I dunno, it sounds like Wright had the concrete done in 1935 and it was 60 years later that "forensic evaluations revealed fatal developing conditions in the late 1990s.". Like after 60 years you can only detect a problem when you bring out tooling (but not an actual failure!)?
I might be no architect but I always hear the comment that "anybody can design a building that stands but it takes an engineer to design a building that just barely stands". It really sounds like Wright correctly designed a building that just barely stands and the rest of the people are too worried about his success.
The engineers of his day and his client both raised concerns. This is the first I've heard that engineers build to barely last. Maybe that's true in software. I hope to hell that it is not true for homes, cars, roads, bridges, aircraft, and spacecraft.
Durability isn’t free. No reason to build for 30,000 years when needs change over time.
Public infrastructure like bridges are designed to predictably decay over time so they can be maintained or replaced if they are still useful. Just look at the NYC subway system there’s tons of old tunnels that just aren’t useful today, they didn’t collapse but they still became obsolete and that’s inside a major city which kept it’s subway system.
I might be no architect but I always hear the comment that "anybody can design a building that stands but it takes an engineer to design a building that just barely stands". It really sounds like Wright correctly designed a building that just barely stands and the rest of the people are too worried about his success.