i just met one of the original architects of the WTC

so, i thought i would write while it's fresh in my mind.
he said he was responsible for floors 15 to 45 on tower two, and worked for emory & roth. (his father, another architect said he should stay FAR away from that company. i don't know why.)
he said was that yamasaki(the designer) RUSHED the designs, because he wanted to beat out the sears tower for the tallest building record(he had to do it first, because once complete, the sears tower was going to be taller). he didn't spray on asbestos on some steel that should have had it, he used bolts instead of welds for some critical connections. he said the perimeter was NOT holding much of the load, but that the CORE was supporting most of it, and the steel on the outside was mostly for running cables and whatnot. he said you could probably drive mountain climbing spike into the perimeter and scale it. he said that the core's main support was FOUR(!!!) columns, and that they were TELESCOPIC!

yamasaki absolutely refused to allow any x-braceing on the perimeter. the architect i spoke with suggested multiple bridges from core to core between the two towers. this would have allowed people trapped above the fire to escape, and would have made the towers much more sturdy. once again, yamasaki wouldn't have it. the two towers had to be separate.
what was MOST interesting to me was that yamasaki approached a small construction firm from saudi arabia, and promised them that if they would be honest and thrifty, he would make all of the sons(24?) into millionaires with the ensuing work they would get.
the construction company was the bin laden construction company.

one day, a man from the bin laden company came and asked him what the best places to place demolition charges in the building were.
he said to the bin laden man, 'it's a piece of paper, there is no building!'(it wasn't up yet), and was shocked by the question. however, he thought it over, and pointed, 'here, and here, and over here', and then said the man went on and questioned the other designers with the same question.
apparently, it was becoming COMMON PRACTICE at the time to pre-plan the building's demolition. in las vegas, for example, moving a building over a few INCHES could mean millions more in revenue, so(i'm not sure which of the next two options he meant by this...) they planned to take them down easily with either pre-planned explosives, or at least pre-planned positions for explosives.

now, i want to make it clear that this man is not a 'conspiracy theorist'. he believes the towers fell the way they did because THEY WERE DESIGNED TO fall that way. telelscope(columns) and accordion(x-braces) down. basically, he says, that's exactly what happened. AND, he says, the bin ladens knew EXACTLY how to do it, because THEY BUILT IT and PLANNED THE DEMOLITION AT INCEPTION.

paul laffoley is the man i met. it was pretty awesome. how many people do you know that say things like, 'i used to argue with bucky over this'.

let me guess. and then you woke up and posted here? I'm sorry. it is not physically possible for the core to carry most all of the load. Its physics really. there is no way a 60 foot span of floor truss can load only one end of the span. The perimeter to carry cables? i can tell you there were absolutely no cables within the perimeter columns. so thin you could stick a climbing spike into them? if they were that thin you would never be able to stack them a quarter mile high. It is well documented how thick the steel was on those columns. don't believe me? take a look at the column sections in pictures of the debris pile. they are unique and easily identifiable. Only four columns in the core? Video of the collapse proves otherwise, you can readily see the spires shortly before they collapsed. also theres the problem of seeing them in the debris pile. yamasaki need not have rushed to beat out the sears tower. as it was completed well in advance of the sears tower. There was no need for shear X bracing on the exterior. Do you know what a Vierendeel truss truss is? look it up. Telescoping columns? I challenge you to produce a single image of one within the trade center wreckage. Thats just silly. a bridge from tower to tower? such a design would in that era would have ripped itself away and crashed to the streets below. because of wind eddy currents the towers do not move in unison. a simple bridge cannot resist this force. I invite you to take a look at the twin petronas towers in Malaysia. The bridge they used was an engineering feat. Do you know it actually floats between the towers and is only connected with a knee brace? not a rigid connection.

after reading the rest of your post there is no need for me to continue. the bin ladans mystery meeting with wtc architects and engineers is quite laughable as the family didn't have a construction empire at the time.


[edit on 30-11-2008 by A W Smith]

reply to post by A W Smith


first of all, i didn't say i believed everything he said.
second of all, he DID say the bin laden construction company was a SMALL unheard of construction company. are you SURE they started up AFTER the towers were being built?
i know how thick the steel was, and i have to say that particular issue i disagree with. i don't think he was suggesting that the perimeter didn't take ANY of the load, rather, that the core bore the vast majority of the load, and that the meme that is being pedaled(indeed i have been a hard seller of it) that the perimeter was extremely strong is a lie. i personally think the perimeter was bearing a great deal of the load, and that paul is wrong about that. however, i am only reporting what HE said.

p.s. don't be rude. it wasn't a frickin' dream. it was very real.

Originally posted by A W Smith
the bin ladans mystery meeting with wtc architects and engineers is quite laughable as the family didn't have a construction empire at the time.

It was founded in 1950.

[edit on 30/11/08 by Implosion]

you can almost do the math for the loads, yes it is a very rough calculation. obviously all the floor live and dead loads inside the core itself are carried by the core structure. now go out half the span onto the floor trusses in both the 30 foot floor spans and 60 foot spans. this is the point at which the perimeter takes the live and dead loads of the floor. so 'vast majority" is an exaggeration. And pardon me for assuming you believed what your friend claimed. as you did not put that disclaimer in your post. My father in law (first marriage) was a staff engineer for the Port authority of new York and new jersey. he worked during that era. because Hie was very proud of his work and the twin towers. he peaked my interest and showed me many blueprints of his detail work. I don't recall any of it being of the towers themselves as it was long long ago and from what I recall was mostly details and schedules. He gave me office copies of the construction weekly engineering news record of that era and they were fascinating. he retired prematurely because of a heart attack in the early seventies while i was dating his daughter but would visit the port authority engineering office all the time to talk with his colleagues. he often lamented how environmental regulation tied the hands of the engineers and by then you couldn't even build the great projects of the past. The end of an era. i never asked him about the 911 attacks for two reasons. I am certain it broke his heart. and by then i had divorced his daughter and remarried. We still talk most recently during services for my mother, he had changed over the years from a very strict type A personality traditional Italian father to now a gentle old man. I post this so you can see where i am coming from and understand that i must speak out when i see stuff that makes me shake my head.

[edit on 30-11-2008 by A W Smith]

i urge anyone who is curious to google paul laffoley and get a feel for his intellect. he is famous as an artist, now, but is still a registered architect.

i couldn't(or wouldn't, either) make this stuff up.

i don't think paul's explanation of the tower's demise takes into consideration all the burned out, MELTED cars that were not very close to the towers, or the molten metal that took MONTHS to cool. however, HE HELPED BUILD THEM, and i won't ignore his accounts of his personal experience.

reply to post by A W Smith


This entire post was the most knee-jerk reaction I think I have ever seen in my life. You must have barely even read billybob's post before you were scrambling to contradict everything in it.

Originally posted by A W Smith
it is not physically possible for the core to carry most all of the load. Its physics really.

You have no idea what you are talking about, literally. First of all he said "most" of the loads were carried by the core, which is an idea that I've seen more than once even from government sources, but he didn't even given a specific ratio, so you literally have no idea what he meant. There is no cut-and-dry ratio because they changed all the way up the towers, but I've seen between 50/50 and 60/40 both suggested by NIST if I'm not mistaken. NIST never released the structural documentation, though, and neglected the core structures in their reports and tried to downplay their significance. I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio was higher, 70/30 or more in places. If you think that is "not physically possible" then you obviously wouldn't have been the man for the job, but I don't see what the big deal is. Griff is a structural engineer, ask him if he thinks it would be possible.

[edit on 1-12-2008 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11
reply to post by A W Smith

 

This entire post was the most knee-jerk reaction I think I have ever seen in my life. You must have barely even read billybob's post before you were scrambling to contradict everything in it.

Originally posted by A W Smith
it is not physically possible for the core to carry most all of the load. Its physics really.

You have no idea what you are talking about, literally. First of all he said "most" of the loads were carried by the core, which is an idea that I've seen more than once even from government sources, but he didn't even given a specific ratio, so you literally have no idea what he meant. There is no cut-and-dry ratio because they changed all the way up the towers, but I've seen between 50/50 and 60/40 both suggested by NIST if I'm not mistaken. NIST never released the structural documentation, though, and neglected the core structures in their reports and tried to downplay their significance. I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio was higher, 70/30 or more in places. If you think that is "not physically possible" then you obviously wouldn't have been the man for the job, but I don't see what the big deal is. Griff is a structural engineer, ask him if he thinks it would be possible.

[edit on 1-12-2008 by bsbray11]

You suffer from reading comprehension problems

he said the perimeter was NOT holding much of the load, but that the CORE was supporting most of it, and the steel on the outside was mostly for running cables and whatnot.

What does that last sentence imply? For mostly running cables? Cmon don't be a fool. for all the clear span office space each end of the floor trusses bared on brackets that carry half the load of the floor area supported by that truss. And 70/30 ? I'm not even gonna comment on that. because its simply idiotic unless you think the tower was made out of diving boards.

I heard an interview with Paul Lafoley once and recall him telling exactly the same story, although he never said it was 'Bin Ladin Construction'. Ghee.. The plot thickens. I have always know a Saudi company were involved and asked about demolition during the pre-construction phase but never knew it was the one and only OBL's construction. Very interesting indeed (if true). I felt there were parts of his story that didn't seem to add up the first time around, although i forget what that was. I will have to look up the interview again. Thanks for posting the infos.

If this story is true in every detail, it is very strange. For one thing the architect's response to the question about controlled demolition is not believable. I can believe that he was surprised by the question but I cannot believe that he suggested demolition charge sites with a view to bringing the building down in that manner.

In every world but the artificial world of 9/11 a demolition by explosions of a building that size would not be contemplated. The building would be taken down in the normal way for high rise buildings, piece by piece, using the same cranes that put it up.

That aspect of the story is infantile, but I am only too well aware that adults can be infantile sometimes.

Originally posted by A W Smith
What does that last sentence imply? For mostly running cables?

Keep in mind that these people published in the 60's that these things had FoS ratings of 20 in some places. The perimeter columns on at least some floors had a FoS of 5. So by those numbers you could take out 4 out of every 5 perimeter columns and the load would (barely) still be carried without deformations beginning (ie creep). Given that this guy would have been aware of things like that, and that he helped build the things, I don't think he was too out of line. Those columns still had to carry those loads, but individually they weren't nearly as critical as the core columns.

And 70/30 ? I'm not even gonna comment on that. because its simply idiotic unless you think the tower was made out of diving boards.

Do you think if you support something on two sides, both sides have to experience the same force from it?

Originally posted by bsbray11

Do you think if you support something on two sides, both sides have to experience the same force from it?

simple live and dead loads? yes. wind loads transferred via the elastomeric dampers? which were only on the perimeter column ends of the trusses? not so much. simple span, half the load on one and. the other half on the other.

www.ou.edu...

reply to post by A W Smith


Well then look at these:





Going off of the area alone there, and assuming that the open office floors carried as much dead and live loading per square foot as within the core (so there is a constant 1-to-1 correspondence between area and loading, which I doubt, elaboration below), the core would be responsible for 64% of the loading. And I think I was generous!

I doubt the loads in the core would have been equal, because the open floor space was designed to act as such, while the core structure housed the elevator banks, stairwells, solidly-walled hallways, bathrooms, a restaurant kitchen, all the loading of the 47 core columns, more bracing, and concrete slabs that were an inch thicker and apparently had I-beams in them in places. The core should have seen more loading and the official sources suggesting a 60/40 split in loading as an estimate support this.

I think the NIST report even estimates the loading per square foot for both the core and the open office area, and the core was rated for higher loading. It makes sense to me that that would be the case at any rate, and I know those numbers are out there.

This is taking the areas of the core and the total building area respectively:

156 x 237 = 36972 pixels (core)

360 x 366 = 131760 (whole floor)

So the total area (131760) minus the core (36972) gives 94788 pixels for the whole area outside the core. That amount of open floor space represents about 72% of the total floor space, and its equivalent loading within that area we consider split into 36% to the perimeter and 36% to the core. 28% is inside of the core. 36% + 28% = 64%.

I didn't consider the hat truss but then again I don't know of a good reason why I should, as I've never heard that the core couldn't support all of its own loads. The hat truss was the last structure built in both towers, so all the way going up prior to that its support would not have been available anyway.

[edit on 1-12-2008 by bsbray11]

well no your not generous at all. Gregory Urich calculates that the core carried 63% and the exterior columns 37%. and hes on your side. notice the percentage of distribution for the simple spans between the core and the perimeter. 50/50 exactly as I have held all along. the corners ? 75% on the exterior and 25% on the core corner column. i respect Gregory as he is truly searching for the truth. But he was disappointed as Jones refused to publish his paper that concluded that collapse was inevitable.

theres no need to wrestle with pixels on an image. the information is available here

www.cool-places.0catch.com...

Originally posted by A W Smith
well no your not generous at all. Gregory Urich calculates that the core carried 63% and the exterior columns 37%.

From that .pdf you just linked me to, page 4:

It appears that NIST’s load distributions as given in section 2 are incorrect.
...
8 Conclusion
DCR’s used by Bažant [2002] and Ross [2006] are shown to be incorrect in favor of their
respective conclusions. However, it should be mentioned that the data used here was not
available to them at the time.
...
Load distributions provided by NIST appear to be incorrect and may in part account for
them having to apply the more severe case, Case B, in order for their simulation to result
in collapse.

This is just an example. The bottom line is I do not trust NIST, and I won't take their numbers for granted (or anyone else who takes their numbers for granted), because I know how easy it would be to manipulate them. Same with people who have to just assume numbers to make their personal theories/models work since NIST didn't provide enough data, because those people are all biased enough in their own regards. Quite frankly you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell whether NIST manipulated any numbers or not. They never released the structural documentation and they hardly offer calculations for anything they tell you. This is why I have a hard time taking things people calculate using "official" numbers at face value. It would be too easy to lie, especially when no one can verify or review their work.

the corners ? 75% on the exterior and 25% on the core corner column.

I forgot about those areas. I'm also surprised my numbers were so close to Urich's using such a simple method. Still there aren't any really good numbers as far as I'm concerned. The important thing is that intuitively it makes sense, unlike the "hollow tube" b.s. that the media peddled in the days after 9/11, leaving the core structure out of consideration entirely. The cores should have been carrying the most either way.

[edit on 1-12-2008 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by ipsedixit
If this story is true in every detail, it is very strange. For one thing the architect's response to the question about controlled demolition is not believable. I can believe that he was surprised by the question but I cannot believe that he suggested demolition charge sites with a view to bringing the building down in that manner.

In every world but the artificial world of 9/11 a demolition by explosions of a building that size would not be contemplated. The building would be taken down in the normal way for high rise buildings, piece by piece, using the same cranes that put it up.

That aspect of the story is infantile, but I am only too well aware that adults can be infantile sometimes.

Hmm... You don't know much about building demolition, if they plan to take it down, they will do it the fastest cheapest way possible, setting up charges and blowing it up in a controlled demolition, they never take cranes and take it down piece by piece, not a building that big, it would take too much time and it would cost WAY too much. Think before you speak next time you say such nonsense.

-Lahara

Originally posted by TheRandom1

Hmm... You don't know much about building demolition, if they plan to take it down, they will do it the fastest cheapest way possible, setting up charges and blowing it up in a controlled demolition, they never take cranes and take it down piece by piece, not a building that big, it would take too much time and it would cost WAY too much. Think before you speak next time you say such nonsense.

-Lahara

just like they are taking down the Deutsche Bank Building?
en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 1-12-2008 by A W Smith]

Originally posted by bsbray11
Griff is a structural engineer, ask him if he thinks it would be possible.

Going by areas, I came up with 57% core, 43% perimeter. That is using NISTs CAD dxf files to come up with areas.

reply to post by Griff


I was talking about the physical possibility of transferring as much as 70% of all the loads through the core, but there's yet another ratio closer to 50/50 from NIST's numbers I guess.