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Questions for Discussion: Designing the Citigroup Skyscraper
When you put columns at the corners, you have to support the centers of the sides. When you put columns at the centers of the sides, you have to support the corners. Why are these two problems so different? Where else do you have to use triangles because the load is neither near nor between the columns (e.g., shelf brackets)? Why might it have been important to build over the church and not just tear it down? What might have been the societal impact of tearing it down? Why are triangles so rigid? Make some triangles and quadrilaterals out of cardboard and fasteners, and experiment with trying to change their shapes. What does what you have learned in geometry about triangles have to do with how they are used in structures? Look around at buildings in your neighborhood. Can you find places where triangles are used to make the building more stable?
