In the thread about art college, TremorViolet said that she is an architectural engineer, which really means a structural engineer. (Ah there, TV a nice hit for you if you ever do vanity searches).
So I’m curious as to how the work on a project is organized. Does the architect confer with the client, invent a design, and then come to the engineer and ask if it’s physically possible to build the structure he has in mind? Is the architect more about the esthetic design of the building while the engineer crunches the numbers?
If the building collapses and kills everyone within, are the architect and engineer equally liable for what happened?
How do the practitioners of architecture and structural engineering regard each other?
I don’t actually work in this field (yet), but I am an engineer, so I’ll give it a try.
Essentially you have it right, though I don’t think it’s a matter of “if it’s possible” so much as “how can we do this.” There will be some back and forth between the two.
I’m just guessing here. Ultimately, I would think the construction firm as a whole is legally responsible; they’re the ones who actually built it, and the engineers should have know what was safe. If the architect is independent of the construction firm, then they may not be as responsible (maybe not at all, though his/her reputation might suffer).
As a whole, engineers look down on everyone, one of the many reassons they’re not much fun to be around. Though we do know that architecture is a very hard major, and someone who’s an architect is someone who’s smart and worked their butt off in college. So there is some respect there. Engineers rarely care for asthetics and see them as unnecessary cost and effort, so the more effort and cost that has to go into functionless asthetics (like say, a design by Gehry), the more they’ll grumble about the wacky artsy architect. I don’t really know how architects view engineers, but I would expect that there’s a good deal of professional respect.
To be fair, architects are not fey artists who work in the medium of structures rather than oil on canvas or poetry, but people who design structures which both work and look good. An architect will draw plans which indicate where electrical conduits, water and sewer pipes are to be located, and the fixtures using them are to be located – their job is to both ensure this stuff is in place and to make it look good when done.
A structural engineer will come into the picture when it’s not a cut-and-dried case matching work done in the past. An architect can design a house or a two-story office building sitting on flat ground or a gentle slope – but if you want to build a 50-story building on a slope with sandstone bedrock, or design a house to sit on a cliff overlooking a beautiful panorama, you need an engineer’s special skills to determine how to build it so the thing will stand up through the first significant stress on it.
I’ve heard someone say that if you see a big fancy looking building (IOW one with nice architecture), that it’s a sign of a weak engineer (for letting the architect get away with it). Don’t know how widely that is belived.
Good architects do this. A fair number of architects are total pains in the butt who don’t understand what is or isn’t physically possible. Or, more often, what they’ve designed is physically possible, it’s just gonna be very, very expensive and require a lot of custom stuff when, with just a little tweaking, you could use standard sized pieces. Confession: I mostly do bridge design so I rarely work with architects. (other structural engineers envy me) But, the few times I have, it’s been a major headache.
OK, I’m totally echoing ryanbobo here. Basically, engineers try to find the most practical, easiest to construct, and cost efficient solution. That may not fit with the architects ideas. In certain cases, say a fancy museum, it makes sense to spend the extra money and get a truely unique building. In other cases, it doesn’t. The pedestrian bridge in Austin over Town Lake, (here’s a picture from my old company’s website) is a good example. Designed by an architect, structurally, it’s very interesting and has won lots of awards. That was worth it. But, the architect also had all these fancy ideas (like lights that pointed upwards and custom railing) that cost a LOT of extra money and didn’t really add a lot to the end effect. Plus, the architect insisted on no construction joints int he fancy colored concrete used for the deck. Now, the deck has lots of cracking issues (that’s why you use construction joints. :smack: Concrete shrinks as it dries. ) and there have been articles in the paper about it.
Correction: All structures must have an professional engineers (Engineers who have passed the state administered professional engineers exam and provided written documentation of their previous work done under the supervision of a licensed engineer. You must be licensed in each state you work in. I’m haven’t taken the exam yet and am considered an engineer-in-training or EIT. I can’t seal plans.) seal on them. Period. Or else you won’t get your building permit. In the case of house plans bought from a catalog, an engineer at sometime in the past has sealed the plans and you may only need to have the foundation designed for your current construction.
Depends on why the building collapses. I can’t really think of a situation where the architect would be liable. The professional engineer seals his plans attesting that he’s designed them according to current codes. He is responsible for the design and will not seal plans he doesn’t believe to be safe. Engineers take this responsiblity very seriously. In school, we had several courses on ethics and the professors impressed on us over and over that ultimately we are responsible for public safety.
When there is a collapse in the US (very rare), it’s investigated. If the plans are inadequate it’s the engineer’s fault. If the contractor, didn’t follow the plans exactly, it’s his fault. The contractor looks at the plans the engineer has drawn up and then figures out how to build them. He then submits “shop drawings” the the engineer which the engineer must approve.
The Kansas City Hyatt elevated walkway collapse was due to an engineers misjudgement. His original design was good but the contractor wanted to alter the plans to make it easier to construct. The contractor submitted a new design to the engineer to approve. He signed off on it without looking very closely. The new design substantially altered the loads and the walkway collapsed.
Here in Austin, there was a collapse of a conrete tower intended for a water intake plant at a local lake. Three construction workers were tied in at the top of the concrete forms and when the tower failed, they died. (I was at the office when that happened, it was horrible, the engineer was crying.) In this case, the contractor ignored safe industry practice and tried to pour the column too quickly without letting the concrete set up. In that case, the contractor was liable. The design was good, the contractor did not implement it properly.
Wow, this is the longest post I’ve ever made. Did I answer everything and not ramble too much?
Don’t structural engineers also review plans for flaws too?
That platform might be built to withstand 300,000 lbs or about 1,000 people(at maximum traffic), but it is also big enough (areawise)to hold 2,000 people so might need to support up to 600,000 lbs.
I remember one so failing because no one built it in the expectation that during a party that people would over crowd the structure. :eek:
I’m a geotechnical engineer, but in my civil engineering undergrad, I did take (way too many) structural classes, so I can answer this.
In the case of a platform like you mentioned, the only architectural input would be on the aesthetics of the structure. The structural engineer doesn’t really review the design; he/she creates it. A platform like that would be either steel or concrete, and the engineer designs it based on either the American Concrete Institute code or the AISC (I think that’s the acronym) steel code book. An architect is not qualified to design anything that the health and safety of so many people would rely on.
As I understand it, an architect will provide a schematic of what he/she would like the structure to look like. The engineer then designs the inner workings that will support the structure.
TremorViolet’s answer is exactly right. ryanbobo’s is wrong in one important way. Civil engineers are *very /I] fun to be around. And we don’t typically have problems with architects, unless they are the sort that TremorViolet talked about. (BTW, how did the engineer ever stamp a set of plans for concrete slab with no construction joints? That seems like professional suicide!)
Aside from a guy specializing in documentation and restoration of historical structures, the three other architects I’ve worked with were ones who were on excellent terms with the engineer and contractors we used regularly – so apparently I haven’t been exposed to the bad side of the profession.
On the one project involving both architect and engineer I was involved with, they split the work intriguingly: the architect designed the buildings – a marina office structure and adjacent bathhouse, a picnic pavilion, and an observation tower incorporating a harbormaster’s office – while the engineer (a) did the specs. and costed out the architect’s designs and (b) designed the nitty-gritty of the marina – retaining walls, permanent mooring equipment, etc., and worked up a phased program for reconstructing a half mile of deteriorated breakwater in stages so that part could be safely used again (the whole breakwater reconstruction would have about tripled the project budget, which was strained to begin with, if done in a single operation).
When you design a structure, you always have a second engineer or EIT review the plans. That’s just standard operating procedure. If there was a failure and it came out that you didn’t have your design reviewed, you would probalby have your license automatically suspended.
AS far as loading goes, that’s specified in the design code you use. Since I design bridgs, I use a combination of the AASHTO (American Association of Highway Transportation Officials) and the local Texas DOT guidlines. THe AASHTO loading is a minimum, states can set more stringent requirements. For buildings, you hav to follow the building code (version and year) specified by the locale. Built into the code is a certain factor of safety as well. If you design a structure correctly using current loads, your ass is pretty much covered liability-wise, even if thr is a structural failure.
Most loads are calculated using area and expected use. For instance, designing a pedestrian bridge such as the one I linked to above, we used a live load (i.e. a movable load as opposed to a dead load which would be the beams, the deck, the rail, etc.) of 100 pounds per square foot. Even though the bridge will probably never be jammed with shoulder to shoulder people, we design it as if it was. So the situation designed above, wouldn’t happen.
What can happen is the expected usage of a structure can change. Generally, we design things on the conservative side. But say you had an office building you wanted to convert into a library. You’d need to get an engineer to check it out because books are so heavy, that’s a special type of loading that’s heavier than regular loading. Chances are, the building would be fine but you’d want to make sure.
Actually, on anything bigger than a house (generally), there is a separate Mechanical Engineer who will oversee this stuff. There is a phenomenal amount of information in these engineering disciplines that the architect cannot be reasonably expected to keep up with, so lots of the work is subbed out. We’ve generally encounter for ground-up work:
Architect (responsible for overall “vision” of the building. He will choose the look of the exterior and interiors. They choose the floorplan, materials to specify and details. They have a general knowledge of how the building will need to be designed to accomodate the following, but leave it up to the specialists:
Structural Engineer: concrete foundation and steel infrastructure.
Electrical engineer: designs how the electrical system will function given the building’s needs and how conduit is to be routed (i.e. from the transformer to where the architect wants the outlets).
Mechanical Engineer: handles HVAC, plumbing, sewers, etc.
Landscape Architect: obvious.
The Architect is responsible for coordinating between all of these guys. In some cases (for very large firms), they are all in-house, but more often, they are separate firms. Ultimately, the resposibility comes back to the architect, who generally blames the contractor.
IME, the Architect hates the engineers for quite a few reasons.
If anyone wants to hear the interaction from the contractor’s POV, let me know, otherwise, I’ll assume that you don’t have any trouble falling asleep as it is.
Re: liability. I’ve not been involved with anything this catastrophic, but here’s how that sort of thing generally goes:
Inspector gets blamed for improperly passing something that obviously doesn’t work, he points the finger at the General Contractor who tried to hide the shoddy work and misrepresented the state of completion. The GC blames his contractor who says he constructed everything according to the contract documents and blames the Architect for approving the work/submittals/drawings that the work was based on. The Architect blames their Engineer for not doing anything. Meanwhile, depending on what failed and how catastrophic it is, lawsuits are either threatened by everyone involved (you’d be surprised who gets named in these things) and/or lawsuits fly around to everyone even peripherally connected to the project. Months or years later after the metaphoric dust settles, someone actually finds out who was responsible and again depending on the severity, either their insurance pays or they have to go into bankruptcy to avoid paying.
I have never worked on commercial buildings, only on public buildings (Universities.) The standard interaction I have seen is that the University staff goes through a selection process for choosing an architect, involving interviews, looking at past designs, and who is hte easiest to work with. The university then writes a fixed price contract with the architect. The architect then goes out and finds civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering firms and beats them over the head and shoulders to get the lowest possible price. This does not result in the hired engineering firms having large aounts of time in the budget to do a great job.
The architect then realizes “Hey! This is my chance to have my name associated with a fancy building!” and comes up with a bizzarre building that has no right angles and few plumb walls. The architects on campus talk about the brilliant use of space, the flowing lines, the organic learning areas, etc. The engineers on campus shake their heads and say “What a giant waste of money. What’s wrong with straight lines?”
Hmmm. Where was I going with this? Sorry, turned into a rant. I guess I’ll answer the OP by saying that often engineers do not respect architects and DO view them as fey artsy types who have little experience actually constructing things and no experience in or concern for maintaining the buildings they design.
I am currently working on a Gehry-designed project, Panama’s Bridge of Life Museum of Biodiversity. I’m Curator of Exhibitions, so fortunately I don’t need to be concerned about too many of the construction issues personally. But I know the engineers and contractors have been tearing their hair out about some aspects of the design.
Former structural engineer here. (Basically went as far as graduating with the degree, passing the EIT exam and working for six months before changing careers. Six month of yelling at Ecuadorans, Jamaicans and high school drop outs was plenty for me).
Architects design SPACES. They usually have a vague idea of how a building has to be built, but many don’t. They figure out what the building should look like, made out of, etc. They don’t like engineers because they have to dillute their “vision” with reality.
Structural engineers design the building to conform with the architects vision. For example, an artictect will design a blue building the shape of a 50’ square steel and glass box. The structural engineer will figure out what materials and what kind of frame will support such a building and try and conform to the architects plan as much as possible. They don’t like architects because their vision often has only a noding acquaintance with the laws of physics.
Contractors generally hate both of them because sometimes neither has an inkling of how their design must actually be put together.
It terms of lawsuits, the PE(s) who puts his stamp on the drawings essentially gives approval that the structure will stand and is thus liable. If the contractors and builders deviate from the plans provided by the PE they can be liable however there are inspectors and engineers who have to give their approval at various stages of construction.
It’s not just big projects like that. Architects of every shape and size like to make unique buildings that feed their ego and waste what is in many cases taxpayer money. And then the project runs out of money when it comes to building the good solid infrastructure that will make the building work for the next 70 years. I’ll stop now before I twist this into a IMHO.
Did I answer everything and not ramble too much?