William M. Greenburg
A new book contains details never published on defective structural engineering design and the construction of the Citicorp Center in Manhattan and the secret nightly repairs made in the summer of 1978.
Episode remained a secret to New Yorker Article in the magazine in 1995, after which it became a touchstone in the ethical education of engineering based on actions of the structural engineer William Lemessturier.
Alert for curious engineering students who were puzzled by the design and contacted him, Lemessurier finally realized the danger: a possibility of failure one in 16 if he was exposed to powerful winds that acted diagonally on the sides of the building. He later consulted other engineers, informed the owners of the problem building and saw repairs until the end.
The author, lawyer and popular historian William M. Greenburg It shows more of the less brander machinations and motifs, behind the scenes than the New York article or the stories after Enr. The resulting story is, therefore, more complex than the article in the magazine and decreases some, But not all, of the honor associated with the admission of Falla de Lemessurier.
Lemessurier, who died in 2007 at the age of 81, is the center of action. But there is a very rich context, from New York City in the 1970’s and the role of failure in the progress of structural design.
In the investigation The Great Mecalculation: The Race to Save New York Citicorp Tower (Nyu Press: $ 27.95), Greenburg dug in a private file of Lemessurier, as well as notes made by writer Joe Morgenstern New Yorker The article headed “the crisis of fifty-nine flats”. Greenburg describes the unusual innovative design, derived from the need To keep in place a small church in the place. Part of the Elementurier of the Tower framed in steel. Greenburg He writes in more detail the roles of two engineers then students who puzzled Lemessurier’s failure to consider the possibly devastating burdens that could be imposed on the winds diagonally or quarter.
The new reading of Greenburg material and its interviews with Lemessurier’s relatives and associates provide many new views on the crisis and the inner motifs of Lemessurier, most. In controversial, to help hide the nature of the repairs of the public and Enr. It was justified as needed to prevent panic.
Greenburg found the main file record preserved by Lemessurier, labeled Project Serene, an acronym for the special review of engineering for events that no one provides for, at the Harvard University Graduate Design School, where the Lemessurier papers are held. Morgenstern gracefully provided Greenburg its notes of interviews with the 1995 New York article.
Adding to the history of the Citicorp tower
In a telephone interview with Massachusetts, Greenburg, a real estate lawyer who has authored four history books, described his approach. “I wanted to add something new,” he said. Until then, the story of CITICORP “focused more on the ethics and aspects of the professional responsibility of the case,” said Greenburg, “but but Most readers will find that I try to focus more on human interest instead of engineering details. “
Among the numerous interviews that were combined with the narrative are other engineers and colleagues and members of the project team who questioned the structural engineer’s trial in their design. There are also less comments than flashes of the office manager of his New York company, who complained that he was unjustly perceived that he had something to do with the errors and an associate engineer in New York City, who said he was not deprived by the steel construction team of the building’s original design construction team of the wind -fashion connections to Bolts. Lemessurier stated that he had not been consulted about change.
This switching connection can be the key to what happened. One of the most innovative skyscrapers in a city full of them, known for its angular crown – departed from a design by architect Hugh Stubbins -, the project seems to have been built with a stricter separation between design and construction and between Lemessurier’s Cambridge, mass -based practice. and the engineer associated with New York City, who would not be ideal in a complex design. Where, you can ask, was the construction inspection that would have revealed and reported to Lemessurier the connection switch?
Greenburg exposes to Lemessurier and the process of defective design and construction and fragmented in all its dimensions as something less impressive than a single person’s heroic ethics lesson. Lemessurier, one of the great structural engineers in the world, understood that the error and repairs of the Citicorp tower would be his legacy as much or more than the buildings he designed.
But now the truths and ironies of Lemessurier’s famous confession can now be seen and taught more completely.
