An award-winning school, Patrick Henry Preparatory (P.S. 171) also has a history worth celebrating: it was designed by Charles B.J. Snyder in his Collegiate Gothic style and named for a famous Founding Father. SUPERSTRUCTURES provided investigation, design, and construction administration services for the NYC School Construction Authority (SCA) to restore the historic school.

Clever of the British to give a posh name to a common problem. But London’s Regent Street Disease affects buildings, not people. Whatever the name, this phenomenon is the same on either side of the Atlantic. When structural iron or steel corrodes, it expands, causing cracks, spalls, or wholesale failure in the surrounding masonry and calling into question the member’s ability to sustain the load it was designed to carry.

The “Get Sheds Down” initiative just announced by NYC Mayor Adams and DOB Commissioner Oddo is intriguing—especially in concert with new rules that allow use of UAVs (drones) for building inspections. We join the city in working to minimize the intrusion of sidewalk sheds.

New York City has issued new rules that allow for some uses of UAVs (drones) in the five boroughs, including for building inspections. We applaud NYC for this decision and look forward to deploying drones on facade inspections, building on the success we’ve had using them outside the city.

Consider the crucial difference between “I like cooking, my family, and my pets” and “I like cooking my family and my pets.” The first sets the stage for a special family dinner; the second is a threat to the entire household. This lesson in punctuation is also a cautionary tale about attention to detail. In our field, the accuracy of construction documents can mean the difference between a project’s success or failure.

In the film Contact, a SETI scientist played by Jodie Foster makes a pivotal discovery: mysterious “blueprints” sent by an alien intelligence fit together to form a 3D “primer.” The relevance to our practice?  Like those SETI researchers, keep listening.

Our unofficial mascot, Bucky, continues to inspire our practice. Bucky’s solution sends a message: why follow convention when there’s a better path, though it may require more effort and initiative? Why “Bucky?” We named him after fellow visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller.

Our 2023 Lunch & Learn series continued on June 21st with “Specifying Masonry Accessories: What You Need to Know” presented by Dennis Maher of Hohmann & Barnard. 60 members of our team improved their knowledge of masonry accessories and their applications over lunch in our “Piazza.”

It’s been said (perhaps by a French officer in WWII) that “battles are fought at the edge of maps.” While we never want the practice of restoration to be a battle, we do find truth in this analogy. Consider, for example, roofing systems. Problems rarely arise in the field of the roof. Almost always, failure is the result of a poorly designed or executed detail at the interface (edge) between two components.

Praemonitus Praemunitus or “forewarned is forearmed.” The Boy Scouts say it more succinctly with their motto, “Be Prepared.” Either way, it’s an ultimate expression of the value of research and preparation and words that SUPERSTRUCTURES lives by.