Here’s my latest 90-second video, part of the “Adventures in Building Bad” series which drops each Wednesday at 11 am ET on Instagram and YouTube. This one looks at a recent change in the building code that makes it harder to have inadequate guardrails on occupied roofs. Even so, there are relatively new guardrails on the occupied roofs of two libraries at Cornell which would not be compliant under the new code.
You can find links to all the videos in this series here
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A recent article in the New York Times reminded me of an issue that emerged when a new Fine Arts Library opened at Cornell University using open metal grating as floors for the stacks — the issue of upskirting. In this video, I show how denials by the architect and Cornell administrators are contradicted by the obvious reality: yes, you can look up through these gratings.
Although I wrote about this issue in this blog in 2020, I recently created a short 90-second video on the same subject for my “Adventures in Building Bad” series.
The complete list of “Adventures” videos can be found here.
Both the ADA and the IBC stipulate that circulation paths must be accessible to people with various disabilities, but illegal protruding objects are still common. In this 90-second video, I look at a few examples in Ithaca, NY, specifically, problems with vertical clearance that often—but not always—result from sloping elements that protrude into the circulation path.
Find links to all the “Adventures” videos here.
Find links to all of the 90-second videos in this series.
This latest 90-second video in the “Adventures in Building Bad” series discusses the implications of column misalignment in E. Sibley Hall at Cornell University. After making the video, which is embedded below, I discovered a photo which seems to show that the column misalignment preceded the 2014 renovation of the third floor.
E. Sibley Hall, third floor, Aug. 21. 2013: inward sloping of the columns is visible in this photo.
So the origin of the problem, it seems to me, is probably either the original removal of attic joists to insert a skylight, or the underpinning of E. Sibley Hall around 2010 during the construction of adjacent Milstein Hall.
Find links to all my episodes here.
Episode 4 in my “Adventures in Building Bad” short-form web series has been posted (a new episode drops every Wednesday). This one concerns dangerous and noncompliant stairs in a fairly new residential building on College Avenue in Ithaca, NY.
Find links to all my episodes here.
Here, I look at the case of a glass guardrail, designed to span over two very different wall types—a basement wall and a retaining wall. And yes, the retaining wall moved, as a result of soil pressure, and the glass guard shattered. Of equal concern is that the repair doesn’t seem to have properly addresses the problem, so the trim at the top of the guard keeps popping up as the glass pushes against it.
Here are links to all the videos in this series.
Every year since I began documenting this Sisyphean cycle of failure and repair in 2009, thin stone pavers in Ho Plaza at Cornell University crack and dislodge, mainly due to vehicular traffic on this supposedly pedestrian street. This is followed by repairs that replicate the original conditions guaranteeing that future damage will occur and that this cycle will keep repeating.
Links to all the episodes can be found here.
I’ve decided to create a short-form web series of 90-second videos, released weekly on Wednesdays at 11:00 AM, called “Adventures in Building Bad.” The first episode was published today, and it concerns a peculiar instance of efflorescence in Milstein Hall, the flagship building designed by Rem Koolhaas/OMA for the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell.
There’s efflorescence all over Milstein Hall, the result of bad detailing which has allowed rainwater to penetrate into the concrete. But the instance of efflorescence described in this video, at the entrance to the critique room, has no obvious connection to rainwater. Are sprinkler pipes that are embedded in the concrete dome leaking?
The web series will appear in YouTube (where the embedded video lives) as well as Instagram and TikTok.
I recently got a question on Bluesky from “Mike – Towards a Metric America!” asking about exit signs in the Crit Room in Milstein Hall at Cornell University, the architecture building designed by OMA.
Now I devoted an entire chapter in my book about OMA’s Milstein Hall to problems with fire safety and egress, but I didn’t say anything about exit signs. So, to answer Mike’s question about whether there was an exit sign for the stair leading up from the Crit Room, I walked over to Milstein Hall this morning to see what I could find, and created this video.
Check out my free open-access book about OMA’s Milstein Hall (and also my book-launch music video)!
Update (June 7, 2026): I just posted another video about exit sign problems in E. Sibley Hall at Cornell.