At 01:27 30/09/01 +0200, Christoph Reuss wrote: cut to--->
>>>> The Herald was unable to contact Mr Seidler yesterday. >>>> Mr Harry Seidler is, to my knowledge, the only architect who has criticised the poor construction of the World Trade Center Towers -- see the article which Christoph Reuss posted below. No wonder Mr Seidler is now unavailable! For a while, there'll be a vendetta against him, particularly by fellow architects, until (perhaps) he's justified by a thorough enquiry. So far, this has been a perfect example of job protectionism by the architectural profession (as well as a cover-up by the authorities so far). In all the UK and US quality newspapers that I have read in the past two weeks (most of them) I have not come across one single comment or letter from a qualified architect referring to the collapses. I was on holiday in Italy when the disaster occurred and, with horror, like all the other holiday-makers in our hotel, I watched CNN and BBC World Service repeatedly. It was obvious then, in seeing the mode of progressive collapse, that each floor was only flimsily connected to the walls and corners of the buildings. It was not until this week when the smoke had cleared that we have been able to see the egg-shell thinness of the outer cladding and hollow box girders. This week we have also been able to see that the structural columns of the first few floors only were were of apparently appropriate thickness. As could be plainly seen (until the evidence was hastily demolished by the New York authorities), these columns did not collapse, despite the whole weight of the building upon them. These should have continued, visibly or invisibly, all the way up the buildings. An "ordinary" substantial fire on any of the floors of the buildings, never mind an airplane crash, sufficient to have caused a floor to sag (even ever so slightly) and break the welds with the outer wall, would have brought the buildings down progressively in just the same way. I'm afraid that the Trade Center Buildings were hardly better than a house of cards from about the third floor upwards. Keith Hudson >[Mr Seidler, an American, designed quite a few of Sydney's high-rise >buildings from the 1950s on--and definitely knows what he's talking >about. --BJ] > > >Sydney Morning Herald, 24 Sep 01 >http://www.smh.com.au/news/0109/24/world/world16.html > >Towers collapsed 'because of cheap, poor construction' > > (pic) Mr Seidler ... "It was all a question of costs, of course." > > >New York's World Trade Centre towers collapsed because they were cheap and >poorly constructed, the Sydney architect Mr Harry Seidler says. > >Other buildings, such as the Empire State Building, would have survived the >impact, an Austrian newspaper, Kleine Zeitung, quotes him as saying. > >The construction of the World Trade Centre was so poor it would not have >been approved in most other countries, Mr Seidler said. > >However, the New York Port Authority, which owned the site, was also >responsible for granting the building approval, he said. > >"It was all a question of costs, of course", he said. > >The Kleine Zeitung reported last week that Mr Seidler inspected the site >shortly before the World Trade Centre was completed. > >"I was extremely surprised at the time that the construction was so >delicate. It was the lightest I have ever seen." > >Other concrete buildings would not have collapsed, he said. The World Trade >Centre had been built as if it was made from cardboard. Its steel girders >were only sprayed with asbestos and melted "like spaghetti" in the heat. > >The lift shafts and staircases were clad with plaster, which explained the >white plaster dust on the faces of survivors. And the floors were made of >metal plates with only a thin layer of concrete, Mr Seidler said. > >The Empire State Building, a steel design, would have withstood the impact >because it was clad with concrete, he said. >[Actually the ESB was hit by a bomber in 1947, with hardly any damage.] > >Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and Sears Tower in Chicago, two of the >highest buildings in the world, also would have survived, Mr Seidler said. > >"All of this would not have happened with a concrete construction. >Impossible." > >The Herald was unable to contact Mr Seidler yesterday. > >--Geesche Jacobsen > > Copyright SMH > > > > > ___________________________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
