How has skyscraper design changed since 9/11?

Miles O'Brien did a report for PBS NewsHour on how the technology and design of skyscrapers has changed since 9/11. Video here, transcript here.

The World Trade Center collapse was a "stark and stunning" reminder to architects and engineers of the value of using concrete to protect skyscrapers from the ravages of fire. This report was produced in collaboration with the PBS program "NOVA," which ran an hour-long feature here about the specific project which was the focus of this video.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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LintMan

I flipped to the Nova special last night as I was about to head to bed and couldn’t stop watching it. It looks at the design and construction of both the 9/11 memorial and the new 1 WTC tower. It looks like the video is available to watch at the link above – definitely recommended.
Corwin Joy

It’s hard to see the world trade center rebuild as a model. Last I heard there is a more than 2.2 billion dollar cost overrun at the world trade center site. The Village Voice had an interesting piece on this, “9/11, the winners:”

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-08-31/news/9-11-the-winners-profiting-from-september-eleventh/
http://twitter.com/sampowers Sam Powers

I know he’s a well-established journalist and all, but the trekkie in me still can’t get over the fact that his name is Miles O’Brien.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=534714149 James Higgins

Related: A recent (Wednesday) Kojo Nnamdi show piece on architecture of government buildings, guests include GSA Commissioner of Public Buildings http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2011-09-07/architecture-security-legacy-911-government-buildings
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QBZFGY2HG5W3M2KYURA2V6AK2I Benjamin

At around 3:38:
“Concrete that can withstand loads of 14,000 feet per square inch”

I think he means “14,000 POUNDS per square inch”
- Mister44
  
  Maybe he meant 14,000 one pound feet.
cymk

Considering only 350 went up in the last decade, I doubt any of them have the same cultural & finacial significance that the WTC towers did. Last time i checked WTC wasn’t picked just because it was tall.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-911-skyscrapers-hawthorne-20110904,0,2792749.story
http://www.facebook.com/people/Press-Watch/100000381641661 Press Watch

How have Newton’s laws of momentum, or the melting point of steel, changed since 9/11/01?
- gerbalblaste
  
  Structural engineering, architecture, concrete and steel formulations have undergone significant innovation since 1973 when WTC was built. Also, as the video explains, new innovation has occurred at a tremendous rate since 2001.
machinestate

How has it changed?
I’m guessing there’s now less super-thermite lining the insides of structural steel beams before being shipped to the construction site.
(Oh, I’m such a kidder =p)
Roscoe

Xeni, are you really not going to touch the WTC7 story at all? I know NPR won’t… but please, there needs to be just a little counterbalance to the weeklong tear-fest. I know you can do it, I know you know about it…
- machinestate
  
  NatGeo spent less than a single minute on 7, basically describing it as the “last little straw” that us ignorant, unrealistic, america-hating truthers grab at, while spending the remaining 45 mins of their little Truther’s series slandering us as mental patients, and repeating the same tried crap from PopMech, which is a far-cry from an acclaimed and authoritative scientific journal)
  - Teller
    
    For the last time: Obama was born in Hawaii.
    oh.
- ocschwar
  
  “Xeni, are you really not going to touch the WTC7 story at all? ”
  
  How about a story on WTC6 ? The one that was, uh, flattened completely by debris from 1&2? This is so unfair, all this attention on 1, 2, and 7, and none on 6. I blame numerologists.
Zachary Nelson

The original design earned the architects awards for excellent and highly redundant design.
Navin_Johnson

The symbol of America: Outsourced manufacturing, Chinese tenants, an office tower built by commuter tolls….

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/9/rebuilt_ground_zero_billed_as_national
http://about.me/achernow achernow

Interesting video. I didn’t see the Nova special, unfortunately, however, the video that you shared here reminded me of a conversation that I had with my RA back on 9/11/01.

I was a sophomore in college in 2001 and being a broadcasting student I was fascinated by the coverage of the initial plane crashes and then the subsequent collapse and search and rescue operations. However, it wasn’t until a conversation with my RA, who was a structural engineering student, that I really understood why a plane crash could bring down a building.

He related the way the WTC buildings were built to how (Carpenter) Tower Hall, the dorm we lived in, was constructed. Tower Hall was built in the 1920′s, and therefore, is of the era where the buildings were built to withstand basically anything. He was explaining that a similar type of plane crash would have incinerated the inside of the building, however, the building itself would largely have been left standing because of the amount of structural support it had. (Of course, Tower Hall being only 16 floors wasn’t much of a target even then, however East Hall was darkened as much as it could be because it was a more visible tower / landmark in downtown Milwaukee.)

Anyway… The video reminded me of that conversation I had back on 9/11/01.

(And quite honestly, I can’t believe it’s been 10 years. I remember a lot from that day including being glued to TV for HOURS in a room with a bunch of broadcast kids to the line outside of Subway on Wells because Marquette shutdown everything, including campus dining halls.)
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/42THFKXIPMJHQBIH6OPI4RVIDY Thebes

Have they ever come up with a rational explanation why some of the steel cores were sheered cleanly at an angle as if cut?
That would seem a good start at preventing a repeat. Only 3 concrete and steel high-rises have ever collapsed due to “fire”, and they all happened on the same day at the same place.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JG5AYMZ2NLPAERVKIS2SCIZDPQ Nothing Much
  
  Man you did not listen to the first part of the video. At the old apt complex even there the fire was hot enough to sag steel. You’d think that after a decade the 9/11 ‘truthers’ could whip up a finite element model to show their point. As for steel sheering cleanly, guess what happens with materials fail under sudden shock loads? They fail on 45 deg lines of maximal sheer. That’s just basic materials science dude. That’s mother nature, and muther nature is a real mutha!
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    You’d think that after a decade the 9/11 ‘truthers’ could whip up a finite element model to show their point.
    
    Your reptilian overlords would tell you to say that.
ocschwar

“That would seem a good start at preventing a repeat. Only 3 concrete and steel high-rises have ever collapsed due to “fire”, and they all happened on the same day at the same place.”

Windsor tower in Madrid and McCormick building in Chicago. So that makes it 5. Because civil engineers work hard to make this kind of event a rare one.
- travtastic
  
  The Madrid fire resulted in a partial collapse after gutting the building down to the frame. It was actually demolished later.
  
  https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:TorreWindsor1.JPG
  
  Also, the McCormick Place fire was a (full) roof collapse on a big, flat, low-profile building.
UncaScrooge

To me, the most interesting conspiracy from the September 11th terrorist attacks was the conspiracy between the government and the media to give conspiracy theorists a massive trove of broken data to play with followed by a few too-little-too-late rebuttals. Sure, there would have been 9/11 Truthers no matter what the Media-Horrification-Complex did, but they reacted to the problem as if the internet did not exist.
fraac

I encourage everyone to tweet “@milesobrien I’ve nothing to say to you, O’Brien. I think you know why.”

I’d especially like it if @trike11 did this. Thank you.
RedShirt77

Its good to see the truthers out again. They are a breath of fresh air after the birthers, climate deniers, evolution deniers, and Anti-Vaccine people.

I haven’t seen a good space lazer story in years.
peaceloveunderstanding

the world trade centers had concrete cores. Really. physics were re-written this day
- BarBarSeven
  
  Really? How strong were those cores? Were they designed to withstand a fire caused by a catastrophic plane disaster where the plane was fully loaded with fuel and just smashed right into it?
  
  Seriously, this is the kind of WTC reporting I want to hear about. Real, practical info on how design has changed and how the WTC events are causing a paradigm shift in how buildings are built. Excellent, excellent stuff!!!
http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

It occurred to me after the September 11, 2001 attack that a great way to evacuate really big buildings would be to equip them with tubes that you could simply fall down. At the bottom the tubes would curve so that falling people would slide away from the building through an underground tunnel. For lubrication some of the water used for firefighting would be sprayed in to the tube. Branching points at many floors would enable people to jump in, so to speak, with a traffic control system to minimize the risk of collisions.
- siloxane
  
  Emergency escape chute systems do already exist. For example:
  Verti-Scape
  Risk Safety Sytems
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Does that explain the Centre Pompidou?
    - ocschwar
      
      Nothing can explain the Centre Pompidou. It’s named after the mayor of Paris who wanted to make the Seine a 4 lane expressway with an onramp right outside the Notre Dame Cathedral. The Centre Pompidou is proof of the existence of the inexplicable.
      - Teller
        
        The Center Pompidou was hailed by Time Magazine and the architectural elite as the apotheosis of the new High-Tech movement. Its ugliness in Paris is unmatched. Nevertheless it offers remarkable views of the city it blights.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Personally, I think that the Eiffel Tower is hideous, but apparently the bulk of humanity disagrees with me. At least the Centre Pompidou can’t be seen from half of Europe.
      - Teller
        
        What’s cool about the Eiffel Tower – when you’re on it, you can’t tell it’s leaning.
  - BarBarSeven
    
    Yeah, those things are really effective. Let’s say someone above the crash zone of the planes that hit the WTC had parachutes. Do you really think that the heat, flame and smoke wouldn’t affect the average office worker who would jump out of a window with that thing?
    
    Workers who work at high-risk jobs and who are exposed to the elements can use that stuff. Someone who gets upset at the printer jamming would jump out with that thing, get tangled in something in a few seconds and then fall to their death.
    
    The best solution for a man-made height problem is to truly build the buildings to fail. Truly fail.
    
    The WTC was designed to survive the impact of a plane hitting, but not the flames and heat of a kerosene fueled fire. That is the key. And now hopefully the new buildings on the WTC site—as well as others built since 9/11—will be built with that in mind.
    - Adela Doiron
      
      “but not the flames and heat of a kerosene fueled fire.”
      Which supports the argument for planes to use non areosoling gel fuels. Making planes less of a flying bomb is an all round safety win for more than just skyscrapers.
      - BarBarSeven
        
        How easy and how much cost would it be to retrofit current planes to use non areosoling gel fuels?
        
        Because if it’s costly and planes can’t easily be retrofitted, then the solution is null and void. Because all planes would need to be using non areosoling gel fuel to make it an effective solution.
      - ocschwar
        
        “Because if it’s costly and planes can’t easily be retrofitted, then the solution is null and void.”
        
        Here’s a simpler solution: high speed rail. It can cut down on the number of planes in the air.
    - Maureen Geoghegan
      
      “Workers who work at high-risk jobs and who are exposed to the elements
      can use that stuff. Someone who gets upset at the printer jamming would
      jump out with that thing, get tangled in something in a few seconds and
      then fall to their death.”
      
      Also, too many fatties.
bobrk

Not looking forward to the Truther storm this weekend.
http://profiles.google.com/davidabarak David Barak

Actually, someone designed something like that several years ago, I’m almost certain it was way before 9/11. The tubes were more like gigantic nylon stocking that spreads apart as you moved through it and closes back up behind you. I guess it would slow people down enough so friction burns weren’t a problem, and people may have even been able to control their rate of decent. So much I’ve forgotten since I saw the video clip. I did a quick Google search and didn’t find anything.
http://twitter.com/gordonjcp gordonjcp

Anyone who reckons you can’t use jet fuel (paraffin) to melt steel is welcome to pop round and play with my forge once I get it set up again. The burner is an old heating boiler one, running on perfectly ordinary heating oil (again, paraffin). It melts steel until it’s as soft as toffee in about a minute.

Everyone going on about how structural steel melts at 1600°C – you do realise you’re talking about the temperature at which it’s a liquid, right? At that temperature, steel is as runny as molten solder. You don’t need to get a steel structure that hot for it to fail. You can heat a crowbar up so the middle is so soft you can tie a knot in it, and have the ends cool enough to pick it up with your bare hands.

TL;DR – if you’ve never worked with steel, keep quiet about how the structure failed.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Smith/714041653 Jim Smith
  
  Great post. Especially structural steel under huge loads, the fail temperature would be way under 1600C
  - http://twitter.com/gordonjcp gordonjcp
    
    Well, the other one is the “cut” structural members, with a nice clean line diagonally across them. Even from blurry low-res photos you can see that the “cut” joins two rivet-holes. What’s that? A stress riser, y’say? Well, it could be…
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JG5AYMZ2NLPAERVKIS2SCIZDPQ Nothing Much
  
  The blast furnace analogy is pretty apt. Look at all the paper flying around before collapse. How did that paper get outside the building? Because the fire set up a huge draft of wind that fed the fire to very high temps.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Smith/714041653 Jim Smith

I would love to see an IQ comparison between truthers and non truthers. I reckon there would be 20 points difference at least.
Gulliver

Next stop…Trantor.
rbvm

Remember Building 7
Ben Burger

I think the buildings from the early 20th century look better than the glass towers
thelayercake

best of luck re-designing something so it can’t be blown up from explosives planted on the support beams throughout the entire building.
- Mister44
  
  That’s just what the Reptillians want you to think!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ettel-Chava-Rosenabaum/624043628 Ettel Chava Rosenabaum

WHY WHY WHY, of all the new buildings at the wtc, is not one as tall or taller than the twin towers, (never mind the big pointless spire). what happened to our promise to rebuild bigger and better? not only do we build smaller but can’t even call it the freedom tower?
machinestate

OPERATION NORTHWOODS, RABARABARABA

but seriously, someone found out what really happened to WTC7 and no cynic or truther has had even the faintest clue, nor any rebuttal! (look b4 its gone, also refresh it as soon as it loads, or it won’t sync the a/v correctly) http://wtcnd.ytmnd.com
machinestate

@gordonjcp the twin towers were obviously hit by airplanes, but also the windows were vented, depressurized jet fuel burns out quickly. assuming nothing dirty happened, it was the rivets in the beams that softened at the threshold temperature to cause static structural failure of the steel beams. there is virtually zero airgap or temperature difference between steel beams, and their attached fasteners. but rivets/trusses, having much snmaller cross-sections, can bear much less maximum load than a big fat beam. what doesn’t make sense, particularly for second tower which was completely vented in its burn zone, is why the high T-conductivity of the steel still allowed the rivets to overheat before the jetfuel burned away? the secondary fires were much lower temperture and more widespread than the fuel fires. @RedShirt77 way to be a generalizing, ignorant fool. why should all “truthers” be assumed “right wing” or even “libertarian” when they have nothign do do with other such stereotyped-rightwingers like firearms rights activism, decriminalization, smaller government, less corporate influence in governance, “birthers” (whom are mostly only in it to desparately seek attn) and anti-vaccinists (some of us are just cleaner people, or otherwise dont need mysterious witch-brew shots because we do not get sick. ever. sure, MMR, polio, etc is important as a kid because it hasn’t chjanged much over the decades. i will go to prison before receiving a flu shot, they jumble some brand new batch together every year for that absolute shit)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=811163 Andy Schultz

For most people, it’s possible to care about multiple issues at once. The idea that people, or America, or Congress only have the attention span to focus on a single topic is a straw man argument.