Architectural Greatest Failures

History's greatest failure infographic reaching back to Ancient Rome's Fidenae Ampitheatre (collapsed in 27 A.D.) all the way to the Lotus Riverside apartment complex in Shanghai (collapsed in 2009)serve as valuable lessons for students studying Civil Engineering and Architecture. Two of the famous failures are described below:

Wind: The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 1940

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a suspension bridge in the U.S. State of Washington, opened to traffic on July 1, 1940, and dramatically collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7 of the same year. Construction workers giving the bridge the nickname "Galloping Gertie" because since construction, the bridge will move vertically in windy conditions. The bridge's main span finally collapsed under 40 mph (64 km/h) wind conditions the morning of November 7, 1940.

Watch the collapsed of the Tacoma NarrowsBridge.







John Hancock Tower


The John Hancock Tower is a 60-story, 790-foot (241 m) building in Boston and was completed in 1976. The structure was famous for its blue reflective glass windowpanes in a steel tower that detached from the building and crashed to the sidewalk hundreds of feet below. The failure of the glass was due to oscillations and repeated thermal stresses caused by the expansion and contraction of the air between the inner and outer glass panels which formed each window.