

John Ochsendorf: The architectural rebel who champions ancient engineers - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/ingenious-john-ochsendorf

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rurban
Is it forbidden in America to celebrate islamic architecture? Islamic stone
architecture is far advanced over roman, greek or native architecture this guy
seems to propagate.

See for example the old stone bridge of Mostar (Stari Most), which had to to
be rebuilt after the war, and they could only do it by finding old turkish
craftsmen who were still able to build such a bridge, without steel. Modern
architects all failed.

~~~
integraton
MIT, where Ochsendorf is a professor, has the Aga Khan Program for Islamic
Architecture [1] (Harvard has a sister program [2]).

Stari Most is also a well-known tourist destination. Its destruction occurred
during a war the US was involved in and its destruction, rebuilding, and
symbolism in the war were widely reported in US media. [3] Today, it's popular
on mainstream sites like reddit. [4]

1\.
[http://web.mit.edu/akpia/www/generalinformation.htm](http://web.mit.edu/akpia/www/generalinformation.htm)

2\.
[http://agakhan.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do](http://agakhan.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do)

3\.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=site:nytimes.com+%22mostar%2...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:nytimes.com+%22mostar%22+%22bridge%22)

4\.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+%22mostar%22...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+%22mostar%22+%22bridge%22)

~~~
rurban
Great to hear that they have special programs for that. Americans could learn
a great deal from them.

Regarding the Stari Most reconstruction effort I can recommend an excellent
documentary by Jasmila Žbanić "Builders diary", and there are numerous more TV
movies about the technical challenges there.

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Isamu
They don't mention concrete except to contrast with modern steel-and-concrete
architecture, but in fact concrete was essential to Roman architecture.

Especially Roman vaults and domes were concrete. The Parthenon is still the
largest concrete dome without steel reinforcing. My pet theory is that that
concrete allowed the Romans to construct giant projects relatively quickly
with large, mostly unskilled labor pools.

~~~
frik
I thought the Pantheon was built of stone. But you are be right, it's called
"Roman concrete":
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete)

About the article and videos, great that some architects value the old
buildings. We have already enough of the Modernism/Bauhaus style full-concrete
buildings. Tourists usually come to visit Rome, Vienna, Venice, ... because of
the beautiful old buildings. They used (rusty) steel/iron-beams to hold
together the Colosseum in Rome, the steel looks very out-of-place. The
Pantheon is indeed one of most inspiring buildings and one of the oldest that
is still almost completely intact.

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Roboprog
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that steel tinker-toys are likely
cheaper than big rock piles, even if the steel buildings aren't as safe and
won't last a thousand years.

~~~
mrspeaker
I often wonder that when I walk around the city: a lot of the new buildings
look so shoddy in their construction - if you buy an apartment, it's probably
not something that will get passed down to your kids' kids. In that case, do
you own part of the land underneath the building, or... what?

~~~
deet
If you own a condo or co-op and the building starts to degrade, the owners
will vote (via an elected board) whether to make repairs to the building. If
they vote to do that, in addition to the apartment, you own your unit's share
of the repair bill, which gets passed to you as an assessment. So when you buy
the apartment you're buying an obligation to pay for the building's repairs
(assuming a majority of the other owners want to keep the building standing as
well). If you disagree with everyone else and don't pay the assessment, the
other owners (again via the condo board) can put a lien on your property and
sell it to cover the amount you owe.

If it got really really bad there's probably a situation in which the owners
of the building could vote to have it demolished and rebuilt.

The take away is that in addition to the apartment itself, you're actually
buying shares in a legal entity and get certain rights and obligations as a
result of that. It's that entity that owns the building and the land
underneath. How exactly the entity is structured depends on whether it's setup
as a condominium or cooperative.

~~~
throwaway889932
As deet said. A practical example of pitfalls with high-rise condos is where
there's a swimming pool inside the condo structure. Every time there is a
crack, owners will get a $20,000 or more assessment each to fix it.

