Interview– Justin Fabrikant
“I think one really important thing is understanding when to push and when not to push. This is true of contractors, developers, and architects. There's a moment when you can say, ‘This isn't working. We need to do something else instead.’ There are good times to say that, and there are times when doing that will cause the project to sit for six months. So it’s about how it is to work with this person and what kind of skills they have, but it's also nice to work with people you like. I don't really know how to define what it is about a person that I might like, but liking people and feeling comfortable with them is very important.”
Which type of job would you take without hesitation? I really like sculptures. Our firm works a lot with the artist Mark Fornes. He does these very thin shell sculptures. They are between three millimeters and six millimeters thick. These sculptures, with all of their curves and crazy shapes, can become as large as 30-40 feet tall. These are used with very thin plates, and they're always challenging. It's interesting in the work that always looks good in the end. He does public art in outdoor spaces like parks, and sometimes he does these crazy, almost biological-looking hanging works in large indoor atriums. And they're always large enough for a person to walk around.
Also, I would like to be involved on a bridge. I wouldn’t necessarily want to work on a big, crazy, super insane bridge but maybe a little pedestrian bridge. That might be a really fun project to work on. The structure would be all exposed, so there's definitely a very strong aesthetic component to what your structural system is. Plus, the world just needs more pedestrian bridges.
A lot of big cities have rivers flowing through them or around them. If you're on your feet or if you're on a bike, you don't want to have to ride all the way over to some crazy, super loud car bridge in order to get into another borough. If there was a beautiful little pedestrian bridge that you could cross then I think more people would ride their bikes or go by foot, and that's better for the world.
What parts of your job do you like and dislike, and why? I like working with clients. I like solving these puzzles. I don't like the deadlines, the stress.
Could you give me an example of a past case that was like “solving a puzzle”? Something that comes up often with facade design is the “degrees of freedom.” So you want to make sure that if the building moves, then the facade doesn't also move. The facade is not designed to take any of the load that would be transmitted through it from the building. So a lot of times you have to come up with a way to put slot holes in the object, or make that object field welded and then figure out the entire sequence of how these things would have to be installed and how they would have to be made so that they have adjustability. You would also need directions to make this thing look great when it's finished, to resist whatever loads that it would potentially take and then also to avoid whatever loads that it shouldn’t be taking. With all of those constraints, you also have a kit of parts or whatever the fabricator is comfortable making, and so you basically have a puzzle that you have to put together.
What are the things that people working in other construction industry fields should understand about your line of work? I wish sometimes that we would get a little bit more direction and a little bit less pushback. For example, if we say, “Oh, you need a column here,” rather than hear back from the contractor or the client and they say “No, we can't put a column here,” have them say instead, “Well, this is difficult in this location because of X but maybe this other location might be a good place.” That would be nice. Sometimes some clients are great but other times people view structural engineering as a stamp or just a form of decoration, but these things could genuinely be unsafe. At a certain point, I think it would be nice if other members in the field would be more willing to make compromises in our favor.
What are the important qualities to excel at to reach your goals as a structural engineer? The thing is to be able to understand how the structure that you are designing or engineering will exist in the real world. Sometimes engineers can go strictly by the book, and they do whatever. Other times they come up with something that's insane, such as plates sticking out of the wall, and it's either way too big or way too small and thus entirely unresponsive to the conditions of the project. It's important to be able to balance it. Obviously, you have to do everything you can to make the building safe enough to code, but you have to be responsive to what the project actually needs from a design perspective. You also have to be good at communicating. Otherwise you're going to find yourself repeating things over and over again because other people on the team didn't understand what you originally meant.
What are some tips to be better at communication? Do you have any tricks or rules? Just try to picture it. For example, you have a building that needs more stiffness added to it. If you need the steel, give the guy a call and ask him, “Do you have a sub that does steel? Do you do steel? Can I design a steel thing?” If they say, “No, no, impossible. Can’t do it,” then you have to go to the architect next. So you say to the architect, “We're going to have to make some changes: you're going to need an additional wall here with some plywood panels, you're going to need this, you're going to need that,” in order to achieve the structural requirement because the contractor can't do it with steel. So you have to be able to figure out how to navigate that.
What do you value most from the people that you work with? I value so many things. I really like to have a team where everyone is bringing diverse things to the table. So in my team, it's nice to have someone who is really good at drawing things up quickly and is a positive driving force for the project. It's also nice to have people who are really knowledgeable about building code, and really understand traditional building methods and how things come together. It's good to have someone who is really good at performing calculations. A lot of times these tools will overlap in a person. Sometimes everyone is very good at a specific thing, so it's great to be able to use that. On the other hand, you also don't want to pigeonhole people and say, “Okay, you're a lab calculation guy.” It's not good for a person, so try to give people the opportunity to take on new jobs.
With the team that’s outside my office, I think one thing that's really important is understanding when to push and when not to push. This is true of contractors, developers, and architects. There's a moment when you can say, “This isn't working. We need to do something else instead.” There are good times to say that and there are times when doing that will cause the project to sit for six months.
So it’s about how it is to work with this person, what kind of skills they have, but it's also just nice to work with people who you like. I don't really know how to define what it is about a person that I might like, but liking people and feeling comfortable with them is very important.
Do you have any book recommendations or websites that architects and contractors or subs might benefit from, to understand more about your line of work? I don't really have any recommendations in that regard, but I would say try to stay focused whenever you walk around in the world. New York, for example, is an amazing laboratory of buildings halfway under construction, buildings halfway falling down, old buildings, new buildings, everything. Try to follow them with your mind. If you look at a building under construction and you see a column and say, “Why is there a column there?” Then you look up and you say, “Well, there are two beams connecting to that column. Why are those beams there? Oh, they're holding up this part of the floor.” Try to piece it together, especially if you don't understand how it's working. So for example this happens to me a lot in airports, because many airports have a lot of exposed structure, and I look around at the structure in the airport and I think, “Why is this not unstable enough to figure out? Okay, it's being stabilized by this element and that element.” Then try to puzzle your way through the design.
What kinds of questions do you ask? I always ask these questions myself. My mind is immediately attracted to things that I don't understand. I think it’s like there's a missing piece. For example, I’m on the street and I see a brick building on the corner, and the doors are at a diagonal. There’s a triangle of slab above that's cantilevering at three or four feet, and then the building goes up another five stories. A lot of us think, how is that being held up? So sometimes we'll go in and take a quick look and try to see what's going on. It’s like peeking through the construction fence. So yeah, anything that I see that I don't understand and I want to understand.
