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Background—Currently, buildings seem to be designed to be strong enough to not fall upon dangerous events, such as earthquakes. This makes them expensive, and out of the reach of poor places.

Poor areas ignore such safety measures, and end up having their buildings collapse on their citizens. This collapse is unpredictable, as people don't really know which area is safe from falling debris or thick reinforced concrete structures.

Thus, I'm thinking of an alternative approach:

  • Let's design buildings, the cheap normal way, and let them collapse upon an earthquake as usual.

However, with 1 caveat:

  • Design them such that, when they collapse, they must collapse in a predictable manner, such that safe-zone cavities are formed in a predictable location.

This caveat helps people go to those safe areas, knowing that—should the building collapse—they won't be smashed by falling debris.

Question—How to create such structures?

caveman
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Designing a building to collapse in a fashion suitable so it falls upon it's footprint, usually how demolition experts plan when explosives are used to dispose of it. It makes little sense to design a building like that.

Buildings must withstand compression, torsion, lateral and shear forces to stay up against weather/Seismic activity. In any case designs to accommodate the poor for buildings that collapse easier? The only way to do that is to make them less strong when actual disasters occur, WHy do that if they're inside when it happens.

Collapsed buildings rarely kill people in disasters, Earthquakes destroy tangible property and assets leaving poor homeless.

LazyReader
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Normal, expensive, earthquake-safe buildings do collapse: they collapse in an earthquake-safe manner, absorbing energy as they collapse, and leaving survivable spaces. Steel is a good material for this use: beyond its elastic range, it has a plastic range, where further distortion results in plastic deformation. Wood tears when collapsed beyond it's elastic deformation range. Traditional Japanese homes were walled with paper. When designed correctly, buildinga collapse in a safe predictable manner.

Buildings collapse unsafely and unpredictably when the ground characteristics change, or when they are poorly designed, or when unsafe materials are used.

Only the last factor is strongly related to the cost of a building. It is mitigated, when there is time, by people attempting to move to safer areas within the building: under tables, or into small rooms with closer walls and smaller spans.

david
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Designing buildings to intentionally collapse isn't a standard practice due to safety concerns. Controlled demolitions, done by experts with precision and planning, ensure safety and controlled debris. For traditional structures, the focus remains on robust design to prevent unexpected collapses altogether

Zain Ul Abedin
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