1. Petroski, Henry. To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design. 1984; Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer sity Press, 2006.

2. Failure
Learning more from mistakes than success
Necessity of failure

3. Potential Reasons for Failure
“Usually buildings fail through men’s ignorance, carelessness or greed.” (McKaig)

4. Factor of Safety

5. Kansas City Hyatt Regency Skywalk Collapse
114 killed
216 injured
Last-minute changes to design
Did not meet code

7. Crystal Palace (London -- 1851)
Joseph Paxton
Skyscrapers

8. Evolution Calculators vs. Slide Rules Human vs. Computer
“Don’t fly too close to the sun”

9. "Success ultimately leads to failure: aesthetic failure, functional failure, and structural failure. The first can take away the zest for life, the second the quality of life, and the third life itself" (222).
“While the curse of human nature appears to be to make mistakes, its determination appears to be to succeed” (105).