Structural Stability Quotes

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

The foundation stones of a great building are destined to groan and be pressed upon; it is not for them to crown the edifice.

When I was in architecture school, I became curious about the exact mathematics, physics, and construction of the great structures I had been studying. I wanted to know how these amazing things would work: the Pantheon, the dome of Michelangelo, the dome of Brunelleschi. So I decided to study civil engineering.

Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.

Leave a cavity behind the [wall] facings, and on the inside build walls two feet thick, made of red dimension stone or burnt brick or lava in courses, and then bind them to the fronts by means of iron clamps and lead. The beds and builds, all settling equally and bonded at the joints, will not let the work bulge out, nor allow the fall of the face walls which have been tightly fastened together.

Architecture ... the adaptation of form to resist force.

An embedded growth obligation is how fast a structure has to grow in order to maintain its honest positions.

… history itself appears to be abandoning the eruption of events in favor of stable structures

In my view, there's no doubt that the Soviets had infinitely greater trouble holding their structure together than we did.

Thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so long as the relations remain unchanged.

The history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, of literature seems to be seeking, and discovering, more and more discontinuities, whereas history itself appears to be abandoning the irruption of events in favor of stable structures.

The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base.

Until higher institutions have been evolved, any attempt to break the old ones will be disastrous.

We build buildings which are terribly restless. And buildings don't go anywhere. They shouldn't be restless.

Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.

Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every piece keeps its place and bears its mark.

Emphasis was usually put on the horizontal acceleration factor, for the simple reason that ordinary structures have a built-in safety factor for the vertical component; that is, gravity.