Postdoctoral Research: Structural Engineering and the Architecture of Nineteenth-Century American Steelworks

这一博士后奖学金允许该合作者应用结构工程学、工业考古学和建筑史的综合方法工具来研究19世纪美国钢铁厂建筑的工程。与宾夕法尼亚州立大学的土木工程师和建筑历史学家组成的咨询委员会合作，共同参与结构分析的密集研究，使用历史上重要的钢铁厂的建筑作为练习。培训的重点是19世纪和20世纪初广泛使用的图形方法--那是钢铁业最具创新性的建筑设计时期。这位c0-pi正在通过一个记录历史建筑的研讨会来扩大他记录历史桥梁的经验。利用这些新技能作为基础，联合PI正在通过实地观察和档案材料分析选定的结构。这种方法的目的是让联合PI熟悉设计师面临的各种选择和限制。与设计师的实际决策相比--就像在建筑本身中发现的那样--表明了工程师和设计师做出决策的频率，这些决策不是基于明确的数学计算，而是基于文化价值观、经济考虑、直觉直觉以及技术知识和经验之间的复杂相互作用。这项研究拓宽了工业建筑的史学，并以科学知情的方法研究工业和其他非高级风格的建筑。这项研究的结果有助于历史保护界寻求评估、保护和解释为数不多的对美国崛起为工业强国至关重要的重工业早期结构。此外，该项目还寻求影响工程和建筑教育。这位合作者计划与主办机构的工程学本科生互动，并利用奖学金将他的职业生涯集中在教授工程和建筑专业的学生有关他们所处环境的技术和社会方面的知识。最后，联合PI打算在主办机构、会议上介绍研究结果，并最终将其纳入一本关于美国钢铁工业的建筑和工程的专著中。

This Postdoctoral Fellowship allows the co-PI to apply the combined methodological tools of structural engineering, industrial archeology, and architectural history to examine the engineering of nineteenth-century American steel works buildings. Working with an advisory committee of civil engineers and architectural historians at The Pennsylvania State University, the co-PI is engaging in the intensive study of structural analysis using buildings from historically important steel works as exercises. Training includes a focus on the graphical methods widely used during the 19th and early 20th centuries --the steel industry's most innovative period of building design. The c0-PI is augmenting his experience in documenting historic bridges with a workshop in documenting historic structures. Using these new skills as a foundation, the co-PI is analyzing selected structures through both field observations and archival materials. This methodology is intended to familiarize the co-PI with the range of choices and constraints confronting designers. Comparison with the actual decisions made by the designers - as found in the building themselves - demonstrates the frequency with which engineers and designers made decisions that based, not on clear-cut and mathematical calculations, but on a complex interplay among cultural values, economic considerations, intuitive hunches, and technological knowledge and experience. The study broadens the historiography of industrial architecture and the study of industrial and other non-high style buildings with a scientifically informed approach. The results of the study help the historic preservation community as it seeks to assess, preserve, and interpret the few remaining early structures of a heavy industry central to the rise of the United States as an industrial power. In addition, the project seeks to impact engineering and architectural education. The co-PI's plans to interact with undergraduate engineering students at the host institution and to use the fellowship to focus his career on teaching engineering and architecture students about both the technical and social aspects of their own milieus. Finally, the co-PI intends to present findings at the host institution, conferences, and ultimately incorporate them into a monograph on the architecture and engineering of the American steel industry.