Word: roof
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Within minutes, the western sky has turned a stunning emerald green, and huge hailstones are smashing on the truck's roof. It is 6:16 p.m. Moore pushes east as the hailstones, some of them literally the size of golf balls, threaten to crack our windshield. After plowing through a curtain of hail and rain, the truck turns south and breaks through the devastating storm. As it rolls through tiny Covington (pop. 605), every light in town blinks off and on, twice, because of storm-blown power lines. "Look for an escape route," Moore warns Moyer...
...sleek, futuristic building had several distinctive structural features. One was the sweep of interior space, 324 ft. long, without a single interior support. Another was the three huge exterior trusses, or interlocking networks of pipes, that marched up, across and over the cool white structure, holding up the roof and giving the building a light, lacy effect. That combination of lightness and strength had won Jahn one of the AlA's prestigious design awards...
...water pouring down two sides of the $250,000 Scoreboard, which was suspended from the center of the ceiling. Then he heard a roar "like a pounding of a sledge hammer on concrete." The 18-ton scoreboard came crashing down, and more than half of the arena's roof collapsed. Twisted steel, broken glass and Insulation material thundered onto the seats below. It was the worst architectural disaster since the roof of the Hartford, Conn., Civic Center caved in under 4.8 in. of snow in January...
...cause of the collapse could not immediately be pinpointed, but theories abounded. One held that rain water on the arena's roof had not drained off properly; an estimated 640 tons deluged the roof before it gave way. City Engineer Don Hurlbert had another theory: fluctuations in air pressure, perhaps caused by a blown-out window, might have caused more pressure to build up under the roof than above it, literally blowing the roof off. Privately, some architects speculated that the arena may have been more vulnerable structurally to atmospheric pressures because its main supports, the exterior pipe networks...
...latest in a succession of spectacular failures (including, besides Hartford, the collapse in 1978 of the snow-laden auditorium roof at the C.W. Post Center in Brookville, N.Y.), the Kemper disaster sent worried architects scurrying back to study their latest designs. There is widespread fear that the reputation of the profession is eroding-and with some reason, according to former AIA President Elmer Botsai. His successful San Francisco firm specializes in correcting other architects' errors. Although workmanship and materials are often faulty, he says, "fundamental design failure" is almost always involved. Echoed one worried AIA conventioneer in Kansas City...