Leslie E. Robertson

Bank of China Tower

Leslie Earl Robertson ( February 12, 1928 in Manhattan Beach , California , † February 11, 2021 in San Mateo , California) was an American civil engineer .

biography

Robertson trained as an electronics technician with the United States Navy and studied at the University of California, Berkeley (Bachelor 1952). First he worked at Kaiser Engineering and from 1958 at Worthington and Skilling in Seattle . His first large high-rise project was the World Trade Center, planned from 1966 and built from 1968 to 1972 in the engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle, and Jackson (WSHJ). When Robertson became a partner, from 1967 it became Skilling, Helle, Christiansen, Robertson . In 1982 the engineering office was split up and Robertson took over the East Coast office asLeslie E. Robertson Associates (LERA). In 1994 he resigned as a partner, but remained active in the company's design team until 2012.

Robertson died in California in February 2021, the day before his 93rd birthday.

buildings

His projects as a senior engineer include the World Trade Center (WTC, architect Minoru Yamasaki ), the Shanghai World Financial Center , Puerta de Europa , Meadowlands Arena and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the US Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Suzhou Museum , Miho Museum and Bridge in Kyoto. He was involved in the planned Nakheel Tower in Dubai, PNB 118 (644 m, Kuala Lumpur) and the Lotte World Tower .

When the WTC was first attacked in 1993, Robertson's team made the structure usable again in a month, for which it received the Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology from the New York City Mayor. When the buildings collapsed after the second terrorist attack in 2001, the buildings lasted long enough for several thousand to get to safety. Robertson nevertheless reproached himself for not having reinforced the steel core in the center with concrete, so that the construction would have withstood a fire longer. For the World Trade Center he invented mechanical damping against wind loads (around 1968). The framed tube structure (framed tube) with truss bridge cantilever ( has system or outrigger ) and prefabricated outer wall elements, which gave the outer wall a load-bearing function and absorbed the lateral wind loads (and created maximum office space without annoying pillars), was a pioneering achievement in high-rise construction. At that time he also played a pioneering role in the use of computers in calculations. For the Bank of China Tower he also broke new ground with a space frame mega-structure composed of triangular elements .

Honors

In 1989 he was named Construction Man of the Year at Engineering News Record, in 2002 he received the first Henry C. Turner Prize from the National Building Museum and in 2003 the OPAL Award (Outstanding Projects and Leaders) from ASCE (of which he was Distinguished Member) and the J. Lloyd Kimbrough Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). In 2004 he received the gold medal of the Institution of Structural Engineers , in 2004 the Fazlur Khan Medal and in 2012 the John Fritz Medal of the American Association of Engineering Societies . He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and received several honorary doctorates ( Lehigh University , University of Western Ontario , University of Notre Dame , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ).

literature

• Karl Koch: Men of Steel: The Story of the Family That Built the World Trade Center , New York: Crown Publishers 2002

Web links

• Biography at LERA
• LERA, history

Individual evidence

1. ^ World Trade Center, PPG Place, USX Building Architect to Speak at Pitt , news.pitt.edu, November 8, 2000
2. ^ WTC chief designer Leslie Robertson The Tower Builder and Tragedy , Spiegel Online , September 1, 2002