(Foreword) A familiar sound - yet entirely more powerful. Back to building construction once more, in a larger sense, in a development of the last study. This new study will start with the same broad idea as its predecessor.
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Virtues are aspects and ideas that are most important to a society, the valued qualities of a social structure. There are virtues that pertain to certain groups or countries. They make individual, small societies unique. No matter where one belongs in the world, the processes of building construction show the virtues their society holds tightly. What ideas and qualities are valued, and those forsaken in a society can be seen in every contribution to the creation of any building, no matter the size or purpose.
Building construction can be split into two main sections: residential and commercial. Residential work is always less intricate and developed versus commercial, which is understandable; commercial buildings and complexes are where we spend most of our time. They are where our work gets done.
Every part and contribution to the overall completed construction to a commercial building is equally important, but some are well overlooked. Fenestrations, arrangements of window or window-related products, are often recognized but without much attention. However, even more overlooked is where these fenestrations are anchored: most often, structural steel. The bones of all buildings, structural steel, is equally forsaken.
From a general or broad perspective of building construction as a whole, it’s rather difficult to make out a society’s virtues; but when the processes are broken down and individual trades are analyzed, conclusions are more easily in determining a society’s virtues. In this study, structural steel holds these conclusions. More importantly, in determining these virtues, it must also be determined that American construction is in need of American steel.
In the development of a product, the designers and engineers must choose two of three aspects that the product will have: “good”, “easy”, and “cheap”. A society exemplifies their virtues through these choices, through product design.
China has notoriously been a global, dominant force in exporting inexpensive, mass-produced products of all kinds. It can be already assumed that their two virtuous aspects would be “easy” and “cheap”, but to further prove this and set up a basis for the presented argument, note two significant statistics:
• In the first four months of 2013 — increased 33% from a year earlier to 480,095 tons of Chinese exported steel
• As of June 15, 2013, production in U.S. steel mills declined to a shocking 76.7% of their capacity
China is gaining a greater presence in American construction and
overwhelming the American steel industry. This is attributed to the extremely low
production cost of Chinese steel and ease of mass production on their part. However,
the poor product quality is bad news for American bridges and buildings; Chinese
steel that is prone to failure is killing jobs and people here in the US.
Shown below is a picture of a 3-D printed building condition section, at the
head of a storefront frame.
The anchor point in most cases, for large fenestrations in commercial buildings, is at a structural steel beam. In this design, the only stable anchor point would be the structural steel tube; no secondary option, as plywood sheathing and fiber cement panels would fail. Poor-quality Chinese steel would present a danger here as it’s failure tendency could cause the storefront frame to fall out, possibly damaging things or killing someone.
