Reviewing Structures with a Philosophical Perspective
Series on Structures | Episode 3 of 5
Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down: A book written by J.E. Gordon
Reverse Engineer Your Life
With this concept, you can conquer your problems, overcome challenges, reach your goals, and most importantly optimize your mindset. At times, we focus too much on beauty and pure pleasure, which derails us from our personal journey and achievements. Other times, we stay too close to the line of form and function, favoring efficiency over everything, leaving little to the mind to enjoy visually in an aesthetic sense. Before we scale down the girders in this review, we must examine the reprise of philosophical sobriquets by which J.E. Gordon so graciously describes for readers of all kinds to enjoy.
In regard to the juxtaposition that modern humans find themselves in, the wise among us may seek a middle ground in the chasm that divides the two lines of thinking. While there are positives in both an aesthetic and function approach, may our minds lend us to shift the plates in a way that allows us to capture the essence and fabric of our time, whatever period that may be.
A blend of the two, form and function, can communicate well together, enriching the lives inside and around us.
The beauty in building something worth remembering for centuries, devised by either nature or man, provides hope for the future to aspire to and continue to create their own message in correspondence.
In other words, turn it inside out, flip it upside down, fail fast, and be amazed by the process.
Think backward by starting from the end. You may have heard it many times before, but the saying has held its weight for centuries on end.
For now, we shall turn the page on the story where we shine a light on the work written by Gordon, denoted with a vertical line and italics. For there are many great sections in the book that are pure in thought, and authentic in form.
For instance, if we look at a suspension bridge and then at an arch, it does not require much imagination to see that the suspension bridge is really an arch turned upside down — or vice versa. In other words, if we change the sign of all the stresses in an arch, that is, if we turn all the compressions into tensions, then these tensions could be carried by a single curved rope, which may be regarded as defining a ‘thrust line’ in tension.
By doing this we can arrive, comparatively painlessly, at the compressive thrust line for an arched bridge or a vaulted roof. Or in the case of the Colosseum, many spectacular arches for spectators to be amazed by.
Tired of Railroads
Let’s take a second and step off the automatic railroad. Instead, take charge and keep rolling like the pneumatic tire. Air yourself up from time to time and check on your mental and physical well-being. Don’t get burned out.
Before we roll along, it is quite necessary to wrap one’s head around the timeline of the tire. Think of how the world would have been different if the tire had been made ubiquitous before the train took off in popularity, or if the familiar tire had not been invented until decades later.
Pneumatic tires were patented in 1845 by a young man called R. W. Thomson, then aged 23. Thomson’s tire was surprisingly successful technically, but by that time the railways were well established, and the rail interests combined with the horse interests to promote absurd and restrictive legislation, which had the effect of delaying the development of the motor car until the turn of the century.
The pneumatic tire was revived with considerable success, for use on cycles, by J. B. Dunlop in 1888. Dunlop made a fortune out of it, but by that time Thomson had passed away and his patent had expired. With solid tires lorries are limited to something like 15 m.p.h., and cars cannot go very much faster. Thomson’s invention has not only made fast and cheap road transport practicable; it has also enabled aircraft to operate from dry land. Without pneumatic tires, we should probably have to use some form of seaplane.
Scaling With Reason
From Thrust Lines demanding to be kept safe in the ‘middle third’ of a column, to the square cube law, discoveries as such have allowed us to progress in our journey of scaling structures to great heights. Galileo’s discovery of the square cube law proves why it is one good reason why vehicles and ships and aircraft and machinery need to be designed by proper modern analytical methods.
This is probably why such things were so late in developing, at least in their modern forms. However, we can neglect the square-cube law with most masonry buildings because, as we have said, buildings do not normally fail by reason of the material breaking in compression. The stresses in masonry are so low that we can afford to go on scaling them up almost indefinitely. Unlike most other structures, buildings fail because they become unstable and tip up; and for any size of building this can be predicted from a model.
We have doubted our abilities to scale ships and buildings from small to big. Not only have we proved our previous generations wrong with every succeeding generation, but the light travels both ways to speak.
We can scale our way larger towards the sky, but we have also learned to master scaling down on a computing chip and genetic level. For most of which concepts were previously unimaginable just decades prior.
The limit does not exist in terms of potential, for whatever limit there currently is straining us with our knowledgeable (yet incomplete view of the law of physics) we have plenty to learn and gain in the coming years.
All the quarks, leptons, and bosons around us will pave the way for quantum computing to reach new heights, so that we in turn will be able to higher our expectations in the hierarchy of what is possible.
You Cantilever
In one way or another, we constantly interact with beams, that are either living or dead. Regardless of animacy, the fact they are supported gives us the idea that everything builds off something else, until we reach the core.
They do the same job; yet beams as a whole tend to fall into two main categories: ‘cantilevers’ and ‘simply supported* beams. There are in fact further variants and sub-divisions, which are frequently useful for examination and other purposes, but we shall ignore them for the moment. A ‘cantilever’ is a beam one end of which can be considered as being’ built in ‘to some rigid support, such as a wall or the ground. This end-condition is called by engineers encastre — which is merely French for ‘built in’. The other end of the cantilever, of course, sticks out and supports the load.
Electricity pylons, telegraph poles, ships’ masts, turbine blades, horns, teeth, animals’ necks and trees and cornstalks and dandelions are cantilevers, and so are the wings of birds and aeroplanes and butterflies and also the tails of mice and peacocks.
Walk on the ledge for a moment; I guarantee you will find a cantilever in some shape or fashion in almost any scenario you find yourself in. There will always be some object or person going out on a limb to accomplish the job at hand.
Truss Me
Whether you are more of a Bollman, Fink, or even a Howe truss, it is imperative to construct a framework that makes the most sense for yourself. Given the situation, you should be able to weather the storm, with extra remarks for being concise in efficiency, such as with the Fink Truss.
So far, we have considered all these bridges as being simply supported beams, and so, of course, a great many of them were and are. However, a number of beam bridges are cantilever bridges. For some reason cantilever bridges were never very popular in wooden construction, but they are widely used nowadays when built from steel and concrete. A good proportion of the bridges over the motorways are reinforced concrete cantilever bridges.
Don’t be a Square-Cube Law
It will be remembered that the buckling load of a long column varies as l/L² (where L is the length) and this implies that, for a rod of constant cross-section, the compressive strength diminishes very rapidly with increase of length. Thus, to support any given load, a long strut has to be made very much thicker, and therefore heavier, than a short one. On the other hand, if we increase the load, keeping the distance the same, then the weight of a compression structure becomes relatively better.
Furthermore, Gordon expands and explains how the size of large animals are more likely to be limited by considerations related to the ‘critical Griffith crack length’ in their bones than by the square-cube law. Thus, keeping this in mind, there are some fluctuations in some species, the trend relies heavily on these key factors.
On the Anisotropic Topic
Here, Gordon explains how the distinction between a material and a structure is never very clearly defined. In this case, it does not matter very much whether the shearing loads in a beam are carried by a continuous plate web or whether they are carried by a lattice which might be made up of rods and wires, strips of wood or whatever.
There is, however, an important difference. If the web is made from, say, a metal plate, then it is of no consequence in which direction the plate is put on. That is to say, if we cut the plate for the web out of some larger sheet of metal, it does not matter at what angle we cut it, since the metal has the same properties in every direction within itself. Such materials, which include the metals, brick, concrete, glass and most kinds of stone, are called ‘isotropic’, which is Greek for ‘the same in all directions’.
The fact that metals are isotropic (or nearly so) and have the same properties in all directions makes life somewhat easier for engineers and is one of the reasons why they like metal. However, if we now consider the lattice web, it is clear that it must be constructed so that the rods and tie-bars lie nearly at ±45° to the length of the beam. If this is not done, then the web will have little or no stiffness in shear.
Under load the lattice will fold up and the beam will probably collapse. Materials of this kind are called ‘anisotropic’, or sometimes ‘aelotropic’ — both of which are Greek for ‘ different in different directions’. In their different ways wood and cloth and nearly all biological materials are anisotropic and they tend to make life complicated, not only for engineers, but for a great many other people as well.
Gordon goes on to give an in-depth, yet sensical example of how cloth behaves in regards to pulling on weft and warp ends, in regards to tension and also Poisson’s ratio.
Arching our Back and Aiming for Efficiency
While there are good reasons to follow function, there is also something to be said about enjoyment and creativity to allow for a proper poisson ratio and Michaelangelo. Just as Money is taken into consideration, so should the mentality of Monet. Architects can dream up beautiful buildings that raise the spirits of many who walk, bike, drive, or fly by them frequently in wonder. We will explore the building side of structures in our next two episodes, but a sneak peek is in full order.
Philosophy and J.E. Gordon prose is very illustrative and anecdotes come in welcoming waves that do not grow tiresome. His language, at times witty, breaks up the instructional vibe and provides a surreal stimulation into actual events and inner workings of a diverse set of structures.
Alas, with the figures and illustrations, in conjunction with the ending of the book focusing on philosophy, you understand Gordon’s ideology as an expert in materials science blended with his vigor for lighthearted enjoyment in the beauty of life itself.
The typical vertebrate animal, such as man, is on the whole a good deal like a bell-tent or a sailing ship. There is a small number of compression members, that is, bones, more or less in the middle, and these are surrounded by a wilderness of muscles and tendons and membranes — even more complicated than the ropes and sails of a full-rigged ship — which carry the tensions. Furthermore, from the structural point of view two legs are better than four, and the centipede is perhaps only saved from total inadequacy by the fact that its legs are so short.
Just as the famous war-time Mosquito plane was initially built with a 88 percent of the factored load — in the rear wing-spar, it learned from the approach of strength-predicting elements of design. This methodogy in enineering and testing can be extrapolated to all facets of life. Finding strength does not necessarily mean overcompensating for flaws, but finding the flaws and figuring out how to efficiently improve them.
It boiled down to a sort of game in which we try to spot the weakest link in the load-bearing system. In this case, the airplane was progressively strengthened up to a figure of 118 percent. It was owing, partly to the exceptionally light and strong airframe that the performance was outstanding and one of the most successful airplanes in history. By allowing for an initial failure load below 120 percent, it is easy to optimize a structure without bogging it down with too many “unnecessary additions” or “improvements” which are actually downgrading the efficiency and quality of the structure.
This is, roughly speaking, the Darwinian method, which Nature seems to rely on to develop her own structures — though she seems to be in less of a hurry and less mindful of the value of life than are most civilized human engineers.
Whereas we look at Poisson ratio in human arteries, as well as buildings and the aforementioned planes, we find how adaptable the body of any structure is to devising a solution. The book influences those who take the time to read it by leaving them memorable impressions on how our life around us is structured and adaptable to the environment. It brings visual elements of all kinds into technical aspects that may otherwise fall on tedious topics.
Preference of Aesthetic Over Functional
Are we terrible beings for having a preference for beauty and ornament. Can we not amalgamate aesthetics and function to achieve architectural amazement? The rise of these buildings have risen and fallen over the years due to fashionable trends and material uses. Thus being, we can see examples of successful architectural authors across the world that still stand to tell stories through their sustained structures.
Whereas the debatable axiomatic statement that ugliness came in with industrialism as an inescapable consequence of mass-production is still widely accepted today. It begs the question as why the events transpired in such ways.
Could it merely have been that during the Age of Reform in the 1870s, aesthetic reformers mostly failed due to them rejecting technology instead of joining it.
Perhaps if they had been prepared to learn technology and engineering they might have operated from within the system. For the task of solving needs on such a large scale with an efficient and aesthetic method was steep, it was not impossible.
If a large enough difference would have been made even if we had interjected aesthetic efforts during the boom of mass-production is unknown for now. Yet, the evidence of profit, along with meeting more fundamental needs, outweighed the sense of beauty we grew accustomed to before.
Saving the Science
‘Science’ has been attacked on almost every conceivable ground ever since the Renaissance; most of these attacks were more or less rubbish. But it is always strange to me that what seems the real argument against science is seldom raised, at least in a direct form. This is that science has subtly warped our system of values by teaching us to judge on grounds which are excessively functional. The modern man asks ‘What is this man or this thing for?’ rather than ‘What is this man or this thing?’ Herein, no doubt, lie the causes of many of our modern sicknesses.
The aesthetic judgment seeks, however inadequately, to answer the broader and the more important question. Too often nowadays, our subjective judgment clashes with our scientific (or banausic) judgment. But we sweep the aesthetic judgment under the carpet at our peril. Naturally, there is nothing in all this to prevent a beautiful object from also being an efficient one.
The point here is that the two qualities are what the mathematician would call ‘independent variables’.
Where Gordon does portray that in some ways Nature has a purposeful and light-hearted sense of humor, his analysis does relegate a certain sense of accepted evolution. His descriptions are accurate as shown below, but by saying these evolutionary advantages we will call them, are proposed by a dreary man, sparks a rather divisive line in the conversation.
This does lead to more questions on the basis of such statement given the evidence has been laid out in favor of preference for such “ornaments”, may it be for attractive and reproduction purposes if nothing else.
But have we not good precedents in Nature? The outside of a person or an animal may be very beautiful; the inside is generally repulsive. Our admiration of Nature is highly selective.
Dare we say our concept of beauty and desire are encapsulated in a bubble of perspective for which we do not know any other? In a temporal sense of the mind, why would we resort ourselves to a life of vacation when our subconscious is programmed to be fit for a life of both survival and extraordinary discoveries? We select what is desirable based on both our genetics and environment. Like all bricks of life, we build on this over time to shape the way we think about every subsequent moment we experience thereafter.
For instance, we admire certain stages of growth (lambs but not fetuses); we are generally horrified by decay and all those worms. But decay is just as necessary and just as functional as growth.
With regard to this question of functionalism and ‘efficiency’ Nature seems to have a sense of humor, or perhaps just a sense of proportion. She will construct the stem of a plant, for instance, with the uttermost regard for metabolic economy; the thing is a miracle of structural efficiency. Having done this, she will put a great big flower on top — for fun, as far as one can see. In the same way, peacocks have tails and girls have hair which cannot be considered strictly functional. If it be urged by some dreary person that these things are done to encourage reproduction, this is only putting the argument back by one notch. For why should these ornaments be attractive, sexually or otherwise?
Gordon goes on to elaborate why performance to the nth degree is inefficient in contrast. This is suitable and relatively agreeable, even if rocket scientists may disagree on their topic.
Although it is practically an article of religion with many engineers to believe in a close connection between functional ‘efficiency’ and appearance, I am, myself, skeptical. Of course, the grossly ineffectual will, and should, offend the eye, but I doubt if the refinements of technical performance really improve appearance very much. Very often it is the other way round; the pursuit of the last ounce of performance results in a boring appearance, as one can see in modern yachts.
Along the same line, we could draw our attention to skyscrapers around the world, here shown in New York City. With the potential of redefining such a skyline, this snake-like skyscraper creatively turns a box among boxes into something pleasing to the imagination and inspirational for future ideas. It amalgamates the beauty of simplicity and function of a typical rectangular skyscraper with the form and aesthetic that would make even Dalí smile.
Mirror of their age
Each generation thinks they are better than before and after.
May it is not fair, it is second nature for us to judge those who come before us on our own scale and current situation. Further, this stands when we are far removed from the ideals and knowledge of the time that shaped older generations' daily lives of what was normal. Actions and events that was accepted during the time period may very well be condemned at our current point in history.
Such as in contrast the middle centuries, that unique period in our European annals, with the centuries following upon the Renaissance. How different their respective views of the world, how opposed their systems of belief! Yet in each the doctrines universally held are felt as inevitable, as unassailable. Each age thinks itself in possession of the true and only view possible for a sensible man.
Thus, about the important things, each age has a totally closed mind. Nowadays, being materialists, we are duly horrified that our ancestors were prepared to tolerate physical poverty and to inflict physical pain (i.e. routine sacrifices to the sun god). But these same ancestors would be just as horrified that we should suffer many millions of people to experience every day the beastliness of London or New York; and that those who work in our Dark Satanic Mills should have to be well paid to put up with noise and ugliness which are largely unnecessary.
Even the ‘clinical’ decor and atmosphere of modern hospitals would seem to them to add a new terror to dying. Therefore many of us seek some kind of relief or consolation in ‘Nature‘ and we escape, when we can, to the country, because we find the countryside more agreeable than towns and roads and factories. Many people indeed believe that Nature is in some way inherently beautiful and, perhaps, in some way inherently ‘good’.
Yet, Gordon goes on in this passage surmising how if we can only get rid of our romantic prejudices and really look at all sides of the question we are forced to the view that Nature is just as aesthetically neutral as she is morally neutral. Mountains and lakes and sunsets may be beautiful, but the sea is often menacing and ugly, and, so far as he has experienced them, primeval forests are frequently places of horror.
It is at least arguable that the countryside is more attractive than the town not because the country is more ‘natural’ but because town and country were made, by and large, by very different kinds of people. But the first thing is to see ugliness for what it is rather than accepting it as part of the natural order of things.
That is until we morph the natural with the unnatural in such a way to make it easier to digest and coincide with. May we start with forests, and move to oceans and desserts. Then shall we progress to new versions of cities. For we will not be satisfied on this first floor of life, may we crave climbing upstairs and beyond to the point of healing our blue planet and other worlds along our journey.
Whether we are referring to the magnificent Gardens by the Bay, or other eco urban architecture utilizing high-rise gardening, it seems we continue to find solace in making our modern world seem more natural in the sense. A romantic vision for a time more similar to the world before the 1800s.
We do that which is inherent within us. In a world which has an unreasonable admiration for reason we are apt to forget that the human mind is rather like an iceberg. The rational part of our minds, of which we are conscious, is quite small, and, like the visible part of the iceberg, it is supported from underneath by the subconscious mind, which is much larger.
Let us begin by looking at the human reception process in aesthetics; that is to say, why we react as we do to some inanimate object. Within the subconscious mind there lies an enormous store of potential reactions and forgotten memories. This material is partly inherited genetically from a remote past (Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’) and partly acquired by the individual himself during the course of his own life, mainly from apparently forgotten experiences — sometimes unpleasant ones.
Elaborating on this reasoning, Gordon notes that this sort of process may account in some measure for the way in which we are influenced, subjectively, by inanimate objects and especially in the present context by artefacts.
Considering the artefacts are made by people and somebody, at some age, there are some sort of choice in the shape and the design. It is impossible to make any object without making a series of statements in the process, Gorddon writes.
Even a straight line is saying in effect ‘Look, I am straight, not crooked.’ Even a very simple artefact contains a package of such statements which have been made by people. Just as there can be no such thing as a totally objective experience, so there can be no such thing as a totally objective statement — one with no emotional connotations of any kind. This is true whether the statement be made in words or music or colour or shape or line or texture or in what engineers call design.
Form this, we conceptualize what it means by transitioning from what might be called the ‘aesthetic reception process’ to the ‘aesthetic transmission process’. In other words, how do things come to be designed as they are?
What is it that the maker or the designer puts into an artefact which causes it to have the aesthetic effects which it does? The short answer is, to a large extent, ‘His own character and his own values.’
Thus, whatever we make and whatever we do we nearly always leave upon the thing or upon the action the imprint of our personalities, written in a code which can usually only be read at the subconscious level.
When you look into the mirror, do you see yourself as someone who you can live with? Someone you look up to? Do you feel that you can confidently look at yourself, along with the flaws and imperfections and all, with the same eyes that you judge others by through the same lens and morals? The mirror of our time has changed, for better and worse, but the concept has remained. In fairness and in good grace, if you are able to experience the virtues which you uphold yourself to, then wehy not open your mind and see that each person and object, living and inanimate, is a reflection of their own time, reflecting back like a glass mirror to everything else looking upon it.
I believe that very few artefacts are intrinsically ugly or beautiful simply because of their function*; they are rather mirrors to an age, to a set of values. Rather the same conditions obtained during the eighteenth century as in Ancient Greece — partly no doubt because it was a classical age which consciously modelled itself on the ancient world. Nearly everything the eighteenth-century craftsman touched was elegant. This was not just a matter of the luxury trade; it extended right through society.
Extending natural beauty through society can easily be extrapolated through generations, given time. What we are acccomplishing by studying history, learning from it, and weaving parts of it in our framework is how we grow our own perspective in the process. Our sense of self and subconscious beliefs which we hold so true to our being is what makes us human, fueled by subjective desires and yearnings for psychological worthiness.
For humans as a species are not meant to be trapped and ordered around as in some manifestion of a Brave New World, but are meant to evolve with science in a individualized way. With real choices, we can cherish our history, not completely dismantle it. We can blend function along with aesthetics by reverse engineering our challenges and by having the freedom to gravitate toward a new world of possibilities.
Topping Out and Looking Back
As we reach the end, shall we top out this review piece by looking back on time, and in particular, the book itself. Let us celebrate a man’s work by raising the last beam along with a ceremonial tree. Where J.E. Gordon sprinkles philosophical remarks and comparisons throughout the book, he reveals his opinions in great lengths in the last chapter of the Structures.
He makes sure to stress reasoning when judging and evaluating our ancestors and their artefacts, not by how we see them today as much, but more or less by how they are a glimpse into their time period. Contrasting efficiency and aesthetics, he concludes with the ongoing battle between the two. Always rightfully pointing out consideration for each side, he aims to find a middle ground where the two can create a harmonious arch by meeting at the keystone. He writes, for we are ‘tool making men’ and “women”, but more importantly, let us have lots of ornament.
Why must form follow function when we can bring beauty to the art of existence in itself?
We may physically only be an ephemeral marker in body, but for every structure we construct, shall we raise inspiration for a myriad of generations that follow our uniquely enduring foundation.
