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John Ochsendorf wants to tear down Rome's iconic Pantheon. He wants to pull apart its 2,000-year-old walls until its gorgeous dome collapses. Destroying it, he believes, is the best way to preserve it.
But the Pantheon that Ochsendorf, a professor of engineering and architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has in mind to destroy is less than 20 inches high, and it's made of 492 3-D-printed blocks. It's designed from laser scans of the real building. A gaggle of MIT engineering students will place it on a table with a sliding base and pull the walls apart, then put it back together and tilt it until it crumbles.
It's hard to see how razing a doll-sized Roman monument will help protect the real thing. But Ochsendorf, whose easy smile and self-effacing humor belie confidence and determination, has a serious goal: to prove that historical structures like the Pantheon are more stable than we give them credit for. "By every measure of success of a building—from an architectural, from an artistic, and from an engineering standpoint—I would argue that the Pantheon is the greatest that was ever built," Ochsendorf says. "There's no greater definition of success for a building than it's been standing for 20 centuries."
It also represents a masterwork of engineering and a repository of ancient technical knowledge—the structural equivalent of the Mona Lisa. Ochsendorf is working to halt what he sees as unnecessary interventions in historical buildings, in which engineers try to fix cracked or slumping walls with steel bars and supports. "We see a crack in a structure and we do a major intervention, but that's akin to dipping the Mona Lisa in epoxy because one section of the painting has faded a bit," he says.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:57AM
I was there when the built the Pantheon. I thought it was a great exercise in engineering. They thought it might last for 40 years. Now anything that exceeds human expectations by that much deserves special consideration. If we have to destroy a model to see how the actual building might fail, I say go for it. We put a lot more into failed engineering projects, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Glen Canyon Dam. So even if the gods may be dead, we should preserve their temple, as a recognition of human ingenuity. (Where I am now, concrete construction is spalling, and cracking, and it is only fourty years old! If only we had Roman engineers!)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 23 2015, @10:01AM
It's the rebar that causes spalling and cracking? Romans left that out..
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:21PM
No, it's not just rebar that causes spalling and cracking in concrete. Today's concrete will do that all by itself. Go look at some older sidewalks in a northeast town: there's no rebar in those I'm pretty sure, just plain poured concrete. What's ruined the surface of the concrete is probably saltwater, from years of having salt poured on it during winter snows. Roman concrete, however, can actually sit in seawater for thousands of years with no ill effects. The real difference is the formulation of the concrete: ours is crap.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:34PM
Is Roman type of concrete unavailable to us? or will it not fit our demands?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday May 23 2015, @04:25PM
Roman concrete uses volcanic ash from a particular volcano, and on top of that, we're not exactly sure of the formula. Finally, I believe their method of making the concrete was much more laborious than what we do now.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:46PM
More laborious than having to regularly make repairs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @08:27PM
Repairs come years after the popular mayor got the sidewalks installed cheap and under budget, or after the construction company that built the building has already closed down and reincorporated as an untraceable new entity.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday May 24 2015, @02:19AM
A modern take of the roman version.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Floathouse/comments/2nq6b7/here_is_the_recipe_for_making_geopolymer_concrete/ [reddit.com]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:37PM
Construction companies need to stay in business. If things were built to last then it would cost jobs and hurt profits.