Journal of Architectural Engineering

Due to the lack of data and experience with designing buildings for a bioterrorism hazard, it is important for civil engineering professionals to understand both the way that risk is currently accounted for in the design of a building for a bioterrorism hazard and the methods for analyzing risks to buildings that can be borrowed from risk analysis professionals. This paper provides a literature survey of four subject areas dealing with the risk analysis of bioterrorism applied to buildings: (1) perception of the risk of bioterrorism; (2) risk analysis of bioterrorism; (3) risk management of bioterrorism risks; and (4) risk communication of bioterrorism risks, and includes an example of a simple risk analysis process for a hypothetical building. Bioterrorism presents building design engineers with new challenges. It is a very unpredictable hazard, and very little data exist to guide building designers and decision makers in protecting buildings from this hazard. Designing a building with bioterrorist attacks in mind involves many different disciplines, including, for example, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, security design professions, and law enforcement. Large consequences are possible in the event of a successful attack, and many building design engineers have little or no experience with defending against a bioterrorist attack. It is important that a reasonable process for analyzing and dealing with these risks be established, and that the process include issues of risk perception and communication within the risk analysis framework.

In historic buildings, a variety of different types of timber roof structures reflecting different building traditions and different ideals for the inner space are found. In Sweden, damage to historic roof structures due to a lack of support for horizontal thrust is common. Knowledge of the relation between structurally efficient horizontal support and the extension of a structure in space is essential for obtaining an adequate understanding of the development of building techniques and for making sound decisions concerning restoration. An approach that involves a classification of horizontal supporting structures, together with a mechanical model that defines and distinguishes between inner and outer support, is introduced, with the aim of offering a tool for comparison of different roof-truss designs with focus on the occupation in space. Comparison of the efficiency of different designs is carried out by comparing horizontal stiffness. Eleven different designs divided into four spatial groups have been analyzed.

Aesthetic and ethical issues of building design are presented here to encourage meaningful discussion among today’s architectural engineering students and practitioners. The evaluative aesthetic ideas of scale, simplicity, and surprise are applied to two important structures designed by Fazlur R. Khan. Khan’s profound understanding of load flow in his buildings influenced his aesthetic ideas. Furthermore, his aesthetic ideas were intimately intertwined with his ethical ideas about structural logic and the role of structure in architecture. We explore these ideas and present new insights as well. Our goal is to encourage a public discourse within our profession on the topic of evaluating structural form.