The globe is filled with breathtaking engineering achievements, with most constructions being created to near perfection by architects globally. A
rchitects, like physicians and attorneys, are among the respected and highly esteemed professions.
Their image for being at the top of their profession stems from their desire to be near-perfectionists in their work, with minimal margin for error.
According to supporters of a new project targeted at reducing mistakes, preventable blunders cost the £100 billion construction sector £21 billion per year.
Errors cost somewhere between 10% and 25% of a project's budget.
It is human to make mistakes, and architects are no exception.
A single tiny error in a building project might result in a massive loss.
Let's take a look at some of history's most expensive construction mistakes.
11. The Dancing Bridge
To some degree, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington is the most conventional catastrophe in the history of bridge construction. I
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The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was estimated to cost $8 million.
It is often considered the third most expensive bridge
after the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge in the 1940s.
The 200-meter-long bridge will swing and contort itself erratically during a gusty wind,
usually driven by the resonance frequency. And, much like dancing, t
he amplitude of vibration reached 1.5m!
As a result, just four months after inauguration into service, it collapsed. The fate of this bridge was predictable.
It had occurred during construction, causing employees to become dizzy.
One of the causes is that the bridge deck's width decreased from 7.6 meters to 2.4 meters.
Another reason is the low-cost beam that was used as a building material.
The world's third-largest suspension bridge was the most sophisticated in its elegant design.
However, it turned out to be was a tangled mess of shattered concrete and steel.
10. The Leaning Tower of Pisa
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a unique architectural monument globally, serving as a landmark in Pisa, Italy. T
he tower was built for two centuries, beginning in 1173 and ending in 1372.
Due to the asymmetrical foundation, loose soil, and other factors, the bell tower began to tilt to the southeast soon after the building started.
The tower's flaw, on the other hand, is what makes it a one-of-a-kind sight.
Engineers inclined the tower in the other direction to compensate for the initial lean by laying stonework to the south of the building and altering the mass of the load-bearing pillar.
When the tower got constructed to the seventh story in 1278, it leaned to the north rather than the south.
Experts have been working their brains since the tower's construction to find ways to save the leaning skyscraper.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa, on the other hand, has remained standing after numerous storms.
9. The Aon Center
The Aon Center, completed in 1973 and funded by the Standard Oil Company, is Chicago's third tallest structure.
At first, the Aon Center, which has a zenith of 346.3 meters and 83 floors,
was often utilized for business and tourism.
From 1973 to 2003, it served as the headquarters of the Standard Oil Company
before the Wells Real Estate Investment Trust bought it.
Due to cost constraints, experts used 43,000 slabs of Italian marble to cover the building's initial exterior,which got discovered to be significantly thinner than standard building materials
and entirely unsuited for external construction. In the second year following construction,
architects detected that the outer wall was prone to falling off and cracking.
Some slabs broke away from the structure and landed on the roof of the Prudential Center across the street.
As a result, replacing the complete external wall with granite material cost additional 80 million dollars!
The activities frequently contradict the initial goal of saving money.
8. The John Hancock Tower
The I.M. Pei & Partners architectural company designed a 60-story skyscraper, the John Hancock Tower, in Boston in 1976.
The architectural world praised it for its stunning, simple aesthetic, but it was notorious for its faults.
One of the building's major problems was that its windows were falling out and smashing to the ground hundreds of feet below.
Authors Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori argued in their 1992 book "Why Buildings Fall";
that this was due to unforeseen, recurrent heat pressures on the panels.
It costs $5 million for John Hancock's 10,000 windows to get repaired.
Another big issue arose at the John Hancock Tower.
Skyscrapers are constructed in such a way that they sway to accommodate powerful gusts of wind. However, the sway is usually not noticeable to the building's occupants.
The John Hancock Tower, on the other hand, shook so violently that it gave those on the higher levels motion sickness.
7. The Ray and Maria Stata Center
Frank Gehry, an award-winning architect, designed the Ray and Maria Stata Center located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. T
he Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems are all housed there, which debuted in 2004.
It got applauded for its logically challenging angles and walls that defied physics laws. Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched a negligence action against Gehry three years after the building was opened,
alleging that design faults in the $300 million structure had created severe structural difficulties.
There were cracks in the walls which were caused by drainage difficulties.
Like lethal sash weights, icicle daggers dangled pendulously from the ceiling.
6. The I-35 Bridge
The bridge in Minneapolis that connects the I-35 highway to the Mississippi River
is regarded as one of the fatal architectural disasters in modern history in Wisconsin's largest city.
On the 1st of August 2007, the bridge that transported 140,000 commuters daily collapsed, killing 13 individuals and injured 145 others.
The design fault that caused the collapse was thin plating alongside the rivets,
which collapsed under the heavyweight of so much traffic.
Despite being told that the bridge that fell into the Mississippi River was "structurally inadequate" as early as 1990,
Minnesota officials banked on patchwork renovations
and stepped-up assessments that unfolded amid a thundering plummet of concrete and cars.
5. The Hyatt Regency Walkway
The hotel had a clean and beautiful design when it first opened in 1980,
with a multi-story centerpiece and three hanging walkways winding through it.
The walkways were supported by 1.5-inch metal rods,
but the key concern was the transition from a single set of suspension rods looped through the top walkways to a double-rod system fastened to the uppermost walkways themselves,
putting enormous and unnecessary stress on the structure.
The layout failed to fulfill the minimal safety criteria, yet it went undiscovered during the construction phase.
Most architectural problems are discovered over time.
But the Hyatt Regency located in Kansas City, Missouri, was not so lucky.
When the elevated walkway on the fourth floor collapsed on the 17th of July, 1981,
it killed 114 people and injured 200 more.
The walkway on the fourth floor fell onto another walkway two levels down and finally into the lobby below. T
he construction was worth approximately 50 million dollars
4. The Kemper Arena Roof Collapse
As the unique home of the Kansas City Kings, the arena was praised for its innovative layout and immaculate architecture.
The architect was even given an Honor Award by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
Years later, due to a design fault that valued form and aesthetics over functionality,
the arena's roof collapsed during a heavy downpour.
The AIA members, ironically, made a visit to Kemper's Arena the day before the roof collapsed at its annual conference in 1979.
The flat roof raised concerns about how it might withstand inclement weather.
As a result, the plan included a makeshift storage to reduce rainfall runoff,
but only the appropriate drains were constructed, despite local regulations requiring at least approximately twice that number.
As a result, the reservoir could only hold 2 inches of rain before overflowing. The night the roof collapsed, a storm dumped well over double as much rain.
The other collapse was so severe that the strain of the collapsing roof blew away parts of the walls.
The cost of construction was estimated to be $23 million
3. The St. Francis Dam
St. Francis Dam was built in the 1920s to serve as a water reservoir for the city of Los Angeles, California.
The dam was enormous, standing 205 feet tall and holding 12.5 billion gallons of water -
nough to provide the city with water for a year!
A tremendous breaking boom echoed down the canyon about midnight onTheacollapses1928, waking hundreds of nearby dam employees.
The dam had failed. 431 individuals were killed as a huge 120-foot surge of floodwater rushed down and killed them.
The multi-billion-gallon reservoir was nearly empty after 70 minutes.
The dam was blown up to aid local inhabitants in their recovery following the devastating tragedy.
The dam's breakdown, according to experts, was caused by bad engineering and geological misinterpretation.
Construction rules were enacted as a result, guaranteeing that such a catastrophe would never occur again.
2. The Rana Plaza Collapse
The collapse of the Savar building was also known as the calamity at Rana Plaza while some called it the catastrophe at the dhaka textile plant. A
n 8-floor building in Bangladesh fell on 24 April 2013 because of an architectural defect.
The collapse took the lives of 1,134 people
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Often considered the most catastrophic and unconscious architectural mistake of the modern age
and the most destructive catastrophe in the textile business.
The buildings included apartments, a bank, manufacturing companies and various shops.
The wall of the bottom floor has splits. As a result, the lower levels were promptly shuttered.
It was reopened after the owner of Rana Plaza ignored warnings not to use the structure because of found cracks. W
orkers at the textile mill were told to return to work the next day,
and the plaza collapsed during rush hour traffic
1. The Metro Overpass Collapse
A girder supporting a bridge holding up Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro
fell underneath a passing train in the metropolis of Tláhuac on May 3, 2021.
The train's final two carriages and the bridge collided on Tláhuac Avenue near Olivo's station,
rendering 79 people injured and 26 dead. It was the worst Metro accident in over 50 years.
Line 12, the newest line in the system was declared openly in 2007
and inaugurated in 2012.
The line has had technical and functional issues from its inception, resulting in the temporary shutdown of the overhead divisions
the disaster occurred–between 2014 and 2015.
The span was badly impacted by an earthquake in 2017,
and while it was restored within a few months, local people complained that issues remained years later.
According to preliminary findings, the bridge's poor and dubious construction was the reason for the collapse.
The finest architects are those who can take charge of a project and keep it on schedule.
It's all too easy to strive to please clients and wind up with unreasonable timetables and expectations.
It might lead to hurrying through activities, which is a guaranteed way to make errors.
Many apparent errors in architecture and building design are the outcome of delivering something the customer did not desire.
A crucial first step in developing structures that receive favorable evaluations is paying attention to detail and being able to discuss with someone who may not grasp the creative aspects of architecture.
Even after the construction project has begun, the client's demands may need certain adjustments.
Great architects ensure that the final design is within the client's desired parameters.
Architects that struggle to adjust original ideas to reflect what the customer wants
are considered to have architectural design faults.
It is normal practice for clients to assign deadlines to architects.
The architect also offers a realistic schedule for the project's completion,
although some customers are very particular about timeframes,
and it is the architect's job to guarantee that he or she does not agree to an unreasonable date.
The consequence of agreeing to an unreasonable timetable is that the architects involved will run out of time and have to hurry the project.
An architectural design should never be rushed.
In the worst-case situation, you can request additional time and explain why you need it.
A tight timetable or timeline is a recipe for disaster