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Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

nautil.us

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Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#51

Post by empath75 »

rafiki6 wrote: post #15
pgnas wrote: post #10

The megaliths of Bolivia and structures all over the world which man could not replicate prove this. It would seem that the more we turn our back on the natural world and our history, the more we hold ourselves back from break throughs in many areas.

Who says we can't replicate them? It's just not economical to do so and really serves no purpose. The world has generally moved past projects with superstitious/dubious meaning attached to them and does an actual cost/benefit on most large scale endeavors. Except for some developing countries with growing economies who have something to prove.

I wonder what the budget would be to make a more or less exact duplicate of the Great Pyramid.

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#52

Post by itronitron »

starpilot wrote: post #47
vtange wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer that went through architecture school and I think you're glorifying architects a bit here. The only reason why architects have a more gradual path as you describe is because there is a LOT of gatekeeping and feedback on your work is a LOT slower. To become an architect you have to ideally go through schooling at a specific set of schools and then after that you have years of internships where…

> The vast majority of architects just work on run-of-the-mill housing (not unlike CRUD apps) where the combination of building codes, the client's budget, zoning and other requirements often prevents you from doing anything too flashy. In talking with civil, naval, and mechanical engineers that I know, this type of "crank out another one similar to the last one" work seems to be the norm. I used to be aerospace and…

>> "crank out another one similar to the last one"

That's because they can't stand up a micro-service or API to crank those things out.

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#53

Post by TripleCrown »

tashoecraft wrote: post #37
gfs78 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As other people stated: they build standing from the shoulder of the giants. And even if they had started from zero, these guys are the exception, not the norm. We can find 20 year-old geniuses in every camp.

I'd be interested in a field where someone wasn't standing on the shoulders of giants.

Horse racing?

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#54

Post by oh_sigh »

shen wrote: post #2

The article title is confusing architects with structural engineers.

It is also confusing in the sense that it uses the term "sound engineering" with 'sound' being the 'good/sturdy' definition, whereas the whole phrase is interchangeable with a field of study within architecture(sound/acoustic engineering)

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#55

Post by toast0 »

majormajor wrote: post #41
imgabe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I also work in the building industry (Electrical Engineering - power distribution for buildings) and I love software because of the instant feedback loop. In software, you make a typo and you get an error immediately. You fix it and go on. In architecture, you make a typo and you hear about it 6 months later, and it's a $200,000 change order (exaggerating...somewhat).

> In software, you make a typo and you get an error immediately. You fix it and go on. This level of thing is usually silly, ultimately-meaningless errors. (The rare exception being the metric-vs-imperial type things that literally blow up eventually.) There are many other errors we make every day building software that lead to years or decades of tech debt. The thing we need to figure out is how to get better at mak…

The costs of making better decisions need to be measured against the costs of making poor decisions. Most (but certainly not all) software is ephemeral. If you knew what would be in use in ten years and what would be in the bit bucket, you might make different choices. If you were liable for your choices and mistakes for years and years after your product shipped, you would examine them closer as well.

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#56

Post by Latteland »

itronitron wrote: post #52
starpilot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of architects just work on run-of-the-mill housing (not unlike CRUD apps) where the combination of building codes, the client's budget, zoning and other requirements often prevents you from doing anything too flashy. In talking with civil, naval, and mechanical engineers that I know, this type of "crank out another one similar to the last one" work seems to be the norm. I used to be aerospace and…

>> "crank out another one similar to the last one" That's because they can't stand up a micro-service or API to crank those things out.

that should be your startup idea! "automate that boring civil engineering design with the agi 5000".

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#57

Post by softwarefounder »

rafiki6 wrote: post #14
waivek wrote: post #4

As a software "engineer", I've always been envious of architects and the well-defined path to mastery that exists in their field. You start off as a lowly apprentice and only through years of study and practice can you progress. As a result, the best architects in the world are generally forty and above and there is a correlation between age and competence. There is no 22 year old rockstar architect. The bar of compe…

This is also the case in software "engineering". Don't assume a code monkey who's 22 and can produce a piece of software with heaps worth of technical debt is a master of anything. The best software engineers in the world are generally mid-career (40-50) and have gone through lots of large projects in several different roles. Just because our industry doesn't want to acknowledge that, doesn't make it less true.

Anecdotally, will say age doesn't matter, but at least 7+ years of experience across different projects and languages.

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#58

Post by polityagent »

empath75 wrote: post #51
rafiki6 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says we can't replicate them? It's just not economical to do so and really serves no purpose. The world has generally moved past projects with superstitious/dubious meaning attached to them and does an actual cost/benefit on most large scale endeavors. Except for some developing countries with growing economies who have something to prove.

I wonder what the budget would be to make a more or less exact duplicate of the Great Pyramid.

I hear that slave labour and not worrying about workplace injuries really reduced budgets for the original.

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#59

Post by marssaxman »

oh_sigh wrote: post #54
shen wrote: post #2

The article title is confusing architects with structural engineers.

It is also confusing in the sense that it uses the term "sound engineering" with 'sound' being the 'good/sturdy' definition, whereas the whole phrase is interchangeable with a field of study within architecture(sound/acoustic engineering)

That threw me; I wondered all the way through when the author was finally going to get around to the part about acoustics.

Re: Architects have a lot to learn from the sound engineering of the ancients

#60

Post by erikpukinskis »

rafiki6 wrote: post #15
pgnas wrote: post #10

The megaliths of Bolivia and structures all over the world which man could not replicate prove this. It would seem that the more we turn our back on the natural world and our history, the more we hold ourselves back from break throughs in many areas.

Who says we can't replicate them? It's just not economical to do so and really serves no purpose. The world has generally moved past projects with superstitious/dubious meaning attached to them and does an actual cost/benefit on most large scale endeavors. Except for some developing countries with growing economies who have something to prove.

You are correct we probably can today. The biggest prehistoric megalith blocks are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 tons, perfectly milled. The modern record for the largest structure lifted by crane is 20,000 tons. So we have an order of magnitude capability on be ancients.

However what is certainly true is that there was a long period in between where we couldn’t. From at least 1000 BC to sometime in the 1900s AD it would’ve been physically impossible to recreate Baalbek. Yet somehow thousands of years before that ancient people did it.

My pet theory is they used compound reed boats, canals, and locks to do it. But in the end we don’t know.

What’s clear is there were people more similar to us than we are to the Elizabethans in terms of technological capability, and they were totally wiped out. No stories, other than myths, no pottery, no metals, nothing left of them except the most durable giant stone remnants.

In other words: the up and to the right trajectory of history is wrong. There are bigger cycles in civilization than all of history combined can illuminate.

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