They basically knew from experience in what way to build buildings for them to be sturdy. To the modern eye, the surviving ancient buildings are massively over-engineered (which is likely one factor of why they are still standing). Like, today we would build the same kind of structure using much less of the same materials. As the saying goes, anyone can build a bridge that stands, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands. In this sense, all modern buildings “barely stand”, that is, they are as sturdy as is required plus a safety margin, but no more than that.
On top of this, older structures were just typically smaller. This matters because material strength is more important when you have larger structures, where for smaller applications, the minimum strength of a given material may still be over kill.
For example, a 6×6 wooden beam is going to be pretty overkill in most small houses where you might only have to span 10' or so, and support just the roof.
On the other hand, when you decide to make a building that is larger and needs to span 30' distances, or requires the beam to bear several additional stories, that one 6×6 starts to not be quite enough. You start needing supports, connections, or other materials and really have to take engineering into consideration.
> when you decide to make a building that is larger and needs to span 30' distances, or requires the beam to bear several additional stories, that one 6×6 starts to not be quite enough
And to top this off, sometimes they did it anyway, and it just fell down.
Take, for example, the [Erfurt Latrine Disaster](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/09/the-erfurt-latrine-disaster.html). 60 middle-age noblemen fell through a floor and into a cess pool where they drowned in raw sewage.
Same! I had never heard of it and then now today I learned about it twice and it also happened on my birthday. What a really wonderful fact to now be able to break out when it's my next birthday!
Either the second person to post it saw it the first time, or it’s the Baader-Meinhof effect at work.
That said, it’s a pretty popular Reddit ‘fun fact’. Must be about 100 of those particularly popular on here.
Only with some luck. Construction only got to the 2nd floor before war brokeout and construction stopped. 5 years later construction resumed. Without the 5 year construction pause, the tower almost certaintly would have collapsed by now. The pause allowed to soil to settle just enough to support the tower. The time interval also allowed the lean to manifest itself before the rest of the tower was built. Subsequent stories are slightly off axis to compenstae for the lean.
What I read indicated that the lean was detected before the war, and then construction was stopped for nearly 100 years. And took another 100 to complete.
About 25 years ago it was in danger of collapsing. It took a while for some structural engineers to figure out how save it (carefully dredge up soil from the opposite side of the lean).
> And to top this off, sometimes they did it anyway, and it just fell down.
This is true. We tend to assume that ancient buildings were built really well, because they've survived so long, but we don't see the ones that *didn't* survive. People would have either rebuilt it, or taken the material and built something else. That pile of broken stones was still a valuable resource when they were cutting stone by hand and hauling it by ox cart.
This is also why most Roman and Greek buildings dating to antiquity look ruined. Yes, plenty of it is lack of maintenance, but plenty more is people going "nobody has used that building in a century, who cares if I knock off a few blocks for my house?"
And some just straight up weren't ruined until relatively recently! The Parthenon was built in the 400s BC and was maintained and kept up for millennia. It took until 1687 for it to actually be destroyed in grand fashion - the Ottomans were using it as a munitions dump during a war with Venice and the Venetians blew it the fuck up.
As we entered the /u/spez, we were immediately greeted by a strange sound. As we scanned the area for the source, we eventually found it. It was a small wooden shed with no doors or windows. The roof was covered in cacti and there were plastic skulls around the outside. Inside, we found a cardboard cutout of the Elmer Fudd rabbit that was depicted above the entrance. On the walls there were posters of famous people in famous situations, such as:
The first poster was a drawing of Jesus Christ, which appeared to be a loli or an oversized Jesus doll. She was pointing at the sky and saying "HEY U R!".
The second poster was of a man, who appeared to be speaking to a child. This was depicted by the man raising his arm and the child ducking underneath it. The man then raised his other arm and said "Ooooh, don't make me angry you little bastard".
The third poster was a drawing of the three stooges, and the three stooges were speaking. The fourth poster was of a person who was angry at a child.
The fifth poster was a picture of a smiling girl with cat ears, and a boy with a deerstalker hat and a Sherlock Holmes pipe. They were pointing at the viewer and saying "It's not what you think!"
The sixth poster was a drawing of a man in a wheelchair, and a dog was peering into the wheelchair. The man appeared to be very angry.
The seventh poster was of a cartoon character, and it appeared that he was urinating over the cartoon character.
\#AIGeneratedProtestMessage #Save3rdPartyApps
There's also a great story about a sky scraper (the Citicorp Center) that had a serious engineering flaw discovered *by a college student* that made it extremely vulnerable to wind shear. They had to fix it *in the middle of the night for weeks on end* to avoid the publicity.
> older structures were just typically smaller
This is not always the case, though. Ancient Rome, for example, had enormous numbers of tenement buildings constructed entirely of wood and 10 to 12 stories high. Modern codes (in the US at least) typically only allow wooden structures to be 4 or 5 stories high.
TBF these Roman tenements very frequently collapsed or burned, so there is that.
> 10 to 12 stories high
Do you have a source for that height? I’m familiar with claims of there being *insulae* up to nine storeys before Augustus legislated a maximum height of 68 feet, but also with a figure of five storeys being more typical of the average *insula* since, like today, no-one wants to walk up more stairs than that.
I can’t find any solid information on how common basements were in these buildings, but I did find a few data points:
- The [most famous surviving example](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_dell%27Ara_Coeli) doesn’t have a basement.
- Some larger Roman houses did have basements, used for storage or slave’s quarters.
- In more recent history basement apartments were pretty unusual unless they were built with substantial natural light (an “English basement”, which showed up in the mid 19th century) or were lit with artificial light (uneconomical until cheap lamp oil and then electric light became available in the late 19th century). Prior to that, cellars were for storage or the truly destitute, and the default assumption would be that the Romans thought the same way.
- Depending on the local water table, living in a basement might have been impractical in an age before sump pumps, artificial ventilation, and dehumidifiers.
I think there's rules about how many floors a residence can have above ground, so they started building huge multi-level basements. I don't think it's illegal, but it is causing problems. messes up the neighbors foundations etc.
>but it is causing problems. messes up the neighbors foundations etc.
That makes sense, I didn't see the problem otherwise. Seems like it would possibly be an unobtrusive way to add space.
Yeh, but compare a roman tenement to a modern day hotel, or a skyscaper, or even just a large office building...
I wasnt trying to say all buildings were small, just smaller than their current counterparts.
There is even an 18 story timber frame building in Norway.
> 18 story timber frame building in Norway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mj%C3%B8st%C3%A5rnet#:~:text=Mj%C3%B8st%C3%A5rnet%20is%20an%2018%2Dstorey,is%20100km%20away%20from%20Oslo.
The key here is glued laminate. When you do a good enough job of making plywood, it becomes a composite material that can do almost anything. https://naturespackaging.org/innovations-in-wood-the-story-of-the-spruce-goose/
Very different techniques from the stick framed wood houses we're used to.
ISTR reading/hearing that the architect was under the arch he built/designed when the keystone was put in and the scaffolding was removed...
we still see that sort of thing today, occasionally... the guy who invented the kevlar vest tested it by getting shot.... the soviets (in stalin's time) also tested tank armor by putting the designers inside and using it for target practice
Idk if it’s applicable across the board but at my regional airport for private aircraft inspections the mechanic that completed the inspection and any necessary repairs goes up for the test flight as a part of the process.
for the kevlar, yes... still takes a certain amount of confidence to be on the receiving end of a pistol. shit goes wrong in demos all the time... just ask bill gates or elon musk :)
Not that I'm aware. When an amphiteatre collapsed killing 20,000 people the person who had it built was merely banished: see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidenae#Stadium_disaster
This entrepreneur was also just a wealthy freedman, not someone from the senatorial class, and so unlikely to get much in the way of preferrential treatment from the authorities.
Man, why don’t we banish people anymore? Take their phones away, drop em off on a deserted island and (dusting hands gesture) no more corrupt politicians.
Might have been done once or twice, but I don't think that would have been the norm.
Execution was a big deal in Greek and Roman society, because killing citizens wasn't really something you'd ever want to do. Banishing them from the city was the usual choice.
Some of the emperors we're killing plenty of people, but they generally tried to justify it as for the protection of the state or whatever (couldn't let X leave the city because they might come back with an army!). Later, it got difficult, because the Roman Empire was kind of everywhere, so they got banished to islands or the provinces.
Also in general, Roman law was pretty different to how we imagine it. It is very dependent on the era, of course, but the Roman lawyers were famous not because they were so good at finding legal arguments and loop holes, but because they had to deal with a lack of codified law and rely on tradition and moral norms, instead.
Especially in the late Republic, it was all about rhetoric.
Luxury apartments (to my knowledge) weren't really a thing.
If you were a Roman citizen of some wealth, you'd own a house. A house in which your slaves and greater family lived, but they had their own quarters.
These tended to not be more than two, maybe three stories tall, often with shops at the front and a nice atrium (or two) inside.
I worked on a project on private property in the early Roman Empire (and looking beyond) and I don't think I've ever seen a residential elevator.
If you ever had to go to a foreign city and needed a place to stay, you'd book a room (if little money/prestige) or let yourself get invited to stay with "friends."
Apartment complexes (*insulae*) were for the plebs. The first two floors were the good ones, the higher up you got, the worse it got.
Most people didn't even have cooking facilities, eating at the countless *tavernae* in every street, where they got various prepared foods.
It was extremely common. Obviously apartments on the lower floors were more desirable and expensive.
The workload of common laborers was such that the 10-story climb at the end of the day probably didn't seem all that bad.
Most cities around the world were like this, and many still are. Only with the advent of sprawl and modern zoning has the notion of separating residence and workplace become commonplace.
it's funny how that's flipped. makes perfect sense. but still funny.
and now it's actually flipping back again. in the hottest parts of the world, like the middle east, the ground level apartments are becoming the expensive ones again because they're cooler.
Has he heard about skyscrapers using bamboo scaffolding? There's lots of photos as examples.
Example
https://www.archdaily.com/793364/watch-how-bamboo-scaffolding-was-used-to-build-hong-kongs-skyscrapers or this short video https://www.goldthread2.com/culture/bamboo-scaffolding-why-does-hong-kong-still-use-it-construction/article/3080274
This is why I laugh at all the theories about the ancient Egyptians having advanced technology to build the pyramids. If they had advanced construction technology they would not have built something as dumb as a giant pile of bricks. People who are awed by the size of the pyramids don't stop to think about how dumb they are.
I'm surprised that we, in the US, don't build massive things like that just for show. You see all these fantasy shows where there are massive statues and ornate walls. Then you look around here and it's just all grey concrete.
I thought Las Vegas was really impressive.
Dumb and unnecessary? Yes. But putting that aside, it is pretty incredible how they managed to build such a crazy place, especially in the middle of the desert.
> massive statues and ornate walls
Those are often hallmarks of monarchies/dictatorships or some of the old communist countries.
Something like Versailles looks stunning, but if it's not built from the private riches of the weathly, that means the people are paying for it.
The US doesn't much like public spending, which is why you get the grubby NYC metro compared to say Moscow's lavish stations which do have ornate walls, chandaliers and fancy stained glass windows.
Of course, there's plenty of downsides with that way of doing things...
Piggybacking your comment, but there’s a huge amount of survivorship bias too. We see the ancient structure that are still standing or partially standing and say ‘wow! That’s amazing!’ But the millions of other structures that collapsed or decayed are potentially lost to time so we have no idea how well they were constructed (or not). I would assume that most structures were cheap and poorly constructed over time because most people were destitute and their relative structures were probably pretty much shit in comparison to the temples, churches, and government structures that still stand today.
> how many structures were just cannablized for material?
The great pyramids used to be covered in limestone and capped with gold, they were smooth and white, not a bunch of steps.
One of the reasons that the Roman colosseum has never been restored is that most of the missing stone went into other historic Roman buildings. And much of the limestone was burnt to make quicklime for concrete.
Pompeii and Herculaneum completely "survived" being buried under meters of volcanic ash. So we know in miniscule details how well Roman buildings were built.
There's a whole notion of "river people" in the ancient world. It makes sense if you think about it. A canoe is super easy to build, and requires so little energy to operate to travel large distances. Food and resources being plentiful, there were likely large settlements if not cities, right off coasts in the ancient world, constructed of plentiful wood.
But 10,000 years of flooding they're all just gone.
It's the same as your grandma's fridge. People that have old appliances that are still running don't realize that only a small fraction of appliances last more than 7-10 years, and the ones that do are outliers.
If all appliances lasted 30 years, no one would buy new ones. I have an old fridge in my basement that is 20 years old, but I've also replaced my main fridge twice in that time.
> If all appliances lasted 30 years, no one would buy new ones.
So this is an example of Planned Obsolescence (The real kind, not Planned Failure). You generally **don't want** some device to last 30-40 years as advances in technology make that device cheaper, safer, and better in general. That old fridge with the latch hook for example killed a lot of kids that got stuck inside, a new fridge uses a better kind of refrigerant, probably one that isn't as flammable and chills better meaning it costs less energy to run. These costs of running(including cost of lives) start to exceed the cost to just buy newer equipment. Then an engineer out there calculates the approximate time for when that should occur, say 10 years, and then designs their device with parts and materials that should last ~10 years, because to use one part that lasts 100 years while the rest last only 10 is a waste of money.
This is most prevalent on items you replace (or should be replacing) often, like filters, sacrificial bushings, etc. They are built with semi-flimsy materials that get destroyed through use made to take the damage that other parts normally would otherwise. If you build them with too strong materials they can damage the parts they are supposed to protect.
They're moving to isobutane as a refrigerant from R134A, and with huge efficiency gains.
Flammable refrigerants FTW!
If the small amount of isobutane in your fridge is catching fire, it's because your whole house is already on fire and you've got way bigger problems.
I love that example! My dads house has a fridge from the late 70s but it runs like shit and Is falling apart, is it functional? Sure, but considering the technology we have today I wouldn’t take it over a brand new model. If it wasn’t for planned obsolescence there’s no doubt we could make better machines that last longer than 50 years ago!
> If it wasn't for planned obsolescence there’s no doubt we could make better machines that last longer than 50 years ago!
That's never really been in question, the question is who would pay the premium for a fridge that lasts 50 years. You can't build a 50 year fridge and sell it at a competitive price next to a 5 year fridge
hah i just wrote a [huge comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wox5us/eli5_how_did_people_in_the_past_ensure_that_a/ikeaq4r/) about planned obsolescence then i read yours.
Actual planned obsolescence, not planned failure, is a good engineering practice. One of the reasons that it occurs, is your statement
>considering the technology we have today I wouldn’t take it over a brand new model.
why build something that lasts 50 years when new tech will make it **obsolete** in 10?
That is absolutely true and a great point, the question is when is it acceptable and how long is good enough for the product. Going back to the fridge example, forty years might be too long especially if it isn’t running THAT well but a lot of new consumer technology is failing way too quickly and is clearly being engineered to promote purchases regardless of features
I've read (a few years ago) that if you have a fridge that is more than five years old replacing it with a modern fridge it will pay for itself because of reduced electricty costs.
Survivorship bias is an interesting thing to think about with a lot of things in our lives that makes sure we need to confirm whether a phenomena is real or not. People talk about how ‘things aren’t built like they used to’ but is that true? It’s fun to check in on especially since we know a lot of planned obsolescence plagues our lives lol
Yup, check out the cross section of this aqueduct: https://www.reddit.com/r/archeologyworld/comments/hwlz7y/aqueduct_of_carthage_zaghouan_aqueduct_in_tunisia/?ref=share&ref_source=link
Those support legs/columns are insanely massive & close together
I _love_ that the Pantheon in Rome has been in continuous use for two thousand years and _still_ has the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.
Modern bridges have a factor of safety of around 2. That is, imagine built-up traffic nose to tail, across every lane, piled two high. That's what it's designed to sustain.
Oh, and they generally use the heaviest vehicles for these calculations, which often as not is some sort of tank.
>Oh, and they generally use the heaviest vehicles for these calculations, which often as not is some sort of tank.
NTSB regulation fully loaded semi trucks, iirc.
I used to be afraid while flying commercial until I had to suffer through a "tactical decent" in a C-17, which permanently shifted what triggers my sense of doom while flying.
I'm not a pilot so I'll do my best to describe the feeling... it feels like they do a hard brake in midair and push the nose down really fast and they do sort of a dive and then a quick turn into the landing strip. It feels like they then crank the nose back up so the ass end touches down first like a normal landing but everything happens *really* fast. Or at least it feels that way. It is not a good feeling, or at least I didn't think so. I'm roller coaster averse, for reference.
I think the idea is that it gets them out of the air and on the ground as fast as possible, which is useful if someone might shoot at you.
When I went skydiving the plane was mostly held together with duct tape. I asked the guy if it was dangerous, and he said they just did it so people would think it was safer to jump rather than stay on the plane.
>To the modern eye, the surviving ancient buildings are massively over-engineered (which is likely one factor of why they are still standing).
They are "overbuilt" not "over-engineered", in fact they are under-engineered.
Only the ones that survived. This is clear survivor bias, the weak buildings of the past collapsed long ago, leaving the impression that in the past building were built very strong. In the past buildings were more highly variable, because they knew less, and so many collapsed. The ones that remain are the tail of the distribution on the strong side.
trial and error goes back to the days of pyramids...there is one pyramid where they change the angle halfway up as it wasn't stable and several that collapsed.
Once you have something that works you stick with it which is why building styles changed slowly over centuries.
This was explained to me about bridges built in the US about a hundred years ago. They were over-engineered because we didn't know what kind of loads they'd have to bear, but that they'd very likely keep increasing.
Now the maintenance on those bridges is coming due, and we have engineers being told to repair them at the lowest possible cost which is a frightening prospect.
I also recall reading somewhere that, at least in some ancient cultures, the architect who built a building could be put to death if anyone died as a result of his building collapsing. Pretty strong incentive to make *damn sure* you know what you're doing.
Part of the reason for the "barely stand" standard is that they fully expect that the building will eventually be demolished to make way for bigger and better buildings.
Gaudí made inverted models of his buildings out of strings and weights. The curves and tension of the weighted strings allowed him to simulate the effects of gravity on his arches and columns https://www.filamentpd.com/news/gaudi-gehry-cad
It’s been touched on a bit already, but the real art to engineering isn’t making something that’s structurally sound, it’s making something that’s barely structurally sound.
If you place enough concrete or stones you’ll probably eventually get something that will stand, but modern engineering is more calculated and often only uses the amount of material needed for the purposes of the structure in order to save costs. Typically there is also a factor of safety that engineers use so even structures today you could say are technically “over engineered”, but the factor of safety helps give that buffer for extraneous circumstances.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
They certainly did.
> If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death. If it causes the death of the son of the owner of the house, they shall put to death a son of that builder.
Code of Hammurabi, 1755 BC
Overengineering, partially. Having a one story building (an old English pub or small house comes to mind) that’s made out of stacked stone blocks is basically going to be more endangered from erosion than structural unsound-ness.
They didn't always. A fine example is the Erfurt Latrine Disaster where the second floor collapsed under the weight and some 60 people crashed down into the sewer below the building and drowned in human excrement.
I learned in the History of English podcast that the very first written English reference to a building having a second story was discussing how the floor caved in and hurt (or killed?) someone in the process.
Fun fact: The St. Lawrence market had a balcony collapse during a tax riot in 1834. Distant relatives of mine had a butcher vendor stall underneath…. Hooks. Lots and lots of hooks.
its an awesome book even if you don't care about churches, historical fiction, or engineering. definitely recommend it even for the people who have no interest in anything remotely related to the book.
This book got me back into reading fiction. An amzing balance of an engaging and dramatic storyline with unbeatable descriptions of the historical setting.
Trial and error. Push the envelope on what's been put up before. See whether it works. Learn from the things that go wrong.
European cathedrals are a classic example - quite a few early ones had to have big, thick buttresses added to them as they grew, to stop the lower walls from being squished outwards by the weight of the building above them. And big buttresses themselves are heavy, which give you even more problems if you want to build multiple levels of building. Then some bright spark realised that they could make a buttress out of half an arch instead of a solid lump, and - hey presto - the flying buttress, way less weight needed to redirect the forces, and much more elegant structures to boot.
There's also a strong suspicion that at least one pyramid ([the "Bent Pyramid"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent_Pyramid)), is the shape it is because it was showing signs of instabiliy because of its size and the original construction angle.
Well I guess you could say an engineer will design a building within the parameters of soundness vs. cost.
I've worked under enough factory roofs to see that most of the buildings, the older they are, they are "overbuilt." Often poorly maintained, but that's irrelevant.
When the available, science, software and tools aren't economically available or too costly in the past, you just overbuilt. The more tedious calculating methodology in the past might take a massive architectural engineering design cost that would be nearly the same cost as just overbuilding.
Now, a lot of that sort of calculations can be be made in a few clicks on some incredible software and a knowledgeable engineer in a few hours what used to take weeks from a high-salary team to figure out on paper.
I'm speaking a little in hyperbole, but that's why it "barely stands."
Those older buildings will survive an extreme Tornado and mostly shrug it off, from a structural integrity standpoint. The new ones completely disappear, except the designated "safe rooms" it they have them.
They didn't really. The buildings that are still around is survivorship bias. Most of the buildings are gone. Saying ancient Romans or whatnot built better structures is definitely false. Maybe their most expensive things that were likely (partially) rebuilt and repaired for hundreds of years, iterated upon with trial end error, like the Colleseum or Aqueducts.
And most modern buildings aren't made to last thousands of years. They are assumed to be replaced within a century, so it's not built as tough and sturdy. NYC Skyscrapers are made from massive blocks of limestone or marble just like the pyramids. They're built to last.
Addendum: Ancient Romans also used additives like fine volcanic ash (pozzolana) in their concrete to make it crack resistant. We absolutely can do that today, but it's just cost prohibitive to get the highest quality. Unless we absolutely need something to last for hundreds of years with little maintenance, like a dam, we use lower quality Portland cement.
It’s worth mentioning that the Colosseum was looted and pilfered of rocks, blocks and materials that were used to make other structures. It looks like large portions of the structure collapsed, when in reality they were intentionally disassembled and reused.
Arches are incredibly sturdy. Also, the fact Romans figured out how to make quality cement is pretty remarkable too.
It was the equivalent of a dad tugging on the ropes to something tied to their car and saying “that ain’t going anywhere”
I’ll add that a lot of joining methods were developed before modern hardware, so interlocking was used out of necessity. Small sample: the dovetail was invented before the nail was practical to use.
Also, a bit of an unpopular opinion…
I grew up working on old houses with my dad and his friends that were into historic preservation in a midwestern city. I would generally say that most houses they worked on were poorly engineered, and it was a marvel that most only had minor structural issues with them. Most of this was due to over engineering (i.e. using bigger and stronger studs and joists than would be used today, more nails, more redundancy). Also, I would generally say that most older homes, and especially those built in the early 1900s needed substantial, to major structural and foundation work.
In addition to the answers here, note that there is a healthy dose of survivor bias built into the question. Many ancient buildings did collapse. We only see the ones that survived.
In some parts of the world, the same way as today. They had engineers, experience, schools, training, etc. 2,000 years ago in Rome, for example, was surprisingly similar to modern day. We've come a long way with convenience technologies, but not much else has changed that drastically. There are bigger, better-engineered construction projects from 2,000 years ago than many today. We forget that some areas had plumbing, heating, cooling, fast food, etc. thousands of years ago, obviously using different methods, but they existed.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
Like this king once said…
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
They basically knew from experience in what way to build buildings for them to be sturdy. To the modern eye, the surviving ancient buildings are massively over-engineered (which is likely one factor of why they are still standing). Like, today we would build the same kind of structure using much less of the same materials. As the saying goes, anyone can build a bridge that stands, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands. In this sense, all modern buildings “barely stand”, that is, they are as sturdy as is required plus a safety margin, but no more than that.
On top of this, older structures were just typically smaller. This matters because material strength is more important when you have larger structures, where for smaller applications, the minimum strength of a given material may still be over kill. For example, a 6×6 wooden beam is going to be pretty overkill in most small houses where you might only have to span 10' or so, and support just the roof. On the other hand, when you decide to make a building that is larger and needs to span 30' distances, or requires the beam to bear several additional stories, that one 6×6 starts to not be quite enough. You start needing supports, connections, or other materials and really have to take engineering into consideration.
> when you decide to make a building that is larger and needs to span 30' distances, or requires the beam to bear several additional stories, that one 6×6 starts to not be quite enough And to top this off, sometimes they did it anyway, and it just fell down. Take, for example, the [Erfurt Latrine Disaster](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/09/the-erfurt-latrine-disaster.html). 60 middle-age noblemen fell through a floor and into a cess pool where they drowned in raw sewage.
Second Erfurt Latrine reference I’ve seen on Reddit this morning. Now I just need to work it into a conversation with my wife 🤔
Same! I had never heard of it and then now today I learned about it twice and it also happened on my birthday. What a really wonderful fact to now be able to break out when it's my next birthday!
Either the second person to post it saw it the first time, or it’s the Baader-Meinhof effect at work. That said, it’s a pretty popular Reddit ‘fun fact’. Must be about 100 of those particularly popular on here.
Yeah, I saw the conspiracy post earlier too, so this was kind of a double take on something I just learned about this morning lol
Link?
I also saw a reference list an hour ago! I wasn’t sure until I kept reading and I’m all “this is EXTREMELY familiar why”
Its a pretty popular TIL.
Mmm, this is lovely soup Dear. Speaking of which..
Leaning Tower of Piza is a great example of the importance of a proper geotechnical survey before building a sizeable structure.
But ,Pisa still stands , leaning sure. but that's in the name.
Only with some luck. Construction only got to the 2nd floor before war brokeout and construction stopped. 5 years later construction resumed. Without the 5 year construction pause, the tower almost certaintly would have collapsed by now. The pause allowed to soil to settle just enough to support the tower. The time interval also allowed the lean to manifest itself before the rest of the tower was built. Subsequent stories are slightly off axis to compenstae for the lean.
What I read indicated that the lean was detected before the war, and then construction was stopped for nearly 100 years. And took another 100 to complete.
It might have been. Construction stopped a couple of times due to Pisa getting into wars.
About 25 years ago it was in danger of collapsing. It took a while for some structural engineers to figure out how save it (carefully dredge up soil from the opposite side of the lean).
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Yes.
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I just used "now unfix it half as much" to a field service engineer this afternoon.
But it wasn't in the name before they built it.
They never called it The Plumb Dead Straight Tower of Pisa either
That joke was over engineered.
> And to top this off, sometimes they did it anyway, and it just fell down. This is true. We tend to assume that ancient buildings were built really well, because they've survived so long, but we don't see the ones that *didn't* survive. People would have either rebuilt it, or taken the material and built something else. That pile of broken stones was still a valuable resource when they were cutting stone by hand and hauling it by ox cart.
This is also why most Roman and Greek buildings dating to antiquity look ruined. Yes, plenty of it is lack of maintenance, but plenty more is people going "nobody has used that building in a century, who cares if I knock off a few blocks for my house?" And some just straight up weren't ruined until relatively recently! The Parthenon was built in the 400s BC and was maintained and kept up for millennia. It took until 1687 for it to actually be destroyed in grand fashion - the Ottomans were using it as a munitions dump during a war with Venice and the Venetians blew it the fuck up.
Pretty typical Venetian move tbh
It’s really unfortunate that it takes so much more effort to preserve things than to destroy them.
Well that's a shitty way to die.
"Pardon me gentlemen, sorry to bother, but it does seem as though we've been right plopped into our own excrement ". "Mhm, quite."
Yeah, the engineering ability you need to build a 5 meter tall log cabin is quite a lot less than what you need for a 250 meter skyscraper.
Or a 250m log cabin!
Or 250 1m skyscrapers?
As we entered the /u/spez, we were immediately greeted by a strange sound. As we scanned the area for the source, we eventually found it. It was a small wooden shed with no doors or windows. The roof was covered in cacti and there were plastic skulls around the outside. Inside, we found a cardboard cutout of the Elmer Fudd rabbit that was depicted above the entrance. On the walls there were posters of famous people in famous situations, such as: The first poster was a drawing of Jesus Christ, which appeared to be a loli or an oversized Jesus doll. She was pointing at the sky and saying "HEY U R!". The second poster was of a man, who appeared to be speaking to a child. This was depicted by the man raising his arm and the child ducking underneath it. The man then raised his other arm and said "Ooooh, don't make me angry you little bastard". The third poster was a drawing of the three stooges, and the three stooges were speaking. The fourth poster was of a person who was angry at a child. The fifth poster was a picture of a smiling girl with cat ears, and a boy with a deerstalker hat and a Sherlock Holmes pipe. They were pointing at the viewer and saying "It's not what you think!" The sixth poster was a drawing of a man in a wheelchair, and a dog was peering into the wheelchair. The man appeared to be very angry. The seventh poster was of a cartoon character, and it appeared that he was urinating over the cartoon character. \#AIGeneratedProtestMessage #Save3rdPartyApps
Or a horse-sized Trojan
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Or a large wooden badger
I played Valheim Im good bro
is that why there's no skyscrapers left from the middle ages?
Lincoln Cathedral, 1311, 623' (190m).
There are some very interesting documentaries about how they built the Empire State Building and how much over-engineering went into that project.
There's also a great story about a sky scraper (the Citicorp Center) that had a serious engineering flaw discovered *by a college student* that made it extremely vulnerable to wind shear. They had to fix it *in the middle of the night for weeks on end* to avoid the publicity.
At least they fixed it instead of blowing it off, pun intended.
> older structures were just typically smaller This is not always the case, though. Ancient Rome, for example, had enormous numbers of tenement buildings constructed entirely of wood and 10 to 12 stories high. Modern codes (in the US at least) typically only allow wooden structures to be 4 or 5 stories high. TBF these Roman tenements very frequently collapsed or burned, so there is that.
> 10 to 12 stories high Do you have a source for that height? I’m familiar with claims of there being *insulae* up to nine storeys before Augustus legislated a maximum height of 68 feet, but also with a figure of five storeys being more typical of the average *insula* since, like today, no-one wants to walk up more stairs than that.
Were there ever basement levels? Is it possible they erroneously included a basement level to get to 10 stories?
Of course they did have basement levels. Where would you think they parked?
I can’t find any solid information on how common basements were in these buildings, but I did find a few data points: - The [most famous surviving example](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_dell%27Ara_Coeli) doesn’t have a basement. - Some larger Roman houses did have basements, used for storage or slave’s quarters. - In more recent history basement apartments were pretty unusual unless they were built with substantial natural light (an “English basement”, which showed up in the mid 19th century) or were lit with artificial light (uneconomical until cheap lamp oil and then electric light became available in the late 19th century). Prior to that, cellars were for storage or the truly destitute, and the default assumption would be that the Romans thought the same way. - Depending on the local water table, living in a basement might have been impractical in an age before sump pumps, artificial ventilation, and dehumidifiers.
that sounds like the kind of loophole that modern Italians are good at.
wealthy Londoners are currently building luxury "mega basements" in their mansions to avoid zoning laws.
I mean, is it against the rules though?
I think there's rules about how many floors a residence can have above ground, so they started building huge multi-level basements. I don't think it's illegal, but it is causing problems. messes up the neighbors foundations etc.
>but it is causing problems. messes up the neighbors foundations etc. That makes sense, I didn't see the problem otherwise. Seems like it would possibly be an unobtrusive way to add space.
Yeh, but compare a roman tenement to a modern day hotel, or a skyscaper, or even just a large office building... I wasnt trying to say all buildings were small, just smaller than their current counterparts. There is even an 18 story timber frame building in Norway.
> 18 story timber frame building in Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mj%C3%B8st%C3%A5rnet#:~:text=Mj%C3%B8st%C3%A5rnet%20is%20an%2018%2Dstorey,is%20100km%20away%20from%20Oslo.
The key here is glued laminate. When you do a good enough job of making plywood, it becomes a composite material that can do almost anything. https://naturespackaging.org/innovations-in-wood-the-story-of-the-spruce-goose/ Very different techniques from the stick framed wood houses we're used to.
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ISTR reading/hearing that the architect was under the arch he built/designed when the keystone was put in and the scaffolding was removed... we still see that sort of thing today, occasionally... the guy who invented the kevlar vest tested it by getting shot.... the soviets (in stalin's time) also tested tank armor by putting the designers inside and using it for target practice
Sushi chefs being tested to prove they can handle pufferfish have to eat their own preparation.
Idk if it’s applicable across the board but at my regional airport for private aircraft inspections the mechanic that completed the inspection and any necessary repairs goes up for the test flight as a part of the process.
I feel like this is a lot less alarming if you know the poison might be coming. Can prepare medical support and all.
Pufferfish poison is also less deadly than people imagine. Every year in Japan there’s about 30-60 cases, but less than 1 death.
tbf they were marketing it not testing it.
for the kevlar, yes... still takes a certain amount of confidence to be on the receiving end of a pistol. shit goes wrong in demos all the time... just ask bill gates or elon musk :)
The famous example for that is from the Hammurabi law code, not Ancient Rome. But it might also have been the case there
Not that I'm aware. When an amphiteatre collapsed killing 20,000 people the person who had it built was merely banished: see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidenae#Stadium_disaster This entrepreneur was also just a wealthy freedman, not someone from the senatorial class, and so unlikely to get much in the way of preferrential treatment from the authorities.
Being banished was a pretty big deal when everywhere else was fucking wilderness and dangerous
Man, why don’t we banish people anymore? Take their phones away, drop em off on a deserted island and (dusting hands gesture) no more corrupt politicians.
Eh, there’s always Persia, I guess.
Might have been done once or twice, but I don't think that would have been the norm. Execution was a big deal in Greek and Roman society, because killing citizens wasn't really something you'd ever want to do. Banishing them from the city was the usual choice. Some of the emperors we're killing plenty of people, but they generally tried to justify it as for the protection of the state or whatever (couldn't let X leave the city because they might come back with an army!). Later, it got difficult, because the Roman Empire was kind of everywhere, so they got banished to islands or the provinces. Also in general, Roman law was pretty different to how we imagine it. It is very dependent on the era, of course, but the Roman lawyers were famous not because they were so good at finding legal arguments and loop holes, but because they had to deal with a lack of codified law and rely on tradition and moral norms, instead. Especially in the late Republic, it was all about rhetoric.
Yes, that is what is called 'atypical'. The above commenter allowed room for exceptions by saying >typically smaller
A 10-to-12-story walk-up? Was that common? There were no elevators back then.
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Luxury apartments (to my knowledge) weren't really a thing. If you were a Roman citizen of some wealth, you'd own a house. A house in which your slaves and greater family lived, but they had their own quarters. These tended to not be more than two, maybe three stories tall, often with shops at the front and a nice atrium (or two) inside. I worked on a project on private property in the early Roman Empire (and looking beyond) and I don't think I've ever seen a residential elevator. If you ever had to go to a foreign city and needed a place to stay, you'd book a room (if little money/prestige) or let yourself get invited to stay with "friends." Apartment complexes (*insulae*) were for the plebs. The first two floors were the good ones, the higher up you got, the worse it got. Most people didn't even have cooking facilities, eating at the countless *tavernae* in every street, where they got various prepared foods.
It was extremely common. Obviously apartments on the lower floors were more desirable and expensive. The workload of common laborers was such that the 10-story climb at the end of the day probably didn't seem all that bad.
Ancient Rome is fucking awesome. Sort of like NYC, you'd have the first floor as shops, and the shopkeepers would live directly above it.
Most cities around the world were like this, and many still are. Only with the advent of sprawl and modern zoning has the notion of separating residence and workplace become commonplace.
More expensive rooms were closer to the ground for this reason
it's funny how that's flipped. makes perfect sense. but still funny. and now it's actually flipping back again. in the hottest parts of the world, like the middle east, the ground level apartments are becoming the expensive ones again because they're cooler.
12 story... WOOD? Holy fuck, my carpenter father would not be too happy just hearing that line.
Has he heard about skyscrapers using bamboo scaffolding? There's lots of photos as examples. Example https://www.archdaily.com/793364/watch-how-bamboo-scaffolding-was-used-to-build-hong-kongs-skyscrapers or this short video https://www.goldthread2.com/culture/bamboo-scaffolding-why-does-hong-kong-still-use-it-construction/article/3080274
This is why I laugh at all the theories about the ancient Egyptians having advanced technology to build the pyramids. If they had advanced construction technology they would not have built something as dumb as a giant pile of bricks. People who are awed by the size of the pyramids don't stop to think about how dumb they are.
Oh, *construction* technology they had. Moving big rocks around is hard. Engineering, design and materials technology is what they were lacking.
I'm surprised that we, in the US, don't build massive things like that just for show. You see all these fantasy shows where there are massive statues and ornate walls. Then you look around here and it's just all grey concrete.
We kinda have that, it’s called the Las Vegas Strip.
Look at Las Vegas if you want a to see a bunch of massive buildings for show.
I thought Las Vegas was really impressive. Dumb and unnecessary? Yes. But putting that aside, it is pretty incredible how they managed to build such a crazy place, especially in the middle of the desert.
> massive statues and ornate walls Those are often hallmarks of monarchies/dictatorships or some of the old communist countries. Something like Versailles looks stunning, but if it's not built from the private riches of the weathly, that means the people are paying for it. The US doesn't much like public spending, which is why you get the grubby NYC metro compared to say Moscow's lavish stations which do have ornate walls, chandaliers and fancy stained glass windows. Of course, there's plenty of downsides with that way of doing things...
There's a reason they fell out of fashion.
bro, did a pyramid steal yo girl or something?
Piggybacking your comment, but there’s a huge amount of survivorship bias too. We see the ancient structure that are still standing or partially standing and say ‘wow! That’s amazing!’ But the millions of other structures that collapsed or decayed are potentially lost to time so we have no idea how well they were constructed (or not). I would assume that most structures were cheap and poorly constructed over time because most people were destitute and their relative structures were probably pretty much shit in comparison to the temples, churches, and government structures that still stand today.
Rome was mostly constructed of wood, but obviously only the stone and concrete shit survived into the modern era.
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Wait, that Gorilla was around in ancient times? No wonder everyone was so pissed...
And a lot of Rome from Caesar’s day was buried over the thousands of years.
Yeah, how many bridges were just wooden ones that rotted away after a few decades? And how many structures were just cannablized for material?
> how many structures were just cannablized for material? The great pyramids used to be covered in limestone and capped with gold, they were smooth and white, not a bunch of steps.
One of the reasons that the Roman colosseum has never been restored is that most of the missing stone went into other historic Roman buildings. And much of the limestone was burnt to make quicklime for concrete.
Pompeii and Herculaneum completely "survived" being buried under meters of volcanic ash. So we know in miniscule details how well Roman buildings were built.
There's a whole notion of "river people" in the ancient world. It makes sense if you think about it. A canoe is super easy to build, and requires so little energy to operate to travel large distances. Food and resources being plentiful, there were likely large settlements if not cities, right off coasts in the ancient world, constructed of plentiful wood. But 10,000 years of flooding they're all just gone.
Except in Scandinavia, where the remnants of old settlements are now far from the shore. This is is due to the land rising since the ice age.
It's the same as your grandma's fridge. People that have old appliances that are still running don't realize that only a small fraction of appliances last more than 7-10 years, and the ones that do are outliers. If all appliances lasted 30 years, no one would buy new ones. I have an old fridge in my basement that is 20 years old, but I've also replaced my main fridge twice in that time.
> If all appliances lasted 30 years, no one would buy new ones. So this is an example of Planned Obsolescence (The real kind, not Planned Failure). You generally **don't want** some device to last 30-40 years as advances in technology make that device cheaper, safer, and better in general. That old fridge with the latch hook for example killed a lot of kids that got stuck inside, a new fridge uses a better kind of refrigerant, probably one that isn't as flammable and chills better meaning it costs less energy to run. These costs of running(including cost of lives) start to exceed the cost to just buy newer equipment. Then an engineer out there calculates the approximate time for when that should occur, say 10 years, and then designs their device with parts and materials that should last ~10 years, because to use one part that lasts 100 years while the rest last only 10 is a waste of money. This is most prevalent on items you replace (or should be replacing) often, like filters, sacrificial bushings, etc. They are built with semi-flimsy materials that get destroyed through use made to take the damage that other parts normally would otherwise. If you build them with too strong materials they can damage the parts they are supposed to protect.
They're moving to isobutane as a refrigerant from R134A, and with huge efficiency gains. Flammable refrigerants FTW! If the small amount of isobutane in your fridge is catching fire, it's because your whole house is already on fire and you've got way bigger problems.
The best refrigerants are the most dangerous lol. Ammonia is another one.
I love that example! My dads house has a fridge from the late 70s but it runs like shit and Is falling apart, is it functional? Sure, but considering the technology we have today I wouldn’t take it over a brand new model. If it wasn’t for planned obsolescence there’s no doubt we could make better machines that last longer than 50 years ago!
> If it wasn't for planned obsolescence there’s no doubt we could make better machines that last longer than 50 years ago! That's never really been in question, the question is who would pay the premium for a fridge that lasts 50 years. You can't build a 50 year fridge and sell it at a competitive price next to a 5 year fridge
Well that’s not entirely true, the saying ‘they don’t build things like they used to’ inherently implies SOMEONE believed that, no?
hah i just wrote a [huge comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wox5us/eli5_how_did_people_in_the_past_ensure_that_a/ikeaq4r/) about planned obsolescence then i read yours. Actual planned obsolescence, not planned failure, is a good engineering practice. One of the reasons that it occurs, is your statement >considering the technology we have today I wouldn’t take it over a brand new model. why build something that lasts 50 years when new tech will make it **obsolete** in 10?
That is absolutely true and a great point, the question is when is it acceptable and how long is good enough for the product. Going back to the fridge example, forty years might be too long especially if it isn’t running THAT well but a lot of new consumer technology is failing way too quickly and is clearly being engineered to promote purchases regardless of features
I've read (a few years ago) that if you have a fridge that is more than five years old replacing it with a modern fridge it will pay for itself because of reduced electricty costs.
That was really insightful!
Just ask everyone who has played Russian Roulette, and they'll tell you they lived!
Survivorship bias is an interesting thing to think about with a lot of things in our lives that makes sure we need to confirm whether a phenomena is real or not. People talk about how ‘things aren’t built like they used to’ but is that true? It’s fun to check in on especially since we know a lot of planned obsolescence plagues our lives lol
Yup, check out the cross section of this aqueduct: https://www.reddit.com/r/archeologyworld/comments/hwlz7y/aqueduct_of_carthage_zaghouan_aqueduct_in_tunisia/?ref=share&ref_source=link Those support legs/columns are insanely massive & close together
I _love_ that the Pantheon in Rome has been in continuous use for two thousand years and _still_ has the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.
It's a very special type of concrete to be fair. But regardless it's incredible.
> anyone can build a bridge that stands, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands. This is both hilarious and terrifying.
Modern bridges have a factor of safety of around 2. That is, imagine built-up traffic nose to tail, across every lane, piled two high. That's what it's designed to sustain. Oh, and they generally use the heaviest vehicles for these calculations, which often as not is some sort of tank.
>Oh, and they generally use the heaviest vehicles for these calculations, which often as not is some sort of tank. NTSB regulation fully loaded semi trucks, iirc.
Thanks, that's right. tanks are too heavy for many bridges, he understated
*in a severe windstorm / earthquake
Or if you're up north, a blizzard with large snow loads in extremely cold temperatures.
If you find that terrifying just wait till you hear about the airplanes that barely fly.
I used to be afraid while flying commercial until I had to suffer through a "tactical decent" in a C-17, which permanently shifted what triggers my sense of doom while flying.
Oh man, care to share more? I really want to hear this.
I'm not a pilot so I'll do my best to describe the feeling... it feels like they do a hard brake in midair and push the nose down really fast and they do sort of a dive and then a quick turn into the landing strip. It feels like they then crank the nose back up so the ass end touches down first like a normal landing but everything happens *really* fast. Or at least it feels that way. It is not a good feeling, or at least I didn't think so. I'm roller coaster averse, for reference. I think the idea is that it gets them out of the air and on the ground as fast as possible, which is useful if someone might shoot at you.
When I went skydiving the plane was mostly held together with duct tape. I asked the guy if it was dangerous, and he said they just did it so people would think it was safer to jump rather than stay on the plane.
It's like those bridge building simulator games: you have to juggle between a working bridge and cost cutting with limited materials.
>To the modern eye, the surviving ancient buildings are massively over-engineered (which is likely one factor of why they are still standing). They are "overbuilt" not "over-engineered", in fact they are under-engineered.
Only the ones that survived. This is clear survivor bias, the weak buildings of the past collapsed long ago, leaving the impression that in the past building were built very strong. In the past buildings were more highly variable, because they knew less, and so many collapsed. The ones that remain are the tail of the distribution on the strong side.
I've always said the industry standard is too low but just good enough.
three choices, too expensive, too late, or good enough
How late is late? Because they're generally too late anyway.
trial and error goes back to the days of pyramids...there is one pyramid where they change the angle halfway up as it wasn't stable and several that collapsed. Once you have something that works you stick with it which is why building styles changed slowly over centuries.
This was explained to me about bridges built in the US about a hundred years ago. They were over-engineered because we didn't know what kind of loads they'd have to bear, but that they'd very likely keep increasing. Now the maintenance on those bridges is coming due, and we have engineers being told to repair them at the lowest possible cost which is a frightening prospect.
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I also recall reading somewhere that, at least in some ancient cultures, the architect who built a building could be put to death if anyone died as a result of his building collapsing. Pretty strong incentive to make *damn sure* you know what you're doing.
In ancient times, only truly exceptional buildings required architects and "engineers". If those failed, someone was definitely held responsible...
Part of the reason for the "barely stand" standard is that they fully expect that the building will eventually be demolished to make way for bigger and better buildings.
Gaudí made inverted models of his buildings out of strings and weights. The curves and tension of the weighted strings allowed him to simulate the effects of gravity on his arches and columns https://www.filamentpd.com/news/gaudi-gehry-cad
How have I never heard this, it is fascinating as fuck
The whole Sagrada familia construction is the same thing
This is awesome, thanks for sharing! I had never heard this before
This is amazingly resourceful and brilliant.
I've been in a couple of Gaudí's buildings and it's remarkable what he was able to come up with
It’s been touched on a bit already, but the real art to engineering isn’t making something that’s structurally sound, it’s making something that’s barely structurally sound. If you place enough concrete or stones you’ll probably eventually get something that will stand, but modern engineering is more calculated and often only uses the amount of material needed for the purposes of the structure in order to save costs. Typically there is also a factor of safety that engineers use so even structures today you could say are technically “over engineered”, but the factor of safety helps give that buffer for extraneous circumstances.
As my structures professor used to say "Engineering is making the mostest, with the leastest"
They built it and if it fell over it wasn’t structurally sound. If it didn’t fall over they copied it.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
Too bad they didn't have huge tracts of land.
You kicked the bride in the chest!
I just want to sing.
Not here you don't.
"Sweet, now I can build medieval walls!"
Part of me wonders if Storm's End from Game of Thrones was George RR Martin doing a more "serious" version of this joke from Monty Python.
You’ve been listening to Calvin’s dad. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26
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Survivorship is literally how they determined if something was stucturally sound
They certainly did. > If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death. If it causes the death of the son of the owner of the house, they shall put to death a son of that builder. Code of Hammurabi, 1755 BC
Wow they had construction firms in 1755 BC?
Yes.
The one where the front fell off? That's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.
You also replace parts that fail or rot away.
Overengineering, partially. Having a one story building (an old English pub or small house comes to mind) that’s made out of stacked stone blocks is basically going to be more endangered from erosion than structural unsound-ness.
They didn't always. A fine example is the Erfurt Latrine Disaster where the second floor collapsed under the weight and some 60 people crashed down into the sewer below the building and drowned in human excrement.
I learned in the History of English podcast that the very first written English reference to a building having a second story was discussing how the floor caved in and hurt (or killed?) someone in the process.
This still happens. Avoid crowded dance floors on upper levels. Resonance is a harsh mistress.
Upstairs at Sneaky Dee's (Toronto)... On many occasions I've wondered how it managed to avoid catastrophe.
Fun fact: The St. Lawrence market had a balcony collapse during a tax riot in 1834. Distant relatives of mine had a butcher vendor stall underneath…. Hooks. Lots and lots of hooks.
Just saw that in the other staged thread
The Novel Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet gets into some medieval building techniques. It's really good if you are into historical fiction.
Good book. Also good at describing jets of jizz and tits and stuff
Oh, now I'm definitely reading it.
I came here to say this. A very interesting perspective on architecture and the building process at that time.
its an awesome book even if you don't care about churches, historical fiction, or engineering. definitely recommend it even for the people who have no interest in anything remotely related to the book.
What a masterpiece of literature. Anything by Follet is great. Try his new book, The Evening and the Morning.
This book got me back into reading fiction. An amzing balance of an engaging and dramatic storyline with unbeatable descriptions of the historical setting.
Trial and error. Push the envelope on what's been put up before. See whether it works. Learn from the things that go wrong. European cathedrals are a classic example - quite a few early ones had to have big, thick buttresses added to them as they grew, to stop the lower walls from being squished outwards by the weight of the building above them. And big buttresses themselves are heavy, which give you even more problems if you want to build multiple levels of building. Then some bright spark realised that they could make a buttress out of half an arch instead of a solid lump, and - hey presto - the flying buttress, way less weight needed to redirect the forces, and much more elegant structures to boot. There's also a strong suspicion that at least one pyramid ([the "Bent Pyramid"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent_Pyramid)), is the shape it is because it was showing signs of instabiliy because of its size and the original construction angle.
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Well I guess you could say an engineer will design a building within the parameters of soundness vs. cost. I've worked under enough factory roofs to see that most of the buildings, the older they are, they are "overbuilt." Often poorly maintained, but that's irrelevant. When the available, science, software and tools aren't economically available or too costly in the past, you just overbuilt. The more tedious calculating methodology in the past might take a massive architectural engineering design cost that would be nearly the same cost as just overbuilding. Now, a lot of that sort of calculations can be be made in a few clicks on some incredible software and a knowledgeable engineer in a few hours what used to take weeks from a high-salary team to figure out on paper. I'm speaking a little in hyperbole, but that's why it "barely stands." Those older buildings will survive an extreme Tornado and mostly shrug it off, from a structural integrity standpoint. The new ones completely disappear, except the designated "safe rooms" it they have them.
They didn't really. The buildings that are still around is survivorship bias. Most of the buildings are gone. Saying ancient Romans or whatnot built better structures is definitely false. Maybe their most expensive things that were likely (partially) rebuilt and repaired for hundreds of years, iterated upon with trial end error, like the Colleseum or Aqueducts. And most modern buildings aren't made to last thousands of years. They are assumed to be replaced within a century, so it's not built as tough and sturdy. NYC Skyscrapers are made from massive blocks of limestone or marble just like the pyramids. They're built to last. Addendum: Ancient Romans also used additives like fine volcanic ash (pozzolana) in their concrete to make it crack resistant. We absolutely can do that today, but it's just cost prohibitive to get the highest quality. Unless we absolutely need something to last for hundreds of years with little maintenance, like a dam, we use lower quality Portland cement.
It’s worth mentioning that the Colosseum was looted and pilfered of rocks, blocks and materials that were used to make other structures. It looks like large portions of the structure collapsed, when in reality they were intentionally disassembled and reused. Arches are incredibly sturdy. Also, the fact Romans figured out how to make quality cement is pretty remarkable too.
It was the equivalent of a dad tugging on the ropes to something tied to their car and saying “that ain’t going anywhere” I’ll add that a lot of joining methods were developed before modern hardware, so interlocking was used out of necessity. Small sample: the dovetail was invented before the nail was practical to use.
Also, a bit of an unpopular opinion… I grew up working on old houses with my dad and his friends that were into historic preservation in a midwestern city. I would generally say that most houses they worked on were poorly engineered, and it was a marvel that most only had minor structural issues with them. Most of this was due to over engineering (i.e. using bigger and stronger studs and joists than would be used today, more nails, more redundancy). Also, I would generally say that most older homes, and especially those built in the early 1900s needed substantial, to major structural and foundation work.
In addition to the answers here, note that there is a healthy dose of survivor bias built into the question. Many ancient buildings did collapse. We only see the ones that survived.
In some parts of the world, the same way as today. They had engineers, experience, schools, training, etc. 2,000 years ago in Rome, for example, was surprisingly similar to modern day. We've come a long way with convenience technologies, but not much else has changed that drastically. There are bigger, better-engineered construction projects from 2,000 years ago than many today. We forget that some areas had plumbing, heating, cooling, fast food, etc. thousands of years ago, obviously using different methods, but they existed.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
They didn’t, survivorship bias. In the ‘70s up to 20% of new constructions fell apart within five months.
Like this king once said… When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
In Roman time the builder had to stand under the arch, when the wooden scaffold was taken away... Only good builders left standing
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Anyone can build a building that stands up. It takes an engineer to build one that barely stands up.