In some circles, “curtain wall” has become synonymous with “glass facade” but that’s not what it means. A curtain wall is simply a wall that does not carry structural load for the building as a whole. Saying that it does not carry any structural load would be wrong, as it carries its own weight (usually …
The picture above is best viewed with the picture below, to explain the change in focus. (If you were ever a fan of The Outer Limits, “We are controlling transmission….We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image; make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft …
That picture shows a 100-year-old fabrication error in some steel framing which, thanks to some facade repairs, is seeing the light of day for the first time since it was built. The rivet holes in the column were punched an inch too far down and, somewhat amazingly, not in a straight line. Since all of …
That’s the Weaverland Bridge, carrying Quarry Road over Conestoga Creek near the village of Terre Hill, Pennsylvania. (HAER says it’s it’s the Conestoga Creek, my map says it’s the Conestoga River. I have no interest in the outcome of that argument.) It’s a concrete tied-arch bridge constructed in 1916, which makes it early for a …
Since I started looking at the new NYC Building Code with a topic that is tangential to my usual work, I might as well continue that way for a bit. A topic that was added to plain-vanilla IBC in its entirety by the New York City code committee is structural peer review. I don’t see …
