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The Structural Engineer, Volume 53, Issue 12, 1975
As a result of an international architectural competition a Conference Centre and Hotel was designed and built in Riyadh. It was the intention that they should set new standards of building in a country which had previously been almost totally closed to the West. This paper gives the story of the design and construction of this building and describes the types and standards of construction which were achieved. E. Happold, W.I. Liddell and P.A. Woodward
A social involvement The title of my address, 'The structural engineer's significance', is not only provocative, as intended, but is clearly incomplete and poses the obvious question: significant in what respect? To answer the question there are a number of expressions which come to mind: with regard to society; to engineering (and it would be interesting to know what would be the order of preference given these two by most members of this Institution); to the sciences: to the quality of life; to the economy? And there are a number of others. If indeed, we should vary the title by calling it 'The structural engineer's contribution', to the foregoing rather general areas of interest we can add more specific ones, for example: the multidisciplinary team; his own and other professional bodies and institutions; the cityscape. (I have had to coin this word because I could not find one that conveyed what I meant- 'seascape' and 'landscape' are clear enough to everyone but how else could one say, in a word, that one meant the visual impact of the large built-up area?). Peter Mason
The opening section of the clause on design in the Code of Practice for concrete reads: 'The purpose of design is the achievement of acceptable probabilities that the structure being designed will not become unfit for the use for which it is required.. . ' The clause goes on to refer to variations in loading and in the properties of materials used; it mentions the need for statistical data on these variations and introduces the partial safety factors necessary to achieve this design objective. It does not, however, define the acceptable probability of a structure becoming unfit for use which is basic to the design concept. At present this is not possible in quantitative terms and may never become so; it can however be stated qualitatively after appraisal whether individual structural failures or cases of unserviceability are acceptable or not. Experience shows that structural inadequacy is seldom due to a single cause; it is often the result of a combination of effects, which may include overloading, fire, impact or explosion, settlement, design errors and faults in construction. Of these, faults in construction have played a major contributory part in causing failure, as illustrated by a few examples drawn from the building field: