In two weeks, I’ll be giving a talk in Philadelphia for the Delaware Valley Association of Structural Engineers, which is the eastern-Pennsylvania chapter of the Structural Engineers Association of Pennsylvania. The topic is “Engineers’ Guidelines for Historic Buildings” and I’m not exaggerating much to say that the DVASE selected me and that topic as a pair, and weren’t interested in me without it. I’ve given versions of this talk several times before to SEAs – in Indianapolis, Portland ME, and Providence – in lengths varying from 90 minutes up to five hours.
It’s a fun talk to give because I can assume that the audience understands any engineering references I make and there’s no need to talk about the details of formal preservation. I get to talk about specifically how to use modern engineering logic on buildings constructed before that logic existed or when it was still being developed. It’s not always an easy fit, but this issue is at the core of my day-to-day work and is ultimately why I started Old Structures Engineering. If engineers don’t work within the context of existing designs, we’ll end up, as a society, demolishing a lot of reusable buildings, wasting time, money, energy, carbon, and history.
The link to the event is: here. If you’re in or near Philly, I hope to see you there.
A mid-1800s tenement building in Manhattan, with cast-iron arches tied with wrought-iron rods serving as lintels over storefronts. The structure was exposed during renovation in 1998, and I can state that year accurately because that’s when the play Art was on Broadway and there were posters on construction fences around town.
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