Pondering anti-terrorist building construction, this idea came to mind. If a building was constructed with a suspension system, the floors would be independently stable, and thus, a cascading collapse would be very difficult. The design would be to have four pillars each flanking a corner of the building. Suspension ropes extend from the pillars at intervals up the building, each set supporting three to five floors.

The pillars would have to have counter tension, to prevent them from falling in on themselves. To this precaution, it may be wise to connect suspension buildings in series, with each terminal end anchored to the ground.

The problem here is that if one pillar is knocked out by whomever, then the whole series of buildings is subject to collapse, and that's worse then from where we began. However, Just as knocking out one node on the internet does not collapse the system, so might this be the case with interconnected suspension buildings.

The most secure design may be to have a grid of suspension buildings, each one suspended to its four adjacent pillars, and to the eight next pillars out. This design would secure the inner most building most, not only form a suspension perspective, but also from the fact that no plane is ever going to get even close to flying through that mess of wires.
-- daseva, Apr 13 2005

earthquake-proof buildings http://web-japan.or...itecture/arc10.html
something about the pagoda style that resists quakes but I forget the detail... [po, Apr 13 2005]

Carbon Fiber Building http://www.peter-te...s/metmag/?artid=746
I don't think there's anything there to blow up. (All the pictures I've seen of this thing are white: wouldn't carbon fiber be black?) [DrCurry, Apr 14 2005]

How's this any more effective than pinning the floors to a metal skeleton?
-- st3f, Apr 13 2005


The floors and the support are seperated from eachother. So, damage to the floors does not affect the skeleton, and visa versa (to an extent). I see now that floors will still have the risk of pancaking down on eachother, but, with a delocalized skeleton this cascade will subdue quicker.
-- daseva, Apr 13 2005


I think redesigning all the major buildings in the world in response to some nuts flying aircraft into a very few of them is a very bad idea. If someone deploys a dirty bomb somewhere, are we all going to move into lead-lined bunkers?
We ought to be building tall, thin and stunningly beautiful brittle towers in the shape of single raised fingers.
-- Basepair, Apr 13 2005


Seperating the 'skeleton' as you call it, from the floors won't have an effect on the ability of the building to survive a catastrophic event
-- scubadooper, Apr 13 2005


Point taken, [basepair] and already in the works, as ground zero will rise tall with one of those "fingers" in a couple years.

And I was just going to add that I would have trained monkeys scaling down the lines, carrying drinks and little messages to employees in adjacent buildings. :(

I believe it would have an effect [scuba], since the main support would be delocalized and thus harder to demolish.
-- daseva, Apr 13 2005


I must be missing something as usual. I thought that some high-rise buildings were constructed by casting each concrete floor at ground level then lifting it in to place and anchoring it to multiple columns to keep it from falling down. I think that method is called lift slab. Each floor is an independent unit supported by the vertical columns.

How does suspending the floors from cables improve on that? Are you saying that in addition to the point where a floor is directly supported by a column, that the floor (at that same approximate point) would be supported by cables attached to other columns? If one pillar is knocked out then several others can take the load?
-- half, Apr 13 2005


UB: I dunno. A fully loaded 727 thumping into your building is going to knock it down in most cases. Not something I'd like to try.

I also think there are height limits to reinforced concrete, which was why a structural frame was used. [Correction:] Oop - no - seems structural concrete is the way to go for very tall buildings. Still wouldn't like to be in one when they start lobbing airplanes around again, though. (Truth to tell, the World Trade Center always gave me severe vertigo, so I probably wouldn't want to be in one anyway.)
-- DrCurry, Apr 14 2005



random, halfbakery