Why did you decide to leave Hungary and come to England, then
the US? What were things like
in
Hungary back in the fifties?
I was a young assistant professor of Applied Mechanics in 1956
when the Hungarian Revolution against
the Soviets and the whole communist regime broke out. When
the Soviets defeated the revolution I
(with another 200,000 mostly young Hungarians) decided that I
cannot continue to live under such
an oppressive regime.
As a full time faculty member at the University of Michigan, why did
you choose to open a
consulting business as well?
In all truthfulness: during those 5 years I caught the "design bug." I
became enamored with the
importance of the design of structures as opposed to the
engineering of structures. My work led
me to the conclusion that no amount of engineering will make a
poorly conceived structure good.
Furthermore, having grown up during a devastating war,
followed by another very destructive
revolutionary fight, I wanted to build, and not just teach or
research some obscure structural
phenomenon.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of keeping one foot in
the academic world and the
other in professional practice?
I tremendously enjoyed working with students. Academia, at least
the teaching part, is very stimulating.
Most students who come to architectural school have creative
talents and they are capable of
looking at things from new perspectives. I believe that I
learned from observing students in their
design studios, and I consciously or unconsciously brought
some concepts or forms into my own
designs. The disadvantage was that I had a rather harried life,
trying to do my best on two different
fronts.
What are some of the changes you've seen in structural engineering practice during your career?
The practice has changed enormously. In some ways to the better, but unfortunately in some ways to
the worse.
The advancement in new and many tremendously improved
materials has created vast new opportunities
in creating spectacular structures. The explosion of physical
testing research in the last few
decades has created better understanding of component
behavior, especially under dynamic loading
conditions. With the advancement of computerized analytic
technology we can build a mathematical
model of virtually any structure and analyze it for any load
combinations we can dream of. We have
reached a point where we can do very exact analysis based on
the input of very questionable
information (i.e. the loads!).
On the negative side I observe that the profession has become very
litigious. The ideal partnership
between the Owner, the Contractor and the Design Team
working toward a common goal has
changed (in many cases) into an adversarial relationship, that if
it has not out-right poisoned the air,
it has created a situation where innovation may be stifled.
How do you see the future of structural engineering?
Structural engineering has a strong future, even if the design
practice is becoming more corporate
oriented. As long as people continue to build, we are going to
be needed, especially because the
training of architects in structures is withering in many
schools.
How do structure and architecture interact?
How do you believe they should interact?
The answer is very simple. There is no architecture without
structure, no element within the building that
does not have a structure per se. Everything in nature has a
structure, something that is innate,
something that provides the very shape and form, as it
responds to the environment it lives in. Thus
I do not believe that one can talk about a physical entity
(except maybe in a very abstract
philosophical way) called architecture.
By Deidre Calarco