Complete issue (March 2018)

Roger Ridsdill Smith leads the Structural Group at Foster + Partners. In this paper, he proposes a Manifesto for Structural Design in which he sets out the four points that he considers to be essential to the design process of the group. These four points are illustrated through projects that the group has designed and delivered over the seven years since its inception. The paper is based on Roger’s 2017 Milne Medal lecture and a presentation on creativity and collaboration that he delivered at the Bath IABSE Conference in April 2017.

Upcoming events at HQ and from around the Regional Groups.

Performance-based seismic design (PBSD) can be applied to the design of any structure, regardless of its importance. Nevertheless, this article will mainly be of interest to structural engineers designing new buildings or working on retrofit interventions to high-profile projects falling outside the range of applicability of prescriptive procedures for seismic design of buildings contained in standards such as ASCE 7 and the International Building Code (IBC). In particular, the article will be of interest to engineers involved in the seismic design of buildings where specific performance-in-use expectations are set by the client. It is assumed that readers of the article have a good understanding of non-linear structural mechanics, earthquake engineering and structural dynamics. The aim of this article is to help structural engineers follow the paradigm shift in seismic engineering from the definition of prescriptive procedures to procedures based on achieving predictable performance levels. The shift will be from the overall load-reduction approach, on which the experience of many structural engineers is based, to the damage-versus-deformation approach, reflected in current approaches to PBSD.