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Photo: Eduardo Fierro, BFP Engineers Inc. Collapsed two-, or possibly three-story reinforced concretebuilding in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Related Links: Structural Engineers Survey Devastation Who Will Lead Recovery Effort in Haiti? Haiti Highlights California Quake Risks A/E/C Specialists and Others Rush to Help Haiti Architects Speak About Shoddy Construction Architecture Groups Mobilize to Help Haiti A preliminary damage assessment map for major buildings and infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is now available from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research's Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNITAR/UNOSAT). Sites marked as "No Visual Damage" may have major structural damage not identifiable in the imagery. Damage there

Scramble to save lives and sustain survivors leaves questions unanswered about how recovery will be led. The leaders of the U.S. earthquake response effort in Haiti say they expect it will be “several weeks” before the effort shifts from a first-response life- support mission to planning for recovery, but when it comes, that phase “will involve all the military and civilian subject-matter experts.” Photo © BFP Engineers Inc / Eduardo Fierro Second- and third-floor beam-column joints without shear reinforcement in this five-story building in Haiti failed. Related Links: Structural Engineers Survey Devastation UN Releases Map Showing Damage in Haiti Haiti

Scramble to save lives and sustain survivors leaves questions unanswered about how recovery will be led. ...hampering the delivery of aid, he noted the U.S. government has been particularly helpful in assisting the Haitian government with restoring and maximizing airport services. “The control tower has been damaged, while the runway was okay. Therefore, the United Nations is very closely coordinating with the U.S. authorities to have a smooth operation, and I am grateful that the United States government has been swiftly and effectively dealing with this in close coordination with the United Nations,” he said. Photo © BFP Engineers Inc

Scramble to save lives and sustain survivors leaves questions unanswered about how recovery will be led. ...Command (NAVFAC) division in Norfolk, Va. It has several contracts in place with private-sector firms to support the Haiti effort if task orders are issued, according to Jim Brantley, division director for public affairs and communications for NAVFAC. Atlantic Contingency Constructors, LLC, Virginia Beach, Va., Fluor Intercontinental Inc., Greenville, S.C., and URS-IAP LLC, Washington, D.C., hold a $1-billion global contingency construction contract with NAVFAC. It includes providing engineering and construction services for disaster recovery. Image © Unosat/Meti&NASA 2009 Density of post-quake bridge, road blockages

Scramble to save lives and sustain survivors leaves questions unanswered about how recovery will be led. ...months. The work of sorting out land tenure and building ownership may be able to begin in about six months but could take as long as five years. Meanwhile, transitional shelters, health clinics, schools, hospitals and community and civic structures will need to start construction within six to nine months, with construction of permanent housing ongoing for one to five years. Image © Unosat/Meti&NASA 2009 Density of post-quake bridge, road blockages in Port-au-prince on Jan. 13, 2010. Related Links: Structural Engineers Survey Devastation UN

Photo courtesy Wikipedia Norval White Architect Norval White, a pioneer of New York City’s preservation movement who parlayed that passion for buildings into a widely read and frequently reprinted book, died on December 26 of a heart attack at his home in Roques, France. He was 83. Educated at M.I.T., Princeton, and the Fontainbleau Schools, White, a native New Yorker, fought unsuccessfully to save the original Pennsylvania Station, a Beaux-Arts creation from McKim, Mead & White that was razed in 1963. White had more luck, however, with the AIA Guide to New York City, a witty and scholarly block-by-block directory

Damage from landslides is common in Haiti. In Port-au-Prince, there is widespread destruction of nonductile concrete structures. Many rubble or unreinforced masonry walls failed. The E-in-plan Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince still has much of the first floor intact, with windows unbroken, but there is total collapse above the first floor. There is very light reinforcing evident in failed columns near the entry. At the port, there is a collapsed pier and cranes, and several buildings are under water. Extensive lateral spreading and liquefaction is evident. These and numerous other on-site observations on damage from Haiti’s magnitude 7 earthqauke are from

Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners, a Toronto-based, 80-employee practice established in 1945, has joined Perkins + Will. No layoffs were reported. Headquartered in Chicago, Perkins + Will now has 19 offices in North America, including two in Canada. In 2004, it acquired Vancouver-based Busby + Associates Architects. “Toronto is a place that has not only a great and big economy, but also a wellspring of architectural talent,” says Phil Harrison, AIA, CEO of Perkins + Will. “So it was a place where we wanted to have a permanent representative office.” Related Links: Perkins + Will Adds Guenther 5 Perkins +

Invited Architects to Brainstorm with Developers Pugh + Scarpa won the 2010 AIA Architecture Firm Award in part for its ability to deliver design excellence to low-income communities. Its affordable housing project Step Up on 5th, in Santa Monica, provides 46 studio apartments for mentally disabled and formerly homeless occupants above ground-floor commercial spaces; and the much-honored Colorado Court complex in the same city houses 44 low-income residents, sheltering them from the sun behind an extensive array of photovoltaic panels. Indeed, founding partner Lawrence Scarpa, AIA, says his firm’s work with community developers is the exception to the norm: “By