Actually wood buildings are safer in case of fire if done right. New techniques (can't find the link) are able to control the way fire spreads and how fast it burns far better, also iirc because the heat that develops is lower.
Yes. The reason is slow and predictable burn that doesn’t affect the structural integrity until it has burned for a very long time. Even without special fire proofing, glulam burns at less than 1mm/minute.
The idea behind a fire safe high rise isn’t that it can’t burn but that when it burns it doesn’t collapse until people have left. That’s why the integrity is measured after 30min burn, 60min burn etc. As a wood beam burns the charring limits the oxygen supply of the fire, slowing the burn.
Steel beams require fire proofing and high temperatures or compromised fire proofing makes them structurally unsound which can cause unpredictable catastrophic failure (this happened in both of the WTC towers).
Is really collapse the the main danger to consider when a fire happens? I would think that when a building collapses from fire, many people in the building would already be dead from smoke and heat. If a wooden building would stand longer but be smoke filled earlier, I am not sure it can be said to be safer.
Everything else around your structural elements are going to be putting out smoke that will kill occupants regardless of whether the structure is steel or wood in situations like this. You worry about collapse for cases when the fire on a lower level traps occupants above, and the more time you can buy to control the fire or evacuate the better.
People working in forestry are used to planning long-term, what you sow or plant now will be reaped by the next generation. They just planted the building and are now waiting for it to grow to harvestable size.
I would love for humans to plant Red Woods and Iron Woods that would someday be harvested. They take so long to grow that they are not replaced, an ultimate testament to selfishness.
I had the same thought, but actually the super long timeline could also be evidence that they're taking it seriously. Roppongi Hills, another Tokyo development, took about 18 years from the start of planning to the end of construction.
The reason why Roppongi Hills took 18 years was because much of that time was spent acquiring lots from 400 smaller property owners.
The construction of Mori tower itself took ~3 years.
On the other hand, if they are serious about it and haven't decided on the location yet, it means that they probably haven't started acquiring the land, or that they are attempting to acquire it at several locations.
Given the Roppongi Hills example, provisioning 15 years just to acquire the smaller properties seems reasonable (and completely crazy at the same time, depending on the point of view).
Very interesting! But there is quite literally zero cross-bracing in that structure, which leads me to believe this was designed by an architect and not a structural engineer.
Do architects nowadays not have to be competent structural engineers? If so, it would amuse me greatly: how can you be entrusted in drawing new building shapes if you have no clue on their feasibility?
In other words, have the word 'architect' devolved into a 'building (exterior & interior) designer'?
Architects these days often seem to be large scale sculptors who inflict strange shapes on people who then have to live in or around them, without regard for engineering or human psychology.
Reminds me of the complaints and lawsuits[1] regarding the Stata building at MIT. Apparently in the beginning it had leaks and other lacks of fit and polish.
This is extremely common, check out the book "How Buildings Learn", which has a few chapters on this phenomenon. The type of buildings you are describing are "Magazine" (buildings that get on the cover of architecture magazines)
Architects have to know material physics, structural physics and structural engineering, but they don't need to have specialist level knowledge. There are architects who specialize in innovative structural designs and their work combines both.
From what I've heard, for high-profile 'designer' construction, the architect will draw the outside of the building and hands the design to engineers, who will have to add all the structures so that the building is usable and buildable.
I have a certain dislike for wooden houses because a) they seem to have high maintenance requirements, since wood as an organic material is often attacked by fungi, mould, or insects b) the ones I've lived in were old buildings lacking insulation and draughty, thus freezing in winter. That could be fixed with insulation of course.
Bricks (everywhere, internal walls and all) and concrete (for the floors) are the best - no stupid squeaking, nothing to rot, nothing to break, great soundproofing, good thermal insulation if done right, will last a long time provided no natural disasters. Not even expensive depending on the region.
That said, I don't get the point of a wooden skyscraper. I'd guess it's earthquake resistant, and it's not actual natural wood but a mix of synthetic materials and wood.
Bricks and concrete are absolutely not the best. They have terrible insulation properties, poor sound absorption, and cost more than wood structures.
Wood is an overall superior construction material if you can use it, and I think you're misunderstanding the pressure treatment process. It's normal wood placed in a vacuum chamber so preservatives can seep into the lumber.
Really? I've seen and lived in a lot of houses. Full concrete + brick were much more enjoyable than the creaky (I really hate those noises heh) wood and plasterboard houses. Colder, definitely, but better soundproofed imo.
Don't forget, brick and mortar also holds moisture and is porous. This can lead to spalling in cold weather and rotting whatever's behind it in warm weather.
Wood is a great construction material if it's treated against life feeding off it, rot and fire, especially when used in combination with other materials, such as building framing for hempcrete, half timbered buildings (fachwerk).
Creaky wood is a problem long since solved, but development contractors prefer to cut costs and build-to-sell before the underlying causes become apparent.
Use screws, not nails. Nail guns are convenient but they are for framing (playing to the strengths of nails’ awesome sheer strength) not layering (screws have far better tensile strength, poorer sheer strength). Add a zigzag of construction adhesive (insanely cheap stuff) to the joists before installing the subfloor. Leave 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch gap between each plywood sheet to leave room for swelling (in the Midwest that’s in the humid summers, on the coast it might be the other way around). Done.
Screws and nails are fundamentally different and should never be considered interchangeable. The cost difference is minimal given the trade offs involved, but contractors are apt to choose nails any time they can get away with it.
In Norway in Bergen few buildings made from bricks during last 20 years got problems with fungus. Once it gets inside the wall, it is very difficult to get rid of it. Yet wooden houses built over 100 years ago are ok despite a lot of rain (up to 9 feet per year).
It's actually less about insulation and more about air sealing. A hermetically sealed home with no insulation is generally warmer than a leaky home with walls stuffed with insulation.
Also regarding wood, this isn't the kind of wood you're thinking of. It's called pressure treated lumber, and it's an order of magnitude stronger than normal wood. The lumber has preservatives injected specifically to prevent rot, insect damage, and fire resistance.
I think the wood found in homes is pressure treated lumber which I don't believe is structurally any stronger than non-pt wood, but helps wood withstand the elements and wards off termites, microorganisms and fungal decay. The most common types of Pressure Treatments (at least that I am aware of in Canada) are Alkaline Copper Quaternary (ACQ) and Copper Azole (CA).
However, the wood material usually used to build these mid-rise buildings is cross laminated timber, which does add significant strength to the wood materials. Really cool material actually!
Does Canada really build homes out of pressure treated lumber? I have never once seen this in the US.
Aside from outside uses (decks, patios, landscaping etc.), pressure treated lumber of one sort or another might be used for a few select applications for home construction, such as sill plates or a bathroom subfloor. Nearly all of the wood used for regular homes is non-pressure treated, at least everywhere I have seen in the US.
No, they don't use PT lumber for framing whole houses in Canada, that guy is just making assumptions. They use it exactly like we do, for wood that comes into contact with concrete.
PT wood is roughly 4x the cost and substantially heavier, framing a whole house in it would be nuts.
It will also destroy any fasteners that aren't galvanized or stainless steel, so you definitely wouldn't build a whole house out of it. Depending on the straps that are installed in the foundation, you'll see people use Teco nails or galvanized 10- or 16-penny nails. But regular vinyl sinkers will rust out really quickly.
You're right, I definitely over simplified. PT is a little bit stronger than non-PT, and I'm used to calling anything that isn't normal wood "PT" in the field.
Pressure-treated wood has a very specific pattern and color. It's usually substantially greener or browner depending on the treatment. And there will be small cuts on the surface of the wood in a regular checker pattern. The pressure treatment just injects the preservative deeper into the wood.
It's different from glue-lams or engineered joists, which are just regular old wood that's been glued together.
> A hermetically sealed home with no insulation is generally warmer than a leaky home with walls stuffed with insulation.
Warmer, maybe, but bad for people and good for fungi. Many contemporary buildings are built too airtight, lacking natural ventilation, which causes huge problems with interior air quality and traps moisture inside structures, creating places for mold to thrive.
Airtight buildings are perfectly fine with a proper Heat recovery ventilation system (HRV) that they should be using. HRV's are mandatory when building the PassiveHaus spec.
True. Unfortunately, at least around here a lot of buildings have been built in the past five or so decades that are fine insulation-wise but sorely lacking in ventilation, natural or otherwise, leading to widespread health issues. Many prefab concrete buildings from the 60s and 70s, even 80s, are practically ready for demolition.
Regarding a), it very much depends on how they are built. Little Moreton Hall has been standing since 1504, subsequent restorations required no changes to the timber structure. Isn't it beautiful? Although I suspect it is definitely subject to point b)!
You might as well call it a steel tower at this point.
Steel is heavy but it's also very strong. You don't need a lot of it to build something. A pure steel building actually ends up being lighter than a concrete building because of this.
Steel has a great tensile strength but an average compressive strength at best. It's prone to buckling. Concrete is the exact opposite. In a skyscraper you need great tensile and compressive strength in different structural elements. This is why reinforced concrete is such a big deal. The properties of steel and concrete naturally complement each other.
No, adjective like "haut" change according to the noun it describes and most of the time by appending a "e". A "tour" (the feminine word for tower) will be "haute". An "arbre" (the masculine word for tree) will be "haut". "Cuisine" is a general noun so it does not change, even if it ends with a "e". There are not a masculine or feminine cuisine, it's just a cuisine :).
> "Cuisine" is a general noun so it does not change, even if it ends with a "e". There are not a masculine or feminine cuisine, it's just a cuisine :).
"cuisine" is definitely a feminine noun. There is no such thing as a "general" noun. Also, it is the adjective that changes to match the noun, not the other way around.
Not. Even not so regular people can't afford to buy. So there is a fairly large contingent of people that rent at exorbitant prices with both parents working and the remainder moved out to more affordable places.
Japan is unrivaled in building long-lasting wooden structures using only joinery (no nails, screws). This allows the wood to expand and contract harmoniously without cracking. Multi-story buildings (temples are a great example) have “floating” stories than may shift several feet during an earthquake, all kept together with a freestanding “spine” mounted only to the ground.
I don't remember the details, but on a previous article on wooden skyscapers, it was explained how the engineering of the wood, which is also required for the necessary structural strength, made it very dense and practically incombustible. Fire proofing is an inherent quality, not something that's applied and thus could be done poorly.
Fire safety in wooden structures is interesting. A friend who does research in the area explained that, in some ways, wooden beams are simpler to engineer than steel beams when dealing with fire.
The goal, engineering wise, is to put a number on a given structure - how many hours can it burn before it falls?
A steel beam will maintain most of its strength up to the point it suddenly becomes soft and loses all of it. The exact point in time this occurs is hard to predict, because it varies substantially with several variables.
A wood beam will maintain the full strength of the beam, minus the average thickness of wood that is burned off per hour, which is a reasonably well known quantity.
This makes it simple (though not easy, of course!), relative to steel structures, to put a number on a wooden structure - "this building can burn for 2 hours before it is no longer safe for firemen to try to put it out from inside".
This doesn't answer the question, but on topic: I was working with a building engineer who described a situation where a car engine caught on fire underneath a buildings (large, extended) eve that was built with steel beams, and they did melt, obviously necessitating a lot of fix-up work. He reckoned though that if the beam was built of wood, in that situation you'd just have to clean of some blackened material and carry on business-as-usual.
He also said that of steel, perfect glass, and wood, glass was (strength to weight) the strongest material (I don't remember if this was in compression, or tension, or ...), but it's so affected by its environment (chemically, physically (a scratch)), there's really no such thing as perfect glass, so it's moot.
> A friend who does research in the area explained that, in some ways, wooden beams are simpler to engineer than steel beams when dealing with fire.
This is kind of tangential, but I have a question pertaining to your friend's profession (the engineering behind how buildings burn.) I was surprised to learn that literally thousands in that profession (I don't believe them) are claiming 9/11 included "massive evidence for controlled demolition", led by:
>Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects,[2] has worked as an architect for 20 years and was involved in the construction of numerous fireproof steel-frame building.
(Both my quotes are from Wikipedia.) In general if thousands of computer scientists were claiming a random number generator has a backdoor, say, I'd tend to believe them.
What does your friend say on this subject? If you haven't asked yet I would be interested if you would do so, and then write to me at my email contact listed here.
My apologies, I was quoting the figure "by December 2014, over 2,300 architectural and engineering professionals had signed the petition" and it states "According to the organization, the identities and qualifications of all licensed architects and engineers whose names are being published on its website as well as those of other supporters who are listed separately are subjected to verification before acceptance".
Usually Wikipedia is actually quite harsh on conspiracy theories. For example the Flat Earth article's 7th word is "archaic" (it begins "The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk".) The final paragraph of the lead states "In the modern era, pseudoscientific flat Earth theories have been espoused". (The flat Earth theory has vigorous, albeit often troll, online defenders.)
So this explains my reaction - from the way the article was written I had thought thousands of architects and structural engineers thought there was massive evidence of a controlled demolition.
You may check out your cousin comment for a reply from someone who has looked into this quite a bit I think. That person (tedivm) seems to think it's a pretty massive waste of time so hopefully this thread won't include much more of it. Sorry to waste your time if this was the case, and thanks for your reply. :)
I'm not either way invested in this, and can not contribute much to the conversation. However, a certain pattern strikes me in the way you are dealing with this conversation, which I've seen before and for personal reasons touches me.
First, I appreciate your politeness and structured responses. It would seem so natural that everyone argue in this manner and yet I find it rare enough that it deserves appreciation.
So for the personal reasons mentioned above, I wanted to ask you this, and you are in no way obligated to answer:
- Do you think most people in this thread are delusional and/or refuse to see a truth which seems painfully obvious?
- Do you sometimes feel this way about people in the real world/other subjects? Often? Always?
- As a thought experiment: if it turned out that masses of people were, as a rule, not ignorant but instead wise, would that impact the way you see yourself?
- Would finding out the truth be equally satisfying for you regardless of what the truth turns out to be?
- Do you find yourself wanting certain statements to turn out to be true?
- Can you identify why?
In any case, I wish you the best of luck with your search.
I went to WPI, which was one of the schools that did the actual research you're claiming was false. They were, at the time, one of only two schools in the country offering a masters degree in fire safety engineering and they had a lot of experience in this area.
The Professor in charge of the investigation is literally the most liberal human being you could imagine (he founded the schools chapter of "BiLAGA", the precursor to many Gay/Straight Alliance clubs), advised multiple progressive clubs, and was rather antiwar. To say that he was not likely to go along with a George Bush conspiracy is an understatement.
My roommate was one of the grad students who literally worked on the studies you are claiming were faked. We've spent hours talking about exactly why the people who faked it were wrong. You can easily google any of the counter arguments yourself, as there is over a decade and a half of the debunking out there.
As a final note though I want to point out that an Architect is not an Engineer. Look through this course description[1] for a bachelor's degree in architecture. Of the 2,300 people who signed on to the petition you're referring to, only 30 claim to be structural engineers. It turns out many of those were unlicensed, several had never worked on tall buildings, and only a few of them had every even read the NIST report[2]. While I can't find the study of the architects with that kind of data, it seems obvious to me that with the lack of background checking done on the petition for the engineers that a significant portion of the 2270 architects remaining are nowhere near qualified to make the claims that this organization has made.
Thanks for your answer. Appreciate that you replied, I see you looked up references. As you reference "hours talking" and "a decade and a half of debunking", likely you're over this and impatient - hopefully I can understand your points quickly.
For my part I certainly had the impression that thousands of engineers and architects were quite convinced that there was a controlled demolition following the plane crashes. Please note that I didn't take any political conclusions from this and would be interested in just sticking to the building structural facts - whether there was a controlled demolition in the opinion of structural engineers and architects.
1. When you write "one of the schools that did the actual research you're claiming was false", what research are you referring to? I didn't reference any study nor have one in mind, I'm a bit confused here.
2. From your last sentence, I think overall you're saying:
"I am certain that following the plane crashes no controlled demolition led to the collapse of the buildings. The 2270 people who signed the petition are not qualified architects. Qualified architects do not claim it was a controlled demolition (let alone obviously one.)"
Can you confirm this - is that right?
Besides these two points of clarification, I'll try not to waste more of your time. Thanks again for the replies.
I am kind of weary making a public statement about this subject, a controlled demolition would have been a crime against humanity. Unlike tedivm I do not claim any authority on this subject. During my teenage years I spent a lot of late nights just surfing the web and researched the 9/11 building collapse quite thoroughly at one point. I can also think. I came to the conclusion that, due to the structural design of the twin towers, if you fly a plane into them a collapse of the kind that was witnessed on the 11. September 2001 is the consequence.
I'm fine with listening to experts. (Of course this is what "Architects and Engineers" purported to be. As detailed by other comments, no, that group is not comprised of architects and structural engineers, which I didn't know.)
Do you really mean "weary" (tired) or "wary" (cautious)? If you are wary about making a public statement you can reply with an email (or write me at mine) I have just 1 or 2 remaining questions. I don't really want to clog this thread any more.
> "The 2270 people who signed the petition are not qualified architects. Qualified architects do not claim it was a controlled demolition (let alone obviously one.)"
No, this isn't what he is saying. What he is saying is "Of the 2270 people who signed the list, only 30 claim to be structural engineers".
The list is actually 2,750 now - anyone can sign it - the vast majority self-report as architects or non-structural engineers (for some reason, many claim to be aeronautical engineers?). For obvious reasons we don't use architects, or aeronautical engineers, to analyze the behavior of steel girders in the presence of fire.
Of the 30 who claim to be structural engineers, only 14 claim they are structural engineers who work on buildings, and of those 14, only one claims to work on high-rises.
TL;DR: One structural engineer with experience of high rises is on the list. And, and I'm going to write this in all caps: HE DOESN'T CLAIM HE THINKS IT WAS EXPLOSIVES!! His official statement is this:
> There seem to be a lot of unanswered questions and it would serve the greater good to re-open the investigation and do a more thorough job to remove any doubt.
You're right I'm making the same point several times, I'm sorry if it gets repetitive. I do it to try to highlight the point from several angles and to reduce ambiguity.
That said, I didn't intend my 6 paragraphs to mean "Qualified architects ..". Architecture is a discipline concerned with aesthetics, it deals with the design of spaces and how humans interact with them. It does not deal with the structural integrity of those spaces; this is why architectural firms employ and contract structural engineers, and why building plans carry separate architects and engineering seals.
An architect (and you'll note I'm making the same point a second time) is as qualified to make comments on the structural safety of steel girders as, say, an anthropologist, or a chello player.
So, and now I'm making the same point a third time: No, I'm not saying "qualified architects do not claim it was controlled demolition"; because there is no such thing as an architect who is qualified to assess that. What I'm saying is that there are 30 structural engineers on the list, and that among them there is only one who has relevant experience, and he is not making the claim that it was controlled demolition.
OK, "qualified structural engineers do not claim it was controlled demolition." (let alone obviously one, let alone thousands of them saying so.) Fair?
As evidenced by your previous comments in this thread, had he put it so succinctly, you would have asked for more clarification.
I'll put it in one sentence: "9/11 truthers are just as purposefully ignorant and ill-informed as climate change deniers and no longer deserve the time and effort of the mentally capable to rehash a conspiracy theory that is so thoroughly and completely debunked."
105 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadThe idea behind a fire safe high rise isn’t that it can’t burn but that when it burns it doesn’t collapse until people have left. That’s why the integrity is measured after 30min burn, 60min burn etc. As a wood beam burns the charring limits the oxygen supply of the fire, slowing the burn.
Steel beams require fire proofing and high temperatures or compromised fire proofing makes them structurally unsound which can cause unpredictable catastrophic failure (this happened in both of the WTC towers).
https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/216369...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/visingso-oak-forest
Ultra long term planning is hard.
This proposal does seem more marketing like marketing than a serious attempt to construct a building in that neither the website nor press release mentioning the location that the tower will be built (Marunouchi).(http://sfc.jp/information/news/2018/2018-02-08.html) (http://sfc.jp/english/news/pdf/20180214_e_01.pdf)
Given the Roppongi Hills example, provisioning 15 years just to acquire the smaller properties seems reasonable (and completely crazy at the same time, depending on the point of view).
https://www.metsawood.com/global/Campaigns/planb/cases/woode...
In other words, have the word 'architect' devolved into a 'building (exterior & interior) designer'?
[1]https://thetech.com/2007/11/09/lawsuit-v127-n53
That said, I don't get the point of a wooden skyscraper. I'd guess it's earthquake resistant, and it's not actual natural wood but a mix of synthetic materials and wood.
Wood is an overall superior construction material if you can use it, and I think you're misunderstanding the pressure treatment process. It's normal wood placed in a vacuum chamber so preservatives can seep into the lumber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1m5VShzxYs
Use screws, not nails. Nail guns are convenient but they are for framing (playing to the strengths of nails’ awesome sheer strength) not layering (screws have far better tensile strength, poorer sheer strength). Add a zigzag of construction adhesive (insanely cheap stuff) to the joists before installing the subfloor. Leave 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch gap between each plywood sheet to leave room for swelling (in the Midwest that’s in the humid summers, on the coast it might be the other way around). Done.
Screws and nails are fundamentally different and should never be considered interchangeable. The cost difference is minimal given the trade offs involved, but contractors are apt to choose nails any time they can get away with it.
Also regarding wood, this isn't the kind of wood you're thinking of. It's called pressure treated lumber, and it's an order of magnitude stronger than normal wood. The lumber has preservatives injected specifically to prevent rot, insect damage, and fire resistance.
However, the wood material usually used to build these mid-rise buildings is cross laminated timber, which does add significant strength to the wood materials. Really cool material actually!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-laminated_timber
Aside from outside uses (decks, patios, landscaping etc.), pressure treated lumber of one sort or another might be used for a few select applications for home construction, such as sill plates or a bathroom subfloor. Nearly all of the wood used for regular homes is non-pressure treated, at least everywhere I have seen in the US.
PT wood is roughly 4x the cost and substantially heavier, framing a whole house in it would be nuts.
It's different from glue-lams or engineered joists, which are just regular old wood that's been glued together.
Warmer, maybe, but bad for people and good for fungi. Many contemporary buildings are built too airtight, lacking natural ventilation, which causes huge problems with interior air quality and traps moisture inside structures, creating places for mold to thrive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Moreton_Hall#/media/Fil...
Wood and steel.
Steel is heavy but it's also very strong. You don't need a lot of it to build something. A pure steel building actually ends up being lighter than a concrete building because of this.
https://hautamsterdam.nl/en/
The name HAUT appears to be a play on the Dutch word for wood (HOUT) and the french word for tall (HAUTE).
"cuisine" is definitely a feminine noun. There is no such thing as a "general" noun. Also, it is the adjective that changes to match the noun, not the other way around.
IIRC.
Even with steel, the actual frame of the building is surrounded by firewalls, fire resistant insulation and various suppression systems.
The goal, engineering wise, is to put a number on a given structure - how many hours can it burn before it falls?
A steel beam will maintain most of its strength up to the point it suddenly becomes soft and loses all of it. The exact point in time this occurs is hard to predict, because it varies substantially with several variables.
A wood beam will maintain the full strength of the beam, minus the average thickness of wood that is burned off per hour, which is a reasonably well known quantity.
This makes it simple (though not easy, of course!), relative to steel structures, to put a number on a wooden structure - "this building can burn for 2 hours before it is no longer safe for firemen to try to put it out from inside".
He also said that of steel, perfect glass, and wood, glass was (strength to weight) the strongest material (I don't remember if this was in compression, or tension, or ...), but it's so affected by its environment (chemically, physically (a scratch)), there's really no such thing as perfect glass, so it's moot.
This is kind of tangential, but I have a question pertaining to your friend's profession (the engineering behind how buildings burn.) I was surprised to learn that literally thousands in that profession (I don't believe them) are claiming 9/11 included "massive evidence for controlled demolition", led by:
>Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects,[2] has worked as an architect for 20 years and was involved in the construction of numerous fireproof steel-frame building.
(Both my quotes are from Wikipedia.) In general if thousands of computer scientists were claiming a random number generator has a backdoor, say, I'd tend to believe them.
What does your friend say on this subject? If you haven't asked yet I would be interested if you would do so, and then write to me at my email contact listed here.
Sorry for the kind of off-topic question.
A) It's not thousands. Out of the ~100,000 members of the AIA, 160 voted to take another look at 9/11.
B) I wouldn't accept an appeal to authority on the computer science side either. They'd have to explain how the RNG is biased.
Usually Wikipedia is actually quite harsh on conspiracy theories. For example the Flat Earth article's 7th word is "archaic" (it begins "The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk".) The final paragraph of the lead states "In the modern era, pseudoscientific flat Earth theories have been espoused". (The flat Earth theory has vigorous, albeit often troll, online defenders.)
So this explains my reaction - from the way the article was written I had thought thousands of architects and structural engineers thought there was massive evidence of a controlled demolition.
You may check out your cousin comment for a reply from someone who has looked into this quite a bit I think. That person (tedivm) seems to think it's a pretty massive waste of time so hopefully this thread won't include much more of it. Sorry to waste your time if this was the case, and thanks for your reply. :)
First, I appreciate your politeness and structured responses. It would seem so natural that everyone argue in this manner and yet I find it rare enough that it deserves appreciation.
So for the personal reasons mentioned above, I wanted to ask you this, and you are in no way obligated to answer:
- Do you think most people in this thread are delusional and/or refuse to see a truth which seems painfully obvious?
- Do you sometimes feel this way about people in the real world/other subjects? Often? Always?
- As a thought experiment: if it turned out that masses of people were, as a rule, not ignorant but instead wise, would that impact the way you see yourself?
- Would finding out the truth be equally satisfying for you regardless of what the truth turns out to be?
- Do you find yourself wanting certain statements to turn out to be true?
- Can you identify why?
In any case, I wish you the best of luck with your search.
The Professor in charge of the investigation is literally the most liberal human being you could imagine (he founded the schools chapter of "BiLAGA", the precursor to many Gay/Straight Alliance clubs), advised multiple progressive clubs, and was rather antiwar. To say that he was not likely to go along with a George Bush conspiracy is an understatement.
My roommate was one of the grad students who literally worked on the studies you are claiming were faked. We've spent hours talking about exactly why the people who faked it were wrong. You can easily google any of the counter arguments yourself, as there is over a decade and a half of the debunking out there.
As a final note though I want to point out that an Architect is not an Engineer. Look through this course description[1] for a bachelor's degree in architecture. Of the 2,300 people who signed on to the petition you're referring to, only 30 claim to be structural engineers. It turns out many of those were unlicensed, several had never worked on tall buildings, and only a few of them had every even read the NIST report[2]. While I can't find the study of the architects with that kind of data, it seems obvious to me that with the lack of background checking done on the petition for the engineers that a significant portion of the 2270 architects remaining are nowhere near qualified to make the claims that this organization has made.
[1]https://cooper.edu/architecture/curriculum/bachelor
[2]http://lies-of-the-truth-movement.blogspot.com/2010/10/richa...
For my part I certainly had the impression that thousands of engineers and architects were quite convinced that there was a controlled demolition following the plane crashes. Please note that I didn't take any political conclusions from this and would be interested in just sticking to the building structural facts - whether there was a controlled demolition in the opinion of structural engineers and architects.
1. When you write "one of the schools that did the actual research you're claiming was false", what research are you referring to? I didn't reference any study nor have one in mind, I'm a bit confused here.
2. From your last sentence, I think overall you're saying:
"I am certain that following the plane crashes no controlled demolition led to the collapse of the buildings. The 2270 people who signed the petition are not qualified architects. Qualified architects do not claim it was a controlled demolition (let alone obviously one.)"
Can you confirm this - is that right?
Besides these two points of clarification, I'll try not to waste more of your time. Thanks again for the replies.
Do you really mean "weary" (tired) or "wary" (cautious)? If you are wary about making a public statement you can reply with an email (or write me at mine) I have just 1 or 2 remaining questions. I don't really want to clog this thread any more.
No, this isn't what he is saying. What he is saying is "Of the 2270 people who signed the list, only 30 claim to be structural engineers".
The list is actually 2,750 now - anyone can sign it - the vast majority self-report as architects or non-structural engineers (for some reason, many claim to be aeronautical engineers?). For obvious reasons we don't use architects, or aeronautical engineers, to analyze the behavior of steel girders in the presence of fire.
Of the 30 who claim to be structural engineers, only 14 claim they are structural engineers who work on buildings, and of those 14, only one claims to work on high-rises.
TL;DR: One structural engineer with experience of high rises is on the list. And, and I'm going to write this in all caps: HE DOESN'T CLAIM HE THINKS IT WAS EXPLOSIVES!! His official statement is this:
> There seem to be a lot of unanswered questions and it would serve the greater good to re-open the investigation and do a more thorough job to remove any doubt.
You can easily verify this yourself by just going through the official list, here: http://www.ae911truth.org/signatures/ae.html#:/signatures/xm...
That said, I didn't intend my 6 paragraphs to mean "Qualified architects ..". Architecture is a discipline concerned with aesthetics, it deals with the design of spaces and how humans interact with them. It does not deal with the structural integrity of those spaces; this is why architectural firms employ and contract structural engineers, and why building plans carry separate architects and engineering seals.
An architect (and you'll note I'm making the same point a second time) is as qualified to make comments on the structural safety of steel girders as, say, an anthropologist, or a chello player.
So, and now I'm making the same point a third time: No, I'm not saying "qualified architects do not claim it was controlled demolition"; because there is no such thing as an architect who is qualified to assess that. What I'm saying is that there are 30 structural engineers on the list, and that among them there is only one who has relevant experience, and he is not making the claim that it was controlled demolition.
I'll put it in one sentence: "9/11 truthers are just as purposefully ignorant and ill-informed as climate change deniers and no longer deserve the time and effort of the mentally capable to rehash a conspiracy theory that is so thoroughly and completely debunked."