[HN Gopher] "Strong focus on aesthetics" contributed to collapse...
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"Strong focus on aesthetics" contributed to collapse of Norway
timber bridge
Author : rntn
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-04-12 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dezeen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dezeen.com)
| te_chris wrote:
| Truly a generational parable for our times.
| voisin wrote:
| Architects' first commandment: always prioritize function over
| form.
| trgn wrote:
| Function over form is a false equivalency, a modernist fetish.
|
| Architect's first commandment should be to strive to a perfect
| integration of beauty, usefulness and durability. There are
| many real world examples, so it's not a trade-off.
|
| Plus, that "strong focus on aesthetics" seem to be a throwaway
| comment in the report, and it is disputed by the design studio
| who built the bridge.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It presupposes a false _dichotomy_, one that misunderstands
| the nature of beauty. A building's beauty will in large part
| be a matter of its _function_. It it not just a matter of
| decoration, which is important, but does not exhaust the
| aesthetic concerns of an architect.
|
| The Pantheon in Rome is an especially nice sign of
| contradiction, but it is hardly alone.
|
| We are human beings, not some consumerist homo economicus
| that exists merely to eat, shit, drink, and copulate and in a
| bestial manner. Let us care about the beauty of our
| environment. This can be done even within means. Beauty is a
| transcendental. Those who attack it, or insult it, who
| denigrate it, who dismiss it are misanthropes and enemies of
| the entire human race.
| trgn wrote:
| right on!
| zdragnar wrote:
| "prioritizing function over form" is not a dichotomy,
| merely a statement that _when_ the two are in conflict,
| function should win.
|
| That does not strictly mean that the two are _always_ in
| conflict.
|
| I am more than a machine without feeling, but I prefer my
| bridges to not collapse when I drive on them, no matter how
| pretty they are.
| chx wrote:
| Nah. Have you seen the Sydney Opera House?
| voisin wrote:
| Something can be beautiful without sacrificing function. It
| isn't "function only"; it's "function over form".
| HPsquared wrote:
| Have you ever HEARD it? The acoustics are famously terrible.
| That's sacrificing function.
| hilux wrote:
| Unsurprisingly, this is Wurster Hall, home of the Architecture
| School (aka "College of Environmental Design") at UC Berkeley:
| https://www.sosbrutalism.org/cms/15892267
| trgn wrote:
| Horrific, but salvageable. Put on a wide overhang flat roof,
| so rain no longer streaks down the wall, and wash/paint it.
| Then, it will just be a large no frills classroom building.
| Not great, but no longer offensive either.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Legitimately makes some prisons look inviting. The bare
| concrete, which the dirt makes it look like it is rotting
| away, gives it the charm of an uninhibited ruin. Even on the
| brightest days the shadows of the building will make you
| inexplicably cold, while the oppressive outside has cut many
| conversations short.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Any good design is a collaboration of art and engineering,
| where the end result accomplishes the technical requirements
| and integrates itself into the world around it in an
| appropriate way. Neither of these can be considered alone,
| function has a form of its own, just like form has a function
| of it's own.
|
| Architects aren't structural engineers and only in dialogue
| good infrastructure can be created.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sounds miserably similar to this one:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_Universi...
|
| Though the FIU one collapsed within a week of the fatally flawed
| span first being _installed_.
| wrycoder wrote:
| That was due to a design calculation error, not some aesthetic
| concern.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > The new pedestrian bridge was designed to connect the
| campus to student housing in a dramatic, sculptural way and
| also to showcase the school's leadership in the ABC method of
| rapid bridge construction.[16][17]
|
| And from my recollection of coverage at the time - FIU's
| administrative pressure to deliver their dramatic & leading-
| edge-construction bridge, quick and cheap, lead to all sorts
| of corner cutting in the engineering & fabrication.
| jeffbee wrote:
| To me the root cause was they just could not see a way to
| inconvenience even one single driver ever. They had to
| grade separate pedestrians from cars over a freeway and a
| gigantic parking lot. Universities should be pedestrian
| focused.
|
| The bridge could have been designed correctly. But the
| fundamental issue was the bridge didn't need to exist.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| I think that's more of an auxiliary issue than the
| "fundamental" one. Space is limited, and a nice (and non-
| collapsing) bridge could be more convenient for
| pedestrians than however things would be laid out on the
| ground even if there wasn't a road there. Safe bridges
| should be able to exist, whether one would have been
| needed in this exact spot in an alternate reality or not.
|
| It's also very telling for you to condense "a freeway and
| a gigantic parking lot" down to "one single driver ever."
| Five motorists wouldn't have been killed by the collapse
| alone if "one single driver" was the only one who ever
| used it.
| Animats wrote:
| No, it was due to a really lame attempt to make something
| that looked like a cable-stayed bridge but wasn't.
|
| Here's the bridge in Norway, before collapse.[1] That is
| something that should never have been made of wood.
|
| [1] https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2022/08/tretten-bridge-
| nor...
| jandrese wrote:
| It just looks so wrong that the cross members don't switch
| direction in the middle. I can't even look at that bridge
| without getting creeped out.
| replygirl wrote:
| that's a pretty political spin. if i remember correctly the
| bridge in florida was entirely feasible but they got the
| pre-tensioning and assembly wrong.
| alricb wrote:
| The NTSB found that it was actually that the 11/12 node
| region was too weak as designed, an error that wasn't
| caught by the reviewer.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Nor of any other material. Between the insanely shallow
| truss depth at the right end of it, and the "can't tell
| compression from tension" decision to slant all the
| diagonal members in the same direction - that bridge is a
| poster child for "I Flunked Engineering 201".
| trgn wrote:
| I almost feel like intuition tells you that. It literally
| looks like it can fold down flat. A regular truss bridge
| looks like a honeycomb, straining, but balanced.
| tiahura wrote:
| Weren't both of these dei showcases?
| bunabhucan wrote:
| The actual report with animated video and english subtitles:
|
| https://www.nsia.no/Road/Published-reports/2024-03
|
| I translated some of the norweigan paragraps that include
| "estetik" but I can't figure out if they mean "they should have
| used steel" or they mean "the diagonal members should change
| direction to keep them in compression" or both.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| I think this is the quote that is most relevant
|
| > En kombinert stalbjelkebru med betongdekke var mulig, men ble
| utelukket pa grunn av estetikken og begrensningene i
| veigeometrien under og pa brua.
|
| which states that aesthetics and road geometry together ruled
| out a combined steel and concrete bridge.
|
| there's also:
|
| > Artikkelen beskriver avslutningsvis at det i pre-designfasen
| var flere retningslinjer knyttet til utformingen av brua.
| Videre star det at teamet som prosjekterte brua ble pavirket av
| andre prosjekter pa den aktuelle tiden, og at Oppland fylke var
| et skogsbruksfylke der tre har vaert et viktig byggemateriale.
| Dette, kombinert med fordelene av det lette dekket, medforte at
| en trebru var det beste alternativet. Kombinasjonen av tre og
| stal gjorde det ogsa mulig a utforme brua som onsket, uten
| ekstra avstivning ved aksene.
|
| But in the end the above just amounts to "they could have built
| a conventional bridge but wanted something prettier": basically
| aesthetics contributed to the collapse because it was the
| primary reason they built something _novel_.
|
| Had there instead been some site specific geometry that forced
| a novel solution, one wonders if they had blamed that...
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Well, either would work: Steel can be easily fitted to take
| tension loads; Or the wood could be oriented to be in
| compression, with the ends butted against other structure thus
| relieving the bolts of most of the load.
|
| Here's one that combines both techniques:
|
| https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
|
| What was done instead concentrated the tension stress onto a
| small central core section of the member, with rest transferred
| to wood grain-aligned, therefore weak, sheer faces within the
| timber.
|
| Thanks for the video: To anyone who's spent some time working
| with wooden garden gates, that's enough to tell the story.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| > "A short construction period, span lengths and reuse of
| existing foundation were framework conditions for the planning of
| the bridge," it continued.
|
| > "These framework conditions, combined with the choice of
| material and a strong focus on aesthetics, contributed to the
| structure not being robust."
|
| Given that it doesn't look that remarkable it seems odd that a
| little asymmetry couldn't be accounted for. Or was someone out
| there saying "we'll never build symmetric bridges, our river is
| too good for them..." Because the rest of the article makes it
| sound more like an engineering failure.
| mperham wrote:
| The key line IMO: Tretten Bridge was designed
| while building regulations in Norway were in transition from a
| national system to European codes. Provisions for this
| transitional period enabled the project to follow the older
| national standards, which unlike the Eurocodes did not account
| for block shear failure.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| Kind of. I should have thought the engineers involved would
| have been good enough to design a bridge that would have lasted
| more than a decade, even if the regulations weren't as
| rigorous.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Somehow I feel like it's not the engineers who needed the
| regulations...
| Quekid5 wrote:
| One would hope... but corporate structures can apply a LOT of
| pressure which can end up impairing judgment or resistance to
| decisions by higher-level executives. It might or might not
| be the issue here, but it's definitely been seen in past
| disasters.
|
| (It's similar to the more readily/well understood "peer
| pressure", but even more insidious.)
| rdtsc wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tretten_Bridge
|
| The ironic part is "The bridge replaced a steel truss bridge
| built in 1895 at the same location". Engineers in 1895 knew how
| to use steel trusses and built a bridge that lasted 100+ years,
| and in 2012 they decided to use glued wooden beams and it fell
| apart in 10 years.
|
| Well perhaps Plan Arkitekter and Norconsult can take a trip to
| the archives and see what the engineers in 1895 knew before
| building any more structures.
| loeg wrote:
| > Engineers in 1895 knew how to use steel trusses and built a
| bridge that lasted 100+ years
|
| It's a little too strong of a claim. Plenty of poorly designed
| steel bridges from the 19th century have collapsed as well,
| despite the superior material.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Plenty of poorly designed steel bridges from the 19th
| century have collapsed as well
|
| That's true. But I only meant that particular bridge, which
| did last for 100+ years. So, when the architects and the
| engineers go to the archives to relearn a few things, they
| can focus on the ones which haven't collapsed.
| hellofellows wrote:
| + why even remove the steel bridge in the first place?
| speedgoose wrote:
| You have more pictures on the Norwegian Wikipedia page: h
| ttps://no.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tretten_bru#/media/Fil%3AT
| re...
|
| The old one wasn't wide while the new one had two lanes
| and a normal sized sidewalk.
| TylerE wrote:
| Moisture causes corrosion.
|
| Rivers produce lots of moisture.
|
| Corrosion weakens the steel. It's literally the metal
| flaking away.
|
| All steel corrodes. Even stainless.
|
| Once corrosion sets in and the outside of the metal
| starts to pit, the corrosion speeds up drastically. (The
| old area vs volume thing, same thing that makes lump coal
| difficult to ignite while aerosolized coal dust is
| practically an explosive).
|
| Here's a modern US bridge - all steel - that collapsed in
| Pittsburgh two years ago. In some areas over 80% of the
| original steel thinkness was gone after 49 years.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-VnWB4fiFk
| Gare wrote:
| Paint protects steel. A frequently painted steel bridge
| can last centuries.
|
| As always, lack of maintenance and poor design choices
| (use of corten steel) are the culprit.
| TylerE wrote:
| Something like 20% of the bridges in this country are 10
| years or more past their design lifetime and mostly not
| due to be replaced any time soon. You think they're
| keeping on top of painting every one? Saying preventing
| corrosion is as easy as slapping on paint is like saying
| computer security is as easy as not leaking your
| password. There are a million things that could happen,
| many of which are outside what any single person could
| control.
| Gare wrote:
| I don't know in what poor country you live, but in my
| country bridges are well maintained and I don't recall a
| single critical failure. Even though we're one of the
| poorest EU countries.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| I don't know in what rich poor EU country you live, but
| in my "rich country" bridges are basically left to their
| own devices until a critical problem occurs and then they
| hastily start repairing it. In some cases they've been
| repairing bridges for decades that way. Some have
| recently finally actually been replaced or are being
| replaced. But nobody is going out and replacing a bridge
| that isn't on the brink of collapse and held up by
| "essentially duct tape".
| TylerE wrote:
| https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges-
| infras...
|
| "There are more than 617,000 bridges across the United
| States. Currently, 42% of all bridges are at least 50
| years old, and 46,154, or 7.5% of the nation's bridges,
| are considered structurally deficient, meaning they are
| in "poor" condition. Unfortunately, 178 million trips are
| taken across these structurally deficient bridges every
| day. In recent years, though, as the average age of
| America's bridges increases to 44 years, the number of
| structurally deficient bridges has continued to decline;
| however, the rate of improvements has slowed. A recent
| estimate for the nation's backlog of bridge repair needs
| is $125 billion. We need to increase spending on bridge
| rehabilitation from $14.4 billion annually to $22.7
| billion annually, or by 58%, if we are to improve the
| condition. At the current rate of investment, it will
| take until 2071 to make all of the repairs that are
| currently necessary, and the additional deterioration
| over the next 50 years will become overwhelming."
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Now do a quick internet search for "hammersmith bridge".
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| There so far haven't been any steel bridges that have
| actually lasted centuries, even if we highly suspect that
| they are capable of it with the right maintenance.
| TylerE wrote:
| Good point. The really old ones are iron.
|
| ETA: Also, the ones that have survived aren't road
| bridges. They're either railway bridges (and thus were
| built strong in the first place) or have been relegated
| to historic preservation/pedestrian use only. Modern cars
| and (especially commercial) trucks are far heavier than
| early vehicles. A road bridge built in the 1850s was only
| designed to carry foot traffic and horsedrawn vehicles.
| cwillu wrote:
| Ode to The Paint on Nuclear Submarines
| The purpose of the hull is to protect the paint.
| The purpose of the reactor is to drive the paint around.
| The purpose of the SUBSAFE program is to ensure the paint
| comes to the surface and will not be lost. The
| purpose of the cathodic protection system is to back up
| the paint. The purpose of the weapons is to
| defend the paint. The purpose of the Special Hull
| Treatment is to protect the paint. The purpose of
| the Vertical Launch System is to destroy those who would
| do the paint harm.
|
| --Naval Research Lab
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| To be fair, there have been a lot of advancements in timber
| and glue -- They just didn't take into account their
| weaknesses when designing (e.g. Stress that would pull
| laminated beams apart).
| Gare wrote:
| There are always unknown unknowns in trying new designs
| and/or materials. Even with all the simulations and
| calculations, nothing beats experience.
|
| Sure, novel things should be tried, but in a conservative
| manner. Overdesign first, then optimize iteratively.
| Because failure costs lives.
| mcphage wrote:
| Glulam isn't a new material, it's over 100 years old.
| Gare wrote:
| How many 70 m span glulam road bridges have been built in
| those 100 years?
| ajross wrote:
| Isn't that basically arguing "Don't talk to me about
| statistics, I want to talk about this one specific data
| point"?
|
| Bridges on the whole are pretty clearly better built and
| safer today then they were 130 years ago. I don't think
| there's any significant argument to the contrary. There are
| outliers in both directions, obviously. The old one at this
| site looks like it was pretty great. The new one sucked.
| That doesn't say much about _why_ that was true, just that
| it was.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Isn't that basically arguing "Don't talk to me about
| statistics, I want to talk about this one specific data
| point"?
|
| For sure, we can each talk about different things. I can
| talk about ironic things and you can talk about
| statistics, and we can still be friends!
|
| > That doesn't say much about why that was true, just
| that it was.
|
| Well, why do you think it sucked?
| mannykannot wrote:
| > Isn't that basically arguing "Don't talk to me about
| statistics, I want to talk about this one specific data
| point"?
|
| And why not? In this particular case, the statistics did
| not justify the expectation that this bridge would be at
| least as robust as the one it replaced.
|
| Speaking in generalities when the topic is a specific
| incident is a way of missing the point.
| Gare wrote:
| > Plenty of poorly designed steel bridges from the 19th
| century have collapsed as well, despite the superior
| material.
|
| Disagree. In late 19th century steel girder bridges were well
| understood and many of them survive to this day.
|
| They were usually replaced due to changed demands (wider
| roads, heavier loads), not because of failure.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Well to paraphrase a common saying, it's easy to build a bridge
| that stands, but it's difficult to make sure that is so
| optimized that it's on the verge of failing but still somehow
| stands.
| VelesDude wrote:
| A good engineer can make a bridge that stands 1,000 years. A
| great one makes one that can stand 100 years.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Tretten Bridge, not to be confused with (Lower) Trenton Bridge,
| the most passive aggressive bridge in the world.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/20...
| hellofellows wrote:
| damn... world doesn't buys but takes..by force?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Could also be "Trenton active, the world passive"
| HPsquared wrote:
| Snappy, inspiring... I like it
| keybored wrote:
| It's like the body of an OSS maintainer and the mind of a HN
| commenter. Well in the body of a bridge.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Here's the daylight view:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2023-09-04_13_02_10_View_...
|
| I'd say it is a very conventional (& rock-solid) steel through-
| truss bridge, with a bunch of neon 'tude tacked onto its side.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| App makers, you've been warned
| deanresin wrote:
| The idea that a "strong focus on aesthetics" contributed to the
| failure of a bridge doesn't make any logical sense. Employing a
| strong focus on aesthetics doesn't preclude also having the
| necessary focus on stability and safety. Bridges fail because
| they were not designed or engineered properly.
| digging wrote:
| I don't agree; to me it states they were _so_ focused on
| aesthetics that they weren 't able to see structural flaws.
| Like tunnel vision. Seems like the best way to state this
| phenomenon IMO.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Employing a strong focus on aesthetics doesn't preclude also
| having the necessary focus on stability and safety
|
| No, you just have to pay a lot more for it, and civil projects
| don't typically allow for endlessly ballooning budgets.
| soneca wrote:
| How do you focus in two different things?
|
| You can strongly value two (or more) things, but when you
| decide to _focus_ on something, as I understand the term, you
| necessarily preclude _focusing_ on another thing.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Err, the actual quotes make it sound more like plain old
| engineering troubles, made more complicated by the discrepancy
| between older and newer building codes.
|
| > "A short construction period, span lengths and reuse of
| existing foundation were framework conditions for the planning of
| the bridge," [the report by the NSIA] continued.
|
| I understand why a design website would emphasize the design
| aspects though.
| blt wrote:
| Never seen a truss where the diagonal members are all one
| direction like that. Also bit weird that the strongest part of
| the bridge is not the middle of the longest span, but it does not
| appear to be cantilever. Disclaimer: I am a mere Poly Bridge
| player.
| btbuildem wrote:
| That's so strange! Looking through the photos on the page,
| there's one showing the bridge still intact.
|
| It's almost as if someone accidentally flipped the materials --
| the members that work in compression are were made of metal, the
| members under tension, out of lumber. That's the opposite of what
| each material is naturally strong at.
| ars wrote:
| Actually wood is stronger in tensile: "tensile strength of
| soft- woods parallel to grain at 12% moisture content generally
| ranges between 70 to 140MPa. The compression strength is lower
| and is usually in the range 30 to 60 MPa."
|
| Steel is similar in strength both ways, although it varies a
| lot depending on how it was annealed. (The harder the metal the
| better compression is vs tensile.)
| exabrial wrote:
| reminds me of "modern" web development.
| notatoad wrote:
| Somewhat amusing to see this headline on deezen, the site that
| usually celebrates a "strong focus on aesthetics" above all else.
| varjag wrote:
| Bookmark this for the next time you read "if construction
| engineers built like programmers" trope.
| blagie wrote:
| To be fair, it was really pretty!
| liftm wrote:
| I suppose assthetics is in the eye of the beeholder?
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