A Different Take

Here’s a good interview with John Ochsendorf, a professor at MIT and the director of the American Academy in Rome. (I see John on average once a year at a conference, so I know a bit more about his work than Wikipedia.) His research, for years, has focussed on structural analysis of old-fashioned masonry structures. This is a reasonably crowded field – the conferences where our paths intersect usually have a number of papers on the analysis of old masonry buildings – but his analysis is accurate, meaningful, and accessible.

In general, we are looking at a different class of building than John – early industrialized construction rather than mass masonry – but interesting analysis is interesting analysis even if it’s not of direct use in our work.