What is the strangest engineering failure in history?

 I was still very young back then and had no experience, but my father taught me about it.

In China in the 1970s, most people received very little education.

Many people had the strange idea, but it was essentially a variation of the perpetual motion machine, and most of them were what you might call the first kind of perpetual motion machine.

Many people became obsessed with these ideas, and some lost all their possessions.

At the time, this enthusiasm for perpetual motion machine research spread throughout the country, and in 1977, the People's Daily published three consecutive articles openly condemning perpetual motion machines, even going so far as to criticize the act of organizing specialists to develop them as "the most foolish plan in the world."

In May 1978, we published another article titled "Dispelling the Illusion of Perpetual Motion Machines."

Anyone with even a basic understanding of Chinese politics should know what it means when the People's Daily intervenes.

At that time, a method called "ultrasonic heating," which heated water without using coal, was popular.

Essentially, it was nothing more than a water pipe with a thin sheet of iron welded to one end, placed underwater.

It was said that when cold water flowed through the pipe, the metal plate vibrated, generating what is known as "ultrasonic waves," which then heated the water in the bathtub.

I have never seen the actual device myself. The image was generated by AI.

Theoretically, cold water has potential energy due to gravity, so it is possible that a small amount of heat could be generated.

However, in reality, it had no effect whatsoever.

According to my father, this device was installed in public bathhouses back then, but its only effect was that occasionally someone would suddenly jump out of the bath clutching their bleeding bottom...

I felt it was necessary to record that absurd period in our country's history because I realized that many of our compatriots no longer know about it.

What are some notorious examples of architectural failures?

 The time has come to anger many architects. While I don't really want to do this, for some reason, there seems to be a reluctance to discuss this matter seriously.

You're interested in learning about some intriguing and infamous architectural failures, aren't you?

What about most of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings?

Wright's Fallingwater, perhaps his most famous building, suffers from significant structural deficiencies and engineering shortcomings. This is a result of Wright's insistence on no changes to his design, and there is evidence that the construction company secretly doubled the amount of reinforcement in the floor slabs without his knowledge. Even a change in the amount of reinforcement that would not affect the building itself seems to have been met with resistance.

The changes were necessary, but not enough to make it structurally sound. Since its construction, the building has leaned significantly, and extensive and costly restoration was needed to prevent collapse. After adjusting for inflation, the construction cost approximately $2.5 million, and $11.5 million was spent on restoration. Any logical designer would call it a terrible failure.

His famous house, Taliesin East, is similarly poorly designed. Much of the house uses shoddy plywood, which has suffered significant warping over the years. Corners are no longer straight, and the entire building leaks. The foundation proved largely inadequate, as the construction was carried out by his students. Repairing and restoring the structure is an ongoing battle.

In short, one of the world's most famous architects was actually terribly bad at designing buildings. While his designs were innovative and aesthetically pleasing, his uncompromising and overwhelming approach created unnecessary engineering nightmares. Much of what he created didn't last long and constantly fell apart.

Architects should be partly artists and partly engineers. Frank Lloyd Wright prioritized his artistic merit over what everyone could consider logical, and his fame has encouraged others to follow the same path.

This led many designers to clash with their team engineers and insist on designs that didn't make sense. Undoubtedly, some of the failures others have listed can be traced directly back to the enlightenment they received from Wright.

Naturally, some architects idolize him for pushing the boundaries of the medium, while most civil engineers absolutely despise the bad precedent he set.