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ellefagan
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 11
Location: www.ellefagan.com
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 Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:48 pm Post subject: Occupant Safety and Issues for Ground Zero Reconstruction |
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Occupant Safety and Escape ....
Nineleven brought back memories of engineers' plans for innovations of the sort fifty years ago, and since then, I have been sending this plea to
every architectural email link I can fit into my days, and some evenings.
The message:
If we catch all the terrorists on earth, planes will still crash, tall buildings still experience structural crises. No one can guarantee better.
But we can be almost certain that nineleven's catastrophic loss of life will never happen again, with innovative attention to Occupant Safety & Escape issues.
Jet-packed escape pods, on the drawingboard in the '50's but not do-able, are even easy today, can be installed in pre-existing structures and incorporated artfully, triumphantly, like jewels in the setting of former deathtraps. It is, of course, more of a project for planes, and the concept only practical as new planes replace "aged-out" ones .
However:
The support/activist groups, made up of families of the nineleven casualties, and other OSHA aware groups, have been sneered at, according to verifiable reports, by those doing the Ground Zero reconstruction, and their political representatives.
There must be more to the "Big Picture":
I love architecture and architects and cannot believe they are disinterested in this window for redemption.
I don't need to remind most people that an event like nineleven has an insidiously poisonous effect on the group well-being, creating hurts in places not easily reached.
The Construction of Freedom Tower and similar actions have the potential power to bring the healing touch to just those places, with soaring spirit innovation, for the grieving, for our children, for the entire world.
But unless the idea is carried out to concepts of innovative, effective Occupant Safety and Escape, to give it "tooth", it may miss its mark.
This note is a plea for the taking up of this aspect of our Nineleven Redemption...and let us hear all about it!
We're Americans, Citizens of the Third Millennium...and we Can!
Think! What a shining message...the Freedom Tower is not just an empty shell, but a entity with healing power as luminous as its neat graphic portraits !
Truly,
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P.C.
millennium club
Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 2163
Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 3:22 am Post subject: |
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Hi
I se it that way, that all over the world you se attitude no real structure, what is inside don't care ,remains of cold post-modern glass and steel.
Forming just the outside expression and attitude leave no room for new technikes new way's and new visions. Just think about the Sydney Opera, what realy made that was an innovative aproach a respect about the structure and no arogant talk.
What is realy the difference just forming the same cold glass and steel surfaces in new fancy forms, with no thought about what to hold it in the air, where are the new jobs, the develobing new building technikes, how will a neater less human inviroment mean progress and new jobs.
Architectural programs work as how you did things before computers, rigid steel frame cubes are the same profiles and a bit better fittings ,same in effective production asking 20 different profiles and expensive special assembly fittings producing what anyone can se is a poor looking boxwork that screem for covering and paneling.
Ground zero did not produce a new vision just the same fancy square faces, the architect do not deal with the structure what hold the fancy surfaces in the air, everything is about attitude nothing deal with structure or quality, ------- great lead for future architecture. |
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ellefagan
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 11
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 7:27 am Post subject: |
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Thank you for your posting, and I welcome more comment,
But what I am hoping for is for more to, quietly, take up the banner with me on Occupant Safety and Escape Provisions for the Reconstruction at Ground Zero, especially among Architecture and Aeronautic professionals.
I am told they bounceback on group attack...will not meet or reply.
In my heart I believe that they do intend to provide just the sort of thing my appeal calls for, and are simply waiting till it is time to share the joyful message of redemption and comeback, that such an announcement is bound to deliver.
I was seven when I saw the designs, and 54 on Nineleven, sickened with the sudden memory, and the idea that, if we had been more responsible and insisted that architecture and aeronautics engineering provide Occupant Safety and Escape technologies, the loss of life would have been negligible...how many grieved might have been spared the trauma!
Today, right now, "Tuesday's Children" ( site online ) is sitting with the human wreckage of the little ones trying to grow up normally after suffering, high-profile-style, the most bitter blow that can befall a child. Go to the site or last week's 5-pages in the New York Times and see what life is like for these children, even three years later. And yet when I sent this note to LMDC and Architect Liebeskind's offices, I did not even receive the courtesy of an autoreply...and I loved him, too, like so many of us, for his flaming sword against the Nineleven darkness...the passion of the glorious speechifying at the anniversaries loses luster and healing power, badly needed, when followup is so insensitive and mindless.
It isn't really sane to ignore the issue, and yet we do, and we glory in a perverse enjoyment of the adrenaline surge when a plane hits an air pocket or visitors to the Twin Towers before their collapse, mention the fact that the towers pitched some 20-30 feet in high winds, even when they were sound...it's just what they do. And the speakers giggled, like children telling tales to teacher, telling their "swayin'in the breeze" story.
It's not so funny when we must bear up under the group sorrow associated with all the loss of life. This new century is the classic time to win over major faults of the last...this time we can Provide for the Occupant Safety and Escape issues... we will be confronting on Space Travel issues this century, anyway, and mere Earthly "cheapthrills" ought to be made manageable now.
Thanks again for your reply.
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P.C.
millennium club
Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 2163
Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 8:22 am Post subject: |
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Hi
I agrea but I add my doubts --- doubts about where you se any "ansver" where you know this to be the right vision ,where I ask do you se anything but what you se anywhere in the world ,same arogance about what's inside arogance about what we shuld learn about safety and what I ask is, if anything realy changed if architects even is capable of just pointing to a solution solve a real challance or if all we hear is attitude and architects talking smalltalk .
-------- It look great, it symbolise, it transform ,,,,, well then what, do it mean new jobs, is the "vision" great enough to make safety profit do it make an attitude that acturly point to somthing different than the other glass and steel towers around the world. If not there are a reson and that reson is a limited vision that make no ansver as the question is not reconised . It somewhere look like the statue ; ok was that an ansver, do this bring architecture a new form language and a direct link production that for once will challance the way building technikes slowly develobed arogant to the options with computers, Must everything be cold postmodern glass and steel ---- then how is it even different except suggesting another fancy form, when did detail and inner quality escape architecture, was this when architecture turned into a social game ?
Fantasy slipped out of it, detail was replaced with smalltalk and the vision is smaller than ever, now wouldn't new jobs and an actural new form language and direct link production be better and cheaper, and then you could place your safety ,you can't do that in today's rigid steelbeam boxwork, you can't even make a design idear offering "safety structure" that float within the other structure, making the structure into several intergrated building structures with each own function, no everything is chosen from the looks. |
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ellefagan
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 11
Location: www.ellefagan.com
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks again for your note.
You are right, of course, but it gets worse than that....
some of the newest international projects for skyscrapers,
according to routine tv documentaries ,
are designed to show off modern tech powers, and situated
deliberately over land faults that could produce earthquakes.
Fine, but since in life, things go awry, I don't see why the occupants of the
buildings should be pawns and guinea pigs in the game of architectural risk .
" oh-oh " doesn't really cover it, when a building fails, as has happened,
and lives and billions in materials are lost.
Our modern world is a free one, but that means "we get what we order up". It is up to us to reach our leaders in every walk of life, and make sure
we get a good product in goods and services, including building designs that include innovative and redemptive occupant safety and escape provisions.
The escape pods are easy.....little independent elevator car-like things,
equipped with ejection mechanics and a few minutes worth of whatever it takes to land it safely on the ground. The only tricky part is being sure the pods eject in such a way as not to bump into one another as they descend.
I am a lady and and artist, so my vision of the pods was as little jewels, giving a crystalline appearance to the outside walls, like diamond studding, when viewed from the street...
a happy and healing sight for all who pass....glittering gently in the light, day or night.
But since the escape pods are independent of one another,
all they need is a "makeroom" niche on the building outer wall.
and, the part visible to people , inside and out , could be finished to blend in and not show at all, till needed, to keep perfectly with the original outer appearance. It is the independent factor of the pods that allows them to be installed in pre-existing buildings...and appear not at all to casual view.
The best part of the pods is that, the elevators and stairwells would not be needed for occupant escape. Elevators and stairwells often act like chimneys in the event of fire. But since the occupants would escape by way of the escape pods situated on the outer walls, the elevator shafts and stairwells could be bulwarked closed, like the partitions on a ship, to prevent the spread of fire and minimize building damage.
Cool no?
This of course presumes that Fire Drills and Escape instructions and Preparedness are attended to......most buildings before nineleven had to admit to managing Preparedness "not well enough".
In fact, it was a lucky accident that prompted a preparedness class at the Pentagon....one that was not on their routine list, over something else that came up.....so the occupants at the Pentagon knew what to do, when the plane hit, and did it and their casualities were one-eighth what they might have been.
In tall buildings, even if the escape pods were included, each floor would need its Preparedness officers, with backup crews, to supervise safe egress and make sure no one was trapped in bulwarked stairwells.
Again, I know I am going to be much relieved and grateful to find that these issues are , indeed, being handled, and handled well, but not ready to share with the public yet.
Believe. I hope you will share our posts with friends....knowledge is power, and it IS our lives.
e.
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drheaton
Joined: 19 Sep 2004
Posts: 1
Location: Indiana
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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Architect's safety focus has been more conventional. As you may know, some of the high rise safety issues being addressed are:
1 Stairwells made of something more impact resistant than gypsum board, like reinforced concrete.
2 Floor structures that are resistant to progressive collapse.
3 Structural fireproofing that is more resistant to being knocked or blown off during construction, or impacts.
4 Elevators specially designed for Fire escape and fire fighting.
5 Sprinkler systems with backup main risers that are fire and impact protected.
6 Wider stairwells.
The consideration of aircraft for evacuation has been limited to providing access to the roof for possible helicopter evacuation, which of course will not evacuate large numbers of people quickly.
How practical are escape pods? Do you have a website reference for more technical info? 
If escape pods are feasible, NASA should have had them on the space shuttle long before we consider them for buildings? What happens when the pod fails during a minor fire or a fire drill and everyone dies? It took us a long time to perfect the elevator, and people occasionally still die in or above or below them.
I do not believe that it will ever be as safe on the 80th floor of a building as it is on the 9th floor. I heard developers report that it is economically feasible to build a 50 story building in Manhattan, they do not NEED to be any taller. It is just the developer's ego... putting people at greater risk than necessary.
 How about an escape car that rides on a rail along the exterior of the building? Like modified window washer's platform... That way we can borrow technology from the elevator and the platform engineers.
Thanks, Dan
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phansford
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 832
Location: SW Ohio
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 6:41 am Post subject: |
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"Its times like this that it occurs to me that we were lied to by the Jetsons" Randall
http://www.viewaskew.com/tv/leno/flyingcar.html
Elle - Thanks for throwing your hat over the wall.
As an architect, I think there are a lot of practical issues that will limit your idea at this time. The shear size of the escape pod to hold all of the potential inhibitants of a single floor would be huge. You have to calculate 100 sf of floor space per person in an office use (International Building Code). Therefore a small floor plate size of say 3, 000 sf would yield an allowable occupant load of 30 occupants - or an escape pod the size of a regional jet. The next question would be where do you place this size of a pod in the building, which you would need for each floor or every couple of floors. I don't know the plate size of the Twin Towers and the related occupant load, but it would have been worst if the planes had struck, lets say an hour or two later when they would be at full or near full capacity. Nonetheless, the size of any escape pod for one of the Trade Tower floors would have to be huge.
Talk to any fire official who has high rises in their juridication and they will tell you that ALL construction over 4 to 6 floors is dangerous. These are the heights their fire ladders and inflaitble jump bags work.
As drheaton, explains there are other areas being reviewed.
To qiuckly explain the issue of "swaying". All buildings flex under lateral loading and are designed to flex (normally for high winds and earthquakes). Rigid structures would snap or fail. The John Hancock in Chicago is designed to sway 30- 36 inches in high wind. I find the comments that the Trade Toweres normally 20-30 feet highly suspect. You would be able to visually detect that amount of movement and it would have put the buildings in structural failure years ago.
Your house probably moves about 3/8 to 3/4 inch in high winds. You just do not sense it. Think about what happens to a stiff tree with low root structure.
I recommend an excellant episode of the PBS show NOVA called "Mystery of the Master Builders" hosted by Robert Mark. He discusses the relationship of structural purity and artistic expression in ancient and modern architecture. There is a very nice explaination of high rise design concerning lateral loading (the swaying your talking about). The show was done in 1993 or 1994. You might find it at the local library.
Again, Thanks for throwing your hat over the wall |
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ellefagan
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 11
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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Thanksomuch for your helpful comments...just what I hoped for to improve my understanding... I was spending too much time with my psychic friend 
The swaying concept notes from you are very helpful...remember that my data was from nineleven reports soon after the event, and quite likely to be poorly remembered. I can't thank you enough for clarifying the point.
I have been following PBS, and Discovery specials on Architecture , Construction and other relevant episodes...it is all fascinating,and worthy of its time demand. Ignorance of concepts that effect our survival is the fault of most of us, and when something happens , it is too late.
I don't think I have seen the episode you mentioned but will find it.
I forwarded our notes from the weekend to my Saturn Campaign leader at NASA......guess what? she is forwarding it to Genesis.... Architect Healy wondered why NASA was not using escape pods if it is such a cool idea...we lean on NASA for innovation too much.
Still a backup ejection , safelanding pod for data or people in space is a bright idea.
If Genesis contacts me would you like to be informed?
Sometimes it is a very long time before an individual note can be respected, due to the volume of mail received. Still.....
As for the pods, confronting on the capacity issue: you are right in wondering how it would be done adequately; how to handle the large number of people on each floor. And that is the controversy: what gives us the idea that it is ok to construct skyscrapers with capacities on each floor greater than could be safely / easily evacuated "in the event of" ?
The little escape pods, like elevator cars, but independent, could easily be tucked anywhere between the inner and outer walls...lots of them on each floor would be needed, to complete the logic circle here. Any good decorator could see that their viewable surface, in and out, was matching or compatible, so as not to be visually distasteful, though most people won't complain about the ungainly fire extinguisher because of the lifesaving function it performs.
Please accept my thanks for your comments.
more.
Elle Fagan
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Architorture
millennium club
Joined: 31 Jul 2004
Posts: 1380
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 11:28 am Post subject: |
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i think the escape pod idea offers far too many practical shortfalls...
lets just try to think of all the places where an 'escape pod' situation exists already...
i can only think of one...and that is the cockpit of a fighter jet...which is only used as the very last option to escape a destroyed or about-to-be-destoyed aircraft...
i think we can all agree that fighter jets are probably some of the most highly designed and tested mechanisms in the world...and yet you have pilots dying during the ejection process...
their seats are fired by an explosion... how would you ever fire one of these pods? you certainly can't introduce an explosion in an escape situation or even ethically store explosives in the outside wall of a building... i suppose magnet technology is around that could 'throw' a pod...but that is to assume in the case of a disaster you still have the massive amounts of electricity needed to power such a mechanism...
so if we suppose some kind of 'firing' device is concieved there are still tons of problems...at what point do these pods start? if it is a 70 story building and you are in a pod on the 30th floor...where does your pod go? does it have to go all the way up to the 70th floor? that would take enormous amounts of energy to achieve...
then the forces that the human body would experience might be enough to cause death anyway... there is force put on the body by a slow moving elevator that can be detected by our senses... now imagine that elevator being launched from the building at speed x... you would need safety harnesses of some kind...which would ultimately lead to the situation where the pod is full and 1 guy doesn't have a harness...
now lets say all of that gets resolved somehow... where is this pod going to land? and how?
it was mentioned earlier..we still have people getting crushed by elevators which are entirely enclosed...a person wouldn't accidentally end up in an elevator shaft...usually...or at least they are well aware that they are in fact in an elevator shaft...
whereas if i'm some random guy walking down a street in an urban area where pretty much all high rises get built... how am i supposed to be aware that i might be crushed by a landing safety pod? to not have gigantic pods you would need hundreds of little pods....where are all these things landing...and on what...especially in an urban setting where the old 'landing pad' is the width of a city street...which has every inch of it covered in either cars or people....
i think the reason the escape pod isn't used is b/c it is a thing of fantasy...and its practical applications can only be seen in the most extreme circumstances such as a fighter jet...where the use of the escape technology is very dangerous and taxing on the escapee
i don't want you to think that i'm being to conservative about this or that i'm not willing to think of it.... i do think technologies need to be investigated to created safer buildings....i just don't think escape pods is anywhere near the answer... |
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ellefagan
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 11
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 12:42 pm Post subject: Thanks and response to your thoughts |
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First, thanks so much for posting to my forum.
Your ideas are great and challenging, so let me go point-by-point in response:
1 "shortfalls"...interesting word choice, deliberate?...gee, I hope not.
2. fighterjet cockpit ejection: I hoped someone would bring up the point.
The jetfigher ejection thing happened when I hit puberty and I just finished menopause...first a recession, concessions to inadequacies in tech knowhow,
and skyhighcosts for tech implementation then a focus on innovation from NASA have resulted in a terrible abandonment of "the pursuit of excellence in innovative thought and followup ever since by aeronautics and architecture......this is your mission! Today's architecture student must break through this trend...without abandoning longterm wisdoms and care... "let it be a challenge to you" ( ..to Sandy Dennis in "up the sandbox"...humor) You must focus your energies to undo the hiatus, the stalemate in evolution in such thought on which all our lives will depend more each year as the Third Millennium gains impetus. I envy you....make me envy you, child.
3. "dying during the ejection process"...Precisely...why? The mechanics are not so complex. Do you follow PBS and Discovery documentaries.....and Architectural and Aeronautical newitems in the major papers? I do. Both have been guilty of life-costing errors of a "port/left, starboard/right " nature. One plane type explodes and crashes because a fuel line was routed, by planned engineering, right alongside a hotspot in the engine, and attached so that leaks might happen... not American ingenuity, by any description. Needs work.
4. The pods work...ejection power: friends from UT and other sources wold have to help me with the powersource details....I have alot of science inmy background, but am and artist/redcrosslady, and promise to do some homework on it, and woudlbe grateful for someone with a "doable" attitude about the idea to help find answers to this facet of the ejection pod idea.....
but for now: I agree with you completely that to power the pods with eplosive energy of any sort would pose a danger in a building fire or collapse situation. I was thinking of some sort of combination of jet and parachute, to give "give and take" power/energy to the thing...I know such
engineering exists but need better detail.
With the pods placed liberally at the space between inner and outer walls,
a simple mechanical push could work to launch them .
You are also very right about the harness need to keep the occupants of the pod safe.......seatbelts along the walls like those we use in our cars with a good airpillow at the ceiling and maybe floor might work,and allow occupants to secure themselves very quickly.
My only concern was how to synchonize the pods so they don't bump into one another en route or on the ground....the placement of the pods, and the landing "drive" would need to be pretty accurate.
Also, a landing pad area at all points that would be needed would need to be cleared aroudn the building, so "passersby " would not need to fear the
conking you mentioned, by a landing pod. But most highrises have such areas incorporated in their design already for appearance and functionality and security.
The think I like best about the escape pods is that they function independently and do not require a shaft....the deadly chimney-effect-shaft of elevator and stairwell functions....so these could be bulwarked closed to contain a fire or limit some other crisis condition to a few floors.
Escape pods are not a fantasy.
We went to starwars and enjoyed the fantasy of 30-second food from Luke Skywalker's microwave....a year later, we all had the same thing in our homes... the only fantasy is reality. You are youth.....where's your vision?
Didn't you read "The Fountainhead"?
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ellefagan
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 11
Location: www.ellefagan.com
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 2:36 pm Post subject: Thanks for the positive moment |
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I appreciate the moral support as much as the challenges that make me defend my idea....both are important to a valid thing. Thank you!
My Father and aero engineers celebrated the beginnings of action on Occupant Safety and Escape Issues in the 50's my Dad had been a flight mechanic, and was neighbor to the drawingboard Sikorsky team genius "Doc" Adenstedt. Then for the reasons mentioned above, in my previous post, the project stopped...My life took its own way, and I truly forgot. Then my Father died in '99, and since then, widowed as well, I spend a little bit of time in memorial prayer or activity. So, when nineleven happened, I experienced a true "backflash" on the subject of the pods, and it feels right to pursue it...if , for no other reason, to add good food for thought and innovation for Occupant Safety and Escape.
A very fine achitect listed the plans for Freedom Tower, where the issue is concerned, and I felt embarassed for them... not innovative, not redemptive; the list might have been pulled from same from a century ago.
If ever the world were to come up with a thing like the escape pods, it would certainly do a lot of good.....much needed, in the wake of our mass grieving.
It is no joke....we can do it! And we must or we die! Not meaning to frighten, but my Father told me that the Soaring Spirit of Aero and Architecture had its basis in service to humanity, and that the pressure to
deliver redemption through innovation was why so many are intimidated out of the field of endeavor....and we never questioned the high salaries earned and the hugh pricetag on the building came to mean that the project had healing and salvation in it for all of us, if only by suggestion.
Today we know that "it ain't necessarily so"........ for threeeeeee years,
we have been getting a painful refresher in the concept: safety, security,
technology, duty, committment, responsibility, national readiness.....none of them were what we had grown to expect.......we did not even have interceptor planes near enought to get to WTC in time.....
It does no good to batter our souls......pull up and problemsolve, or make it worse! Center, find our own good lights from within, aim them at the dark places and illumnate .......Since we CAN.....LET'S !
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Architorture
millennium club
Joined: 31 Jul 2004
Posts: 1380
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 4:11 pm Post subject: Re: Thanks and response to your thoughts |
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| ellefagan wrote: |
Didn't you read "The Fountainhead"? |
well i certainly hope you realize that book it pure fantasy...
1-shortfalls... just a term
2-ejection seat....i don't really understand your explanation there...sometimes certain ideas are never safe or good no matter how much you engineer them...like an ejection seat
3-dying in the ejection process...i'm not talking simple mistakes...i'm talking forces that will be put on the human body... sudden ejection and all the forces related to it could easily cause people to become unconscious/or die... especially when you consider the wide array of specific aliments people might have...
4- they might work mechanically...but i don't think they can ever carry out their supposed task here
jet power? i think we have see what jet fuel can do to a skyscraper...and with the parachute... think about the old NASA pods...they splash down in the water b/c landing on land wouldn't go so well for the occupants...even though the parachute is deployed at a high altitude... granted the pods wouldn't be going as fast as a space object...
i really think in the end...the landing is the killer... in dense urban areas there is no place for hundreds of these pods to be landing...and if they are landing in the open space around the building as you suggest...that isn't necessarily a safer place...especially if the building were to collapse or if emergency personel need to be in that space... and the fact that you have put hundreds of projectiles into the air endangering other stuctures
i don't think you can compare the microwave to the escape pod... the microwave came to pass from new sciences... the HARD issues in the escape pod are known... and when dealing with something that will be responsible for people's lives i don't think you can just disregard these issues as being able to be resolved through improving current technologies....
i think there is far more wrong, practically, with the skyscraper than the need for escape pods... the bigger issue that you have presented that we should seriously investigate how to keep people safe in buildings in the wake of 9/11 is very valid...i just don't think escape pods is the answer that is needed...
as for donald's suggestion that there should be enough parachutes on each floor for everyone to escape, is nearly as unpractical... the only thing keeping death rates low in the skydiving industry is in fact the fear of dying... sure i would take a parachute over death in a burning building...but the result could just as easily be death...it would really just be offering people an option
die in collapse/fire or die by strapping on this parachute and jumping out of the building
i don't think the answer are quite that simple |
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