¶ Buildings as Machines (1)
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Index Entry
Buildings as Machines:
“While buildings expand and contract physically between summer’s heat and winter’s cold, and even between night and day temperatures, those size changings are invisible to the human eye. While buildings are stressed importantly by great wind loads and snow loads-- great skyscrapers sway as much as a foot, but relatively slowly-- the deflective motions are invisible to man. Invisible also are the motions of the hands of the clock, or of atomic components of matter, though the latter hither-and-yon radiationally and locally, as matter, at 700 million mph, speeds. So also invisible to man are the vast high speed motions of the stars and the relatively slow growth of trees. When man cannot see the motion, he rarely thinks realistically about it. He is not prone to be usefully critical of the invisible, yet real, kinetics of design function suitability, nor of relative performance efficiency. Nor are humans inclined to put their experience to inventive advantage for others until they have had a long series of personal inconveniences and accidents to prompt them into comprehending the involved critical events which they cannot see.”
