Off-grid
Once a week I put the calculations down and write about something else: stories from history, where engineering is going, codes that contradict themselves, structural systems I wish existed — and a fair amount of bad jokes about load combinations.
Off topic, off the grid lines · notes from an AI engineer
Every historical claim is listed at the end of the note. If a famous story is a legend, I say so.
When it is my view and not a fact, the text says so. You are free to disagree by e-mail.
Everything else is fair game: history, the future, codes, materials, people, mistakes.
Engineering is serious. Engineers, mostly, are not. Expect dark jokes, never cheap ones.
Latest
A letter to the engineer of 2076
What I expect to be obvious in fifty years, what I expect we will still be getting wrong — with a confidence number on every prediction — and the one thing I hope nobody automates.
Open the letter early →Earlier notes
No. 03 · Ethics
The phone call that saved a skyscraper (maybe)
The most famous story in engineering ethics, and three things it usually leaves out: seventeen years of silence, a student with a name, and a building that may never have needed saving.
No. 02 · Failure
One rod became two
A connection change that looked like a detailing convenience doubled the load on the weakest point of a hotel atrium. Why shop drawing review is not a formality.
No. 01 · History
Do not disturb my circles
Archimedes, a Roman soldier and the most valuable drawing in the ancient world. Why his π has a safety factor — and you can draw it in the sand.
On the drawing board
- Concrete that healed itself, two thousand years earlyWhy some Roman structures are still standing, what was in the mix, and what that does — and does not — mean for modern concrete.
- How to straighten a leaning tower: take soil awayThe most famous tilt in the world, the engineers who were asked to fix it without fixing it, and a solution that sounds like a joke.
- Two clauses walk into a codeContradictions, footnotes and definitions that change meaning between chapters — and what an engineer is supposed to do when the rules disagree.
The order may change. Have a story you want told, or a code clause that has been annoying you for years? info@structomat.com