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

这个博士后奖学金允许合作PI应用结构工程，工业考古学和建筑历史的组合方法工具来研究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咨询委员会合作，共同研究者正在利用历史上重要的钢铁厂的建筑作为练习，进行结构分析的深入研究。培训包括专注于19世纪和20世纪初广泛使用的图形方法-钢铁行业最具创新性的建筑设计时期。这位c 0-PI正在通过一个记录历史建筑的研讨会来增加他记录历史桥梁的经验。利用这些新技能作为基础，共同PI正在通过实地观察和档案材料分析选定的结构。该方法旨在使co-PI熟悉设计师面临的选择范围和限制。与设计师所做的实际决定（如在建筑物本身中发现的）进行比较，表明工程师和设计师所做的决定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、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和工业和其他非高风格建筑的研究与科学知情的方法。这项研究的结果有助于历史保护社区，因为它试图评估，保护和解释少数剩余的早期结构的重工业中心的崛起，美国作为一个工业大国。此外，该项目旨在影响工程和建筑教育。共同PI的计划与本科工程专业的学生在主办机构互动，并利用奖学金，把他的职业生涯集中在教学工程和建筑专业的学生对他们自己的环境的技术和社会方面。最后，共同PI打算在主办机构，会议上提出的调查结果，并最终将其纳入美国钢铁行业的建筑和工程的专著。

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.