透来一片幽幽的银白色的光,宛如穿过一群沧桑满面的老妪的惊鸿一瞥。曾在书中无数次看过这个画面,我知道那就是博物馆。走出老城,开阔蜿蜒的河岸上,平缓的山岭下,赫然伫立着一座钛锌板包裹成的巨大雕塑般的建筑。一堆体量以弯卷的姿态舒展开来,给人无穷的想象空间,有人说它像一艘船,象征着城市过去造船业的历史;有人说它像一团燃烧的火焰。我看到的则是在压顶的阴霾下天水一色却又熠熠生辉的奇妙景象。庞大的身躯,太空时代的材料和独立的姿态无一不是标识着自我中心的地位:骄傲而不自负,优雅而不冷漠,热情而不失态。这样一个散发着艺术精神的建筑一定是受人喜爱的和成功的。
在建筑前倘佯良久,忽然旁边走来一年轻女子,惶惑地问我入口在哪里。我说今天闭馆啊。女子惊愕之余悲哀地说,我从罗马专门过来看古根海姆,是给自己的一个生日礼物啊。我正以深圳人特有的警觉在飞快地判断她是否有其它意图的时候,她已转身离去。我笑了,无论如何,一个普通人会从一个艺术的圣地前来拜谒,足以说明了神话还在继续。离开时我没有遗憾,因为我知道是上天给了我又一个理由再来窥视毕尔巴鄂的古根海姆的另一种惊艳。

THE FIFTY-NINE-STORY CRISIS
作者:urbanus 日期:2009-03-05
这是花旗银行总部大楼结构危机事件的报道
CITY PERILS
THE FIFTY-NINE-STORY CRISIS
THE NEW YORKER, MAY 29, 1995, pp 45-53
What's an engineer's worst nightmare? To realize that the supports he designed for a skyscraper like
BY JOE MORGENSTERN
ON a warm June day in 1978, William J. LeMessurier, one of the nation's leading structural engineers, received a phone call at his headquarters, in
LeMessurier found the subject hard to resist, even though the call caught him in the middle of a meeting. As a structural consultant to the architect Hugh Stubbins, Jr., he had designed the twenty-five-thousand-ton steel skeleton beneath the tower's sleek aluminum skin. And, in a field where architects usually get all the credit, the engineer, then fifty-two, had won his own share of praise for the tower's technical elegance and singular grace; indeed, earlier that year he had been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the highest honor his profession bestows. Excusing himself from the meeting, LeMessurier asked his caller how he could help.
The student wondered about the columns--there are four--that held the building up. According to his professor, LeMessurier had put them in the wrong place.
"I was very nice to this young man," LeMessurier recalls. "But I said, 'Listen, I want you to tell your teacher that he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, because he doesn't know the problem that had to be solved.' I promised to call back after my meeting and explain the whole thing."
The problem had been posed by a church. When planning for Citicorp Center began, in the early nineteen-seventies, the site of choice was on the east side of Lexington Avenue between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Streets, directly across the street from Citicorp's headquarters. But the northwest corner of that block was occupied by St. Peter's Church, a decaying Gothic structure built in 1905. Since St. Peter's owned the corner, and one of the world's biggest banking corporations wanted the whole block, the church was able to strike a deal that seemed heaven-sent: its old building would be demolished and a new one built as a free-standing part of Citicorp Center.
To clear space for the new church, Hugh Stubbins and Bill LeMessurier (he pronounces his name "LeMeasure") set their fifty-nine-story tower on four massive, nine-story-high stilts, and positioned them at the center of each side, rather than at each corner. This daring scheme allowed the designers to cantilever the building's corners seventy-two feet out over the church, on the northwest, and over a plaza on the southwest. The columns also produced high visual drama: a nine-hundred-and-fourteen-foot monolith that seemed all but weightless as it hovered above the street.
When LeMessurier called the student back, he related this with the pride of a master builder and the elaborate patience of a pedagogue; he, too, taught a structural-engineering class, to architecture students at Harvard. Then he explained how the peculiar geometry of the building, far from constituting a mistake, put the columns in the strongest position to resist what sailors call quartering winds--those which come from a diagonal and, by flowing across two sides of a building at once, increase the forces on both. For further enlightenment on the matter, he referred the student to a technical article written by LeMessurier's partner in
Later that day, LeMessurier decided that the information would interest his own students; like sailors, designers of tall buildings must know the wind and respect its power. And the columns were only part of the tower's defense against swaying in severe winds. A classroom lecture would also look at the tower's unusual system of wind braces, which LeMessurier had first sketched out, in a burst of almost ecstatic invention, on a napkin in a Greek restaurant in
LeMessurier had long since established the strength of those braces in perpendicular winds--the only calculation required by
THE meeting had been called, during the month of May, to review plans for two new skyscrapers in
To reassure him, LeMessurier put in a call to his office in
This news gave LeMessurier no cause for concern in the days immediately following the meeting. The choice of bolted joints was technically sound and professionally correct. Even the failure of his associates to flag him on the design change was justifiable; had every decision on the site in
Yet now, a month after the May meeting, the substitution of bolted joints raised a troubling question. If the bracing system was unusually sensitive to quartering winds, as LeMessurier had just discovered, so were the joints that held it together. The question was whether the
On July 24th, he flew to
To understand why, one must look at the interplay of opposing forces in a windblown building. The wind causes tension in the structural members--that is, it tries to blow the building down. At the same time, some of' that tension, measured in thousands, or even millions, of pounds, is offset by the force of gravity, which, by pressing the members together, tends to hold the building in place. The joints must be strong enough to resist the differential between these forces--the amount of wind tension minus the amount of compression.
Within this seemingly simple computation, however, lurks a powerful multiplier. At any given level of the building, the compression figure remains constant; the wind may blow harder, but the structure doesn't get any heavier. Thus, immense leverage can result from higher wind forces. In the Citicorp tower, the forty-per-cent increase in tension produced by a quartering wind became a hundred-and-sixty-per-cent increase on the building's bolts.
Precisely because of that leverage, a margin of safety is built into the standard formulas for calculating how strong a joint must be; these formulas are contained in an American Institute of Steel Construction specification that deals with joints in structural columns. What LeMessurier found in
He later detailed these mistakes in a thirty-page document called "Project SERENE''; the acronym, both rueful and apt, stands for "Special Engineering Review of Events Nobody Envisioned." What emerges from this document, which has been confidential until now, and from interviews with LeMessurier and other principals in the events, is not malfeasance, or even negligence, but a series of miscalculations that flowed from a specific mind-set. In the case of the Citicorp tower, the first event that nobody envisioned had taken place when LeMessurier sketched, on a restaurant napkin, a bracing system with an inherent sensitivity to quartering winds. None of his associates identified this as a problem, let alone understood that they were compounding it with their fuzzy semantics. In the stiff, angular language of "Project SERENE," "consideration of wind from non-perpendicular directions on ordinary rectangular buildings is generally not discussed in the literature or in the classroom."
LeMessurier tried to take comfort from another element of Citicorp's advanced design: the building's tuned mass damper. This machine, built at his behest and perched where the bells would have been if the Citicorp tower had been a cathedral, was essentially a four-hundred-and-ten-ton block of concrete, attached to huge springs and floating on a film of oil. When the building swayed, the block's inertia worked to damp the movement and calm tenants' queasy stomachs. Reducing sway was of special importance, because the Citicorp tower was an unusually lightweight building;, the twenty-five thousand tons of steel in its skeleton contrasted with the
BEFORE making a final judgment on how dangerous the bolted joints were, LeMessurier turned to a Canadian engineer named Alan Davenport, the director of the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory, at the
On July 26th, he flew to
First, he went to
The weakest joint, he discovered, was at the building's thirtieth floor; if that one gave way, catastrophic failure of the whole structure would follow. Next, he took
"That was very low, awesomely low," LeMessurier said, his voice hushed as if the horror of discovery were still fresh. "To put it another way, there was one chance in sixteen in any year, including that one." When the steadying influence of the tuned mass damper was factored in, the probability dwindled to one in fifty-five--a fifty-five-year storm. But the machine required electric current, which might fail as soon as a major storm hit.
As an experienced engineer, LeMessurier liked to think he could solve most structural problems, and the Citicorp tower was no exception. The bolted joints were readily accessible, thanks to Hugh Stubbins' insistence on putting the chevrons inside the building's skin rather than displaying them outside. With money and materials, the joints could be reinforced by welding heavy steel plates over them, like giant Band-Aids. But time was short; this was the end of July, and the height of the hurricane season was approaching. To avert disaster, LeMessurier would have to blow the whistle quickly on himself. That meant facing the pain of possible protracted litigation, probable bankruptcy, and professional disgrace. It also meant shock and dismay for Citicorp's officers and shareholders when they learned that the bank's proud new corporate symbol, built at a cost of a hundred and seventy-five million dollars, was threatened with collapse.
On the island, LeMessurier considered his options. Silence was one of them; only
At his office in Cambridge on the morning of Monday, July 31st, LeMessurier tried to reach Hugh Stubbins whose firm was upstairs in the same building, but Stubbins was in California and unavailable by phone. Then he called Stubbins' lawyer, Carl Sapers, and outlined the emergency over lunch. Sapers advised him against telling Citicorp until he had consulted with his own company's liability insurers, the Northbrook Insurance Company, in
At
When they pressed him for specific wind velocities--would the wind have to be at eighty miles per hour, or ninety, or ninety-five?--he insisted that such figures were not significant in themselves, since every structure was uniquely sensitive to certain winds; an eighty-five-mile-per-hour wind that blew for sixteen minutes from the northwest might pose less of a threat to a particular building than an eighty-mile-per-hour wind that blew for fourteen minutes from the southwest.
But the lawyers certainly understood that they had a crisis on their hands, so they sent for an expert adviser they trusted: Leslie Robertson, an engineer who had been a structural consultant for the
The two structural engineers were peers, but not friends. LeMessurier was a visionary with a fondness for heroic designs, though he was also an energetic manager. Robertson was a stickler for technical detail, a man fascinated by how things fit together. LeMessurier, older by two years, was voluble and intense, with a courtly rhetorical style. Robertson was tall, trim, brisk, and edgily funny, but made no effort to hide his impatience with things that didn't interest him.
In addition to his engineering expertise, Robertson brought to the table a background in disaster management. He had worked with such groups as the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council on teams that studied the aftermaths of earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods. (In 1993, he worked with the F.B.I. on the World Trade Center bombing.) For the liability lawyers, this special perspective enhanced his stature as a consultant, but it unsettled LeMessurier from the start. As he remembers it, "Robertson predicted to everybody present that within hours of the time Citicorp heard about this the whole building would be evacuated. I almost fainted. I didn't want that to happen." (For his part, Robertson recalls making no such dire prediction.)
LeMessurier didn't think an evacuation would be necessary. He believed that the building was safe for occupancy in all but the most violent weather, thanks to the tuned mass damper, and he insisted that the damper's reliability in a storm could be assured by installing emergency generators. Robertson conceded the importance of keeping the damper running--it had performed flawlessly since it became operational earlier that year---but, because, in his view, its value as a safety device was unproved, he flatly refused to consider it as a mitigating factor. (In a conversation shortly after the
One point on which everyone agreed was that LeMessurier, together with Stubbins, needed to inform Citicorp as soon as possible. Only Stubbins had ever dealt directly with Citicorp's chairman, Walter B. Wriston, and he was flying home that same day from
The next morning, August 2nd, Stubbins and LeMessurier flew to
Reed was well equipped to understand the problem. He had an engineering background, and he had been involved in the design and construction of
When Reed asked how much the repairs would cost, LeMessurier offered an estimate of a million dollars. At the end of the meeting, which lasted half an hour, Reed thanked the two men courteously, though noncommittally, and told them to go back to their office and await further instructions. They did so, but after waiting for more than an hour they decided to go out to lunch. As they were finishing their meal, a secretary from LeMessurier's office called to say that John Reed would be in the office in ten minutes with Walter Wriston.
In the late nineteen-seventies, when Citicorp began its expansion into global banking, Wriston was one of the most influential bankers in the country. A tall man of piercing intelligence, he was not known for effusiveness in the best of circumstances, and LeMessurier expected none now, what with
"Wriston was fantastic," LeMessurier says. "He said, 'I guess my job is to handle the public relations of this, so I'll have to start drafting a press release.'" But he didn't have anything to write on, so someone handed him a yellow pad. That made him laugh. According to LeMessurier, "'All wars,' Wriston said, 'are won by generals writing on yellow pads.'" In fact, Wriston simply took notes; the press release would not go out for six days. But his laughter put the others at ease. Citicorp's general was on their side.
WITHIN hours of Wriston's visit, LeMessurier's office arranged for emergency generators for the tower's tuned mass damper. The bank issued beepers to LeMessurier and his key engineers, assuring them that Reed and other top managers could be reached by phone at any hour of the day or night. Citicorp also assigned two vice-presidents, Henry DeFord III and Robert Dexter, to manage the repairs; both had overseen the building's construction and knew it well.
The next morning, Thursday, August 3rd, LeMessurier, Robertson, and four of LeMessurier's associates met with DeFord and Dexter in a conference room on the thirtieth floor of
"I called them," Robertson says, "and got, 'Well, we're a little busy right now,' and I said, 'Hey, you don't understand what we're talking about here.'" A few hours later, two Koch engineers joined the meeting. LeMessurier and Robertson took them to an unoccupied floor of the building, and there workmen tore apart enough sheetrock to expose a diagonal connection. Comparing the original drawings of the joints with the nuts-and-bolts reality before their eyes, the engineers concluded that LeMessurier's plan was indeed feasible. Koch also happened to have all the necessary steel plate on band, so Citicorp negotiated a contract for welding to begin as soon as LeMessurier's office could issue new drawings.
Two more contracts were drawn up before the end of the following day. One of them went out to MTS Systems Corporation, the
The other contract engaged a
A different problem-solving approach was taken by Robertson during another nighttime meeting in Citicorp's executive suite. Wriston wanted copies of some documents that Robertson had shown him, but all the secretaries had gone home--the only people' on the floor were Wriston, Robertson, and John Reed--and every copying machine was locked. "I'm an engineer," Robertson says, "so I kneeled down, tipped the door off one of the machines, and we made our copies. I looked up at them a little apologetically, but, what the hell--fixing the door was a few hundred bucks, and these guys had a hundred-and-seventy-five-million-dollar building in trouble across the street."
Robertson also assembled an advisory group of weather experts from academia and the government's Brookhaven National Laboratory, on
DURING the first week of August, discussions had involved only a small circle of company officials and engineers. But the circle widened on Monday, August 7th, when final drawings for the steel plates went out to Arthur Nusbaum, the veteran project manager of HRH Construction, which was the original contractor for
That night, DeFord and Dexter, following Robertson's advice, met with Mike Reilly, the American Red Cross's director of disaster services for the
On Tuesday morning, August 8th, the public-affairs department of Citibank, Citicorp's chief subsidiary, put out the long delayed press release. In language as bland as a loan officer's wardrobe, the three-paragraph document said unnamed "engineers who designed the building" had recommended that "certain of the connections in Citicorp Center's wind bracing system be strengthened through additional welding.'' The engineers, the press release added, "have assured us that there is no danger." When DeFord expanded on the handout in interviews, he portrayed the bank as a corporate citizen of exemplary caution--"We wear both belts and suspenders here," he told a reporter for the News--that had decided on the welds as soon as it learned of new data based on dynamic-wind tests conducted at the
There was some truth in all this. During LeMessurier's recent trip to , one of Alan Davenport's assistants had mentioned to him that probable wind velocities might be slightly higher, on a statistical basis, than predicted in 1973, during the original tests for
On Tuesday- afternoon at a meeting in Robertson's office, LeMessurier told the whole truth to
In the discussion that followed, the city officials asked a few technical questions, and Arthur Nusbaum expressed concern over a shortage of certified welders who had passed the city's structural-welding test. That would not be a problem, the representatives from the Department of Buildings replied; one of the area's most trusted steel inspectors, Neil Moreton, would have the power to test and immediately certify any welder that Citicorp's repair project required. Nusbaum recalls, "Once they said that, I knew we were O.K., because there were steamfitter welders all over the place who could do a fantastic job."
Before the city officials left, they commended LeMessurier for his courage and candor, and expressed a desire to be kept informed as the repair work progressed. Given the urgency of the situation, that was all they could reasonably do. "It wasn't a case of 'We caught you, you skunk,'" Nusbaum says. "It started with a guy who stood up and said, 'I got a problem, I made the problem, let's fix the problem.' If you're gonna kill a guy like LeMessurier, why should anybody ever talk?"
Meanwhile, Robertson's switchboard was besieged by calls. "Every reporter in town wanted to know how come all these people were in our office," Robertson says. Once the meeting ended, the Building Commissioner returned the reporters' calls and, hewing to Citicorp's line, reassured them that the structural work was only a prudent response to new meteorological data.
As a result, press coverage in
WELDERS started work almost immediately, their torches a dazzlement in the night sky. The weather was sticky, as it had been since the beginning of the month--New Jersey's tomato crop was rotting from too much rained forecasts called for temperatures in the mid-eighties the next day, with no wind; in other words, a perfect day for Citicorp Center.
Yet tropical storms were already churning the
The welders worked seven days a week. Sometimes they worked on unoccupied floors; sometimes they invaded lavish offices. But decor, or the lack of it, had no bearing on their priorities, which were set by LeMessurier. "It was a tense time for the whole month," he says. "I was constantly calculating which joint to fix next, which level of the building was more critical, and I developed charts and graphs of all the consequences: if you fix this, then the rarity of the storm that will cause any trouble lengthens to that."
At Robertson's office, a steady stream of data poured in from the weather forecasters and from the building itself. Occasionally, the strain-gage readings jumped, like spikes on an electrocardiogram, when the technicians from MTS Systems exercised their tuned mass damper to make sure it was working properly. One time, the readings went off the chart, then stopped. This provoked more bafflement than fear, since it seemed unlikely that a hurricane raging on
For most of August, the weather smiled on Citicorp, or at least held its breath, and the welders made steady progress. LeMessurier felt confident enough to fly off with his wife for a weekend in
A great deal of work remained. Robertson was insisting on a complete reevaluation of the Citicorp tower: not just the sensitivity of the chevrons to quartering winds but the strength of other skeletal members, the adequacy of braces that kept the supporting columns in plumb, and the rigidity of the building's corrugated metal-and-concrete floors, which Robertson feared might be compromised by trenches carrying electrical connections.
His insistence was proper--settling for less would have compromised Robertson's own position. It amounted to a post-construction autopsy by teams of forensic engineers. For LeMessurier, the reevaluation was harrowing in the extreme; every new doubt about his design for
In one instance, Robertson's fears were unwarranted: tests showed that the tower floors were entirely sound--the trenches were not a source of weakness. In another, Robertson, assuming the worst about construction tolerances, decided that the columns might be slightly, even though undetectably, out of plumb, and therefore he ordered the installation of supplemental bracing above the fourteenth floor.
Shortly before dawn on Friday, September 1st, weather services carried the news that everyone had been dreading-- major storm, Hurricane Ella, was off
As the storm bore down on the city, the bank's representatives, DeFord and Dexter, asked LeMessurier for a report on the status of repairs. He told them that the most critical joints had already been fixed and that the building, with its tuned mass damper operating, could now withstand a two-hundred-year storm. It didn't have to, however. A few hours later, Hurricane Ella veered from its northwesterly course and began moving out to sea.
LeMessurier spent the following night in
THE weather watch ended on September 13th. That same day, Robertson recommended terminating the evacuation plans, too. Welding was completed in October, several weeks before most of the city's newspapers resumed publication. No further stories on the subject appeared in the wake of the strike. The building, in fact, was now strong enough to withstand a seven-hundred-year storm even without the damper, which made it one of the safest structures ever built--and rebuilt--by the hand of man.
Throughout the summer, Citicorp's top management team had concentrated on facilitating repairs, while keeping the lawyers on the sidelines. That changed on September 13th, when Citicorp served notice on LeMessurier and Hugh Stubbins, whose firm held the primary contract, of its intention to seek indemnification for all costs. Their estimate of the costs, according to LeMessurier, amounted to $4.3 million, including management fees. A much higher total was suggested by Arthur Nusbaum, who recalled that his firm, HRH Construction, spent eight million dollars on structural repairs alone. Citicorp has declined to provide its own figure.
Whatever the actual cost, Citicorp's effort to recoup it was remarkably free of the punitive impulse that often poisons such negotiations. When the terms of a settlement were first discussed--without lawyers--by LeMessurier, on one side, and DeFord and Dexter, on the other, LeMessurier spoke of two million dollars, which was the amount that his liability insurer, the Northbrook Insurance Company, had agreed to pay. "DeFord and Dexter said, 'Well, we've been deeply wounded here,' and they tried to play hardball," LeMessurier says. "But they didn't do it with much conviction.'' After a second meeting, which included a
The crisis at
In the last few years, LeMessurier has been talking about the summer of 1978 to his classes at Harvard. The tale, as he tells it, is by turns painful, self-deprecating, and self-dramatizing--an engineer who did the right thing. But it also speaks to the larger question of how professional people should behave. "You have a social obligation," LeMessurier reminds his students. "In return for getting a license and being regarded with respect, you're supposed to be self-sacrificing and look beyond the interests of yourself and your client to society as a whole. And the most wonderful part of my story is that when I did it nothing bad happened." *
都市拾见08-拿厕所说事
作者:urbanus 日期:2009-03-02
莲花山顶小平像后面有一个高级公共厕所,是一个非常现代的设计,深圳著名建筑师费晓华的力作。一座桥将厕所带入树林,被几根斜柱支撑在山坡上,即隐蔽又亲近自然。最有意思的是在小便池上方有一个窄窄的水平带窗,让人在方便时也能够欣赏到外面的美景。建议读者去实地参观体验一下这个颇有诗意的如厕经历。深圳有这样水准的公共厕所,全国文明城市的称号真不是白拿的。
当年上大学学建筑设计的时候,厕所都写成“WC”。令人不解的是,在外国杂志却看不到这种表达。后来才搞明白原来是“water closet”的简称,是被现代英语淘汰的老词了。现在厕所的普遍雅称是toilet,公共场所叫restroom比较多,家里就叫bathroom,飞机上的则标为lavatory,等等。不过WC这个强调冲水观念的词的确让人体会到了西方人折腾了300年才搞定的这套系统有多不容易。难怪某英国杂志将抽水马桶评为世界上最伟大的发明之一。
前不久地产名人潘石屹宣布要在自己家乡甘肃陇南的天水捐建10个18万造价的冲水厕所给10所学校,让孩子们从小就在豪华厕所里受到文明的熏陶。其实按本人在陇南灾区的经验,修一个能抗震的厕所,18万是豪华不了的,更不用提这缺水的地方根本使不起水了。不过老潘的这个不太靠谱的善举确实还点中了中国乡村厕所设施落后的窘迫之处。我国大部分农村地区都还在使用简陋的旱厕,亟待改善。
最近一直在四川进行灾后重建的台湾草根建筑师谢英俊设计的改良厕所算是真的在为农民兄弟排忧解难。他的方法就是采用尿便分离的方式,用土覆盖粪便成为肥料,同时避免蝇虫和臭气,简单廉价而且有效。我想这是在农村推进文明进步的有意义的一步。
在我们的现代城市,抽水马桶和排污系统的技术早已完善和普及,对待厕所的观念就是更多的表现在精神层面上了。比如把厕所和餐厅放在一起,挑战的是你的观念;把厕所设计成外面完全反光,而内部透明的方式挑战的是你的胆量。其实中国古代的豪华厕所是很讲究的,比如皇家的厕所都是有床榻和香薰。野史上武则天和太子李治就是在设备豪华如寝宫的厕所里发生第一次亲密接触的。可惜老祖宗的这套讲究没传下来,反而同样是出自西方宫廷的抽水马桶却传到了民间,改写了文明的历史。我基本上同意将厕所的设计和使用水准与文明程度挂上钩,至少是一个表象。
- 1