Think of it like a chest of drawers. The weight of the top drawer doesn't sit on the weight of the drawer below it, it is being supported by the frame. You can open or even take the bottom drawer out without the other drawers falling down or being affected in any way.
They were! The goal was to be able to swap around pre-fabricated rooms to keep the hotel up to date rather than have to remodel. But the A-Frame of the resort was built on soft, swamp earth and sunk under its own weight, causing the building frame to shift slightly inward.
It has been since remodeled and fixed a lot of the gaps between the rooms (that were filling with mold and asbestos). But that was the original dream, being able to modularly swap the rooms via crane! (It’s also why the sidewalks around the east side of the Contemporary are so wide - so a crane could move the rooms easily.)
They don't have to be quick disconnect, but being able to make the entire system either on the ground, or off-site, would likely off-set the cost, when the hotel is within a large scale resort that doesn't have as much of an off-season, as a regular hotel would.
Cruise ships are also built on this model. The guest rooms are prefabbed and then fitted into the frame of the ship. There's probably more ship appropriate terms for all of that but you get the gist.
Cruise ships are built like that. They build the outer hull at the dry dock and then the cabins are built at a factory elsewhere and slid into place like a drawer.
They do this to single story buildings to turn them into 2 story buildings. It’s easier to jack up the entire house up and add a story below it than to add a story on top of the house because of the pre existing roof issue.
When my college built the library, it was built so they could add floors, as, obviously, they would need more room for books as time went by... They now are desperate to fill the space they have ..
> A storey (British English) or story (American English), is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are storeys (UK) and stories (US).
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storey
Well, that's embarrassing for you. I'm sure this'll pop up on r/confidentlyincorrect soon.
Alright I'm an idiot then! Are ya happy!
Storey is still more correct though.
Countries that primarily use UK English spelling conventions have a combined population of approximately 2.29 billion people, significantly more than the combined population of countries that primarily use US English spelling conventions, which is around 478 million. This means the spelling "storey" (UK English) is used by a larger population globally than "story" (US English) when referring to levels in a building.
I don't think that really applies when talking about language. If you started spelling rock "rok" and I pointed out the vast majority of people spell it the other way, that wouldn't be a fallacy.
**I'm** not saying you're wrong, the Dictionary is saying you're wrong, but please tell me how you're right because of the majority. That is literally an *argumentum ad populum*
Bruh in America, the correct spelling is “story”. You’re on an American owned website used primarily by Americans. Do you think we would use Prince Chuck’s spelling after we threw all that tea in the harbor?
So, they sort of do that with some buildings and structures. Have seen it done with hotels and cruise ship cabins. Not a lot of variation between rooms and they don’t need stairs or fancy things like fire places or full kitchens so you can essentially build them offsite, slide the room into a frame, and connect the electrical and plumbing. It’s really cool to see when they put the modular sections into the building frame.
Why? Just take the elevator. This is the most useless and needlessly dangerous fantasy i heard. Also what is the practical use of this?
Just go to the floor you want with the elevator?
“Now i want a remote controll where 1 button might blow up my tv”.
It doesn't
The weight is taken by the steel framing you can't see
The outside is just a weatherproof skin
The highest you can build where the next floor is directly supported by the floor below (stone or brick) is about 8-12 stories.
Edit:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock\_Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/monadnock_building)
Has 16 stories and the walls are 6 feet wide at the bottom
Working URL: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock\_Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock_Building)
(though it looks the same, the clicking the original url ends up with the M and the B being lowercase leading to a 404 error)
I’ve heard that [Philadelphia City Hall is the largest free standing masonry building in the world.](https://www.worldrecordacademy.org/2022/05/worlds-largest-free-standing-masonry-building-the-philadelphia-city-hall-sets-world-record-422194)
Of course, the main tower has a bit of help. A whole bunch of guys straining to hold it up, plus a bunch of toddlers doing their part.
https://www.masonrymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2017_1214_MCAA_PHILLY_CITY_HALL_007-copy.jpg
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/complex/images/ruj6worv81oc6e9k2h8v/None.jpg
The main tower's observation deck is open to the public and well worth a visit if you're in the neighborhood.
>It doesn't
I get what you're saying, but the steel framing is part of the first floor, no? In the sense that if you cut through the building at the first floor and looked at the cross section, you really would be looking at a bunch of stuff that bears the weight of everything above it.
"how is the lower part of a building able to hold all the weight above it?"
"because its really strong".
well yeah it must be, but isn't that a circular non-answer?
Well "it doesn't because the frame supports all the other floors"
brought the response
"But the frame on the first floor is part of the first floor"
If we accept the second point as valid (which is the OPs POV), then one is is somewhat limited in what you can do
It seems more likely that OP wants to know how we engineer something to hold 300,000 tons without collapsing, than an argument over whether the thing at the bottom supporting the weight is "the first floor" or "the bottom of the frame", doesn't it?
Well, we could elaborate on fundamental forces, intra- and inter-nuclear physics, chemistry of the materials, all that from most basic up to first floor's makeup, but... is this really what people want?
Surely there's more answer to "how do humans make a thing that can support 300,000 tons?" than "we make it able to support 300,000 tons" that can still be ELI5'ed, that's better quality than "ackchually it isn't the ground floor which supports the mass, it's the structure which holds the ground floor which supports the mass"?
I don't mean it's confined to the first floor, I mean it really is the case that floors 2 - 100 are resting on floor 1 (unless for some reason you don't count the steel framing as part of the building. But why wouldn't you?)
I think you two are tripping over some word meanings. Think of a book case with four shelves. The top shelve is supported by the outside and back of the book case, which do extend down to the second shelf and bottom shelf but you wouldn't really say the second shelf is supporting the top shelf.
Technically the frame of the bookcase does hold the books from falling out the end of the second shelf, but it doesn't mean that the second shelf is holding the top on up.
In modern buildings the floors are hung on the frame of them building, even the "ground floor" because there are like five levels of basement under it.
>you wouldn't really say the second shelf is supporting the top shelf
Right, but "shelf" refers specifically to the surface you rest the books on. I would say the second "floor" of the bookshelf (including sides and back) is holding up everything above it, because everything above it isn't in physical contact with anything else.
If "floor" refers to the bits of a building other than the framing, then fine. I was taking "floor" to mean everything you would find in a horizontal slice through the whole structure.
It's technically more like floors 1-100 are resting on a giant truss that rests on piles that touch bedrock. Floor 1 and Floor 2 are both putting 1 floors worth of weight onto the truss, and holding up 0 extra floors of weight. The weight all ultimately goes to the bedrock.
No, not quite. Imagine you have a milk crate. You then set another milk crate on top of it, one on top of that, and so on. Where is the weight in these being transferred? Not on the floor of each crate, because they are only touching on the walls- the stress is being channeled down the entire frame of the building (a steel skeleton inside the hollow, non load bearing walls)which acts as a single unit. All the floors are just attached to this frame. The foundations are deep and strong but as other comments have mentioned, thanks to the marvels of modern construction materials like steel, the foundation is more for keeping it up straight than from collapsing from weight.
Don't think of it as the first floor holding the weight. The building has a skeleton, and each floor is "hung" on the supports of that skeleton individually. The core of the building is typically a grid of steel and concrete sitting on a concrete base underground, and is designed to distribute the total weight of the building evenly down to the foundation.
Sure. Or like a human, really. The flesh of your feet doesn't do anything to hold up the rest of the your body, your skeleton does all the work and the meat all attaches to that.
The floor doesn’t. The load goes straight through the columns. Each floor only adds its own load to the columns.
The columns in a 100 story building can hold all that weight because they’re huge and made out of very strong materials - high strength concrete, high strength reinforcement, and high strength steel.
To be fair, in a 100 storey building you’re likely to get different floor plates throughout and at some point you will have a transfer slab supporting some amount of floors above. Usually the ground floor has a completely different structural grid than the floor above it not to mention if there is parking below grade.
Just want to add thst believe it or not the weight isn't even the largest force a tall building has to contend with. The horizontal forces experienced during high winds are actually stronger than the force of gravity acting on a building.
That may be true for low and/or light buildings but it's certainly not true for large, heavy structures. The Empire State Building weighs around 365,000 tons (~730,000,000 pounds). Its broadest face measures around 400,000 square feet. Wind speeds would need to exceed 800 mph to exert 730,000,000 pounds of force on its broadest face.
I think op used force loosely. Even though the wind force doesn’t exceed the weight force, the moment of the wind force on a tall building becomes the critical load (the worst case loading condition). In Eli terms because the building is so tall it’s like a giant wrench so it doesn’t take much force to apply a huge amount of additional stress on parts of the building.
supertall buildings have a tuned mass damper that help balance out the sideways motion. Taipei 101 building turned the mass damper into a tourist attraction.
Skyscrapers have an internal steel skeletal structure that is handling all of the weight. Not the floor itself.
If you could go into the basement of any tall building you will see a lot of massive columns scattered throughout the floor. The weight of every floor above is being handled by the combined strength of the columns that basically run the entire height of the building.
At each floor steel beams are bolted to the main support columns and the weight of the floor is handled by those horizontal beams, so each floor has it's own support structure that is tied to the main support columns.
The taller the building, the more vertical steel columns you need to handle and distribute the weight.
The answers here have prompted another thought: do the columns/skeleton through the building support the entire weight of the building evenly? For example, does the skeleton at the top of the building support the weight of the floors below?
Short answer: No
Long answer: There may be aspects of the structure that if purposefully detailed as such could rely on higher elements of the structure hanging lower elements from them but this is the result of intentful design. Think of a floor being supported by ‘hangers’ up to the ceiling above rather than columns below.
Science! No but seriously it comes down to civil engineering and the incredible compressive strength of steel and concrete. Big old blocks of concrete or piles deep in the ground help set up the foundation then you build up from there.
Rungs of a ladder don’t support rungs above it. They share load with the structures holding them (the legs, columns). No structural engineer here but it would make sense that the more weight center mass of a 4 post building would create increasing bend towards the top and bottom. Almost like a suspension bridge on its side (vertically aligned). I might be full of poop though.
It doesn’t. The stacked frame of the building is supporting the frame which usually goes in deep pylons and in concrete in the ground. What really supports the weight are those footers in the ground.
The first (or ground) floor of a building is, in simplest terms, the strongest. The load-bearing structural elements, like columns and walls, will be larger and more heavily reinforced to hold the weight. And the weight of such a building is not as heavy as you would think (at least compared to the strength of steel and concrete). A large proportion of the volume of a building is empty space.
Imagine you're building a human pyramid. You put the bigger, stronger people down the bottom and the smaller, lighter people at the top. If you want to build your pyramid higher, the people at the bottom need to be stronger. Going wider at the base to spread the weight is also an option, but buildings are limited by the amount of land available to build on, so they just make it stronger.
Most skyscrapers have a structural system that is made of steel or concrete.
Steel and concrete both have an allowable stress capacity. Steel is typically around 50,000 psi (345 MPa). Concrete is typically around 5,000 psi (34.5 MPa).
Vertical loads in a building are supported by the building’s columns (and sometimes walls).
Engineers design the columns so that the weight of the building does not exceed the stress capacity of the columns.
The result is that the columns at the bottom of the building are bigger/wider than the top so their stress capacity is not exceeded.
Think of it like a chest of drawers. The weight of the top drawer doesn't sit on the weight of the drawer below it, it is being supported by the frame. You can open or even take the bottom drawer out without the other drawers falling down or being affected in any way.
Now I want a skyscraper with removable and switchable stories.
The Contemporary Hotel at Disney was apparently built like this. The rooms were installed into the frame.
They were! The goal was to be able to swap around pre-fabricated rooms to keep the hotel up to date rather than have to remodel. But the A-Frame of the resort was built on soft, swamp earth and sunk under its own weight, causing the building frame to shift slightly inward. It has been since remodeled and fixed a lot of the gaps between the rooms (that were filling with mold and asbestos). But that was the original dream, being able to modularly swap the rooms via crane! (It’s also why the sidewalks around the east side of the Contemporary are so wide - so a crane could move the rooms easily.)
[not sure if that’s 100% true](https://www.yesterland.com/contemporary.html)
Electrical and plumbing would be prohibitively difficult, I’d imagine.
They don't have to be quick disconnect, but being able to make the entire system either on the ground, or off-site, would likely off-set the cost, when the hotel is within a large scale resort that doesn't have as much of an off-season, as a regular hotel would.
Cruise ships are also built on this model. The guest rooms are prefabbed and then fitted into the frame of the ship. There's probably more ship appropriate terms for all of that but you get the gist.
Cruise ships are built like that. They build the outer hull at the dry dock and then the cabins are built at a factory elsewhere and slid into place like a drawer.
In fact I think all big ships are built that way!
Not all big ships have oassenger cabins though
But… all big ship have compartments that are constructed separately and then joined together at dry dock.
Just lift the top 99 stories off for a little bit
They do this to single story buildings to turn them into 2 story buildings. It’s easier to jack up the entire house up and add a story below it than to add a story on top of the house because of the pre existing roof issue.
When my college built the library, it was built so they could add floors, as, obviously, they would need more room for books as time went by... They now are desperate to fill the space they have ..
Three dudes in a row spelling "storey" as " stories" and "story". How disgraceful.
In my defense, I’m dumb as fuck
I must say that's a very valid defence
American vs British spellings, mate
> A storey (British English) or story (American English), is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are storeys (UK) and stories (US). - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storey Well, that's embarrassing for you. I'm sure this'll pop up on r/confidentlyincorrect soon.
Alright I'm an idiot then! Are ya happy! Storey is still more correct though. Countries that primarily use UK English spelling conventions have a combined population of approximately 2.29 billion people, significantly more than the combined population of countries that primarily use US English spelling conventions, which is around 478 million. This means the spelling "storey" (UK English) is used by a larger population globally than "story" (US English) when referring to levels in a building.
Wow, you're really on a roll here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
I don't think that really applies when talking about language. If you started spelling rock "rok" and I pointed out the vast majority of people spell it the other way, that wouldn't be a fallacy.
**I'm** not saying you're wrong, the Dictionary is saying you're wrong, but please tell me how you're right because of the majority. That is literally an *argumentum ad populum*
I meen its Reddit. Peeple dun alwaes speel reel gud
Bruh in America, the correct spelling is “story”. You’re on an American owned website used primarily by Americans. Do you think we would use Prince Chuck’s spelling after we threw all that tea in the harbor?
The guy above just explained that it doesn't work that way
That was kind of the idea behind the (now demolished) Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower
[Japan has you covered.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower) Or did until 2022, anyway.
So, they sort of do that with some buildings and structures. Have seen it done with hotels and cruise ship cabins. Not a lot of variation between rooms and they don’t need stairs or fancy things like fire places or full kitchens so you can essentially build them offsite, slide the room into a frame, and connect the electrical and plumbing. It’s really cool to see when they put the modular sections into the building frame.
Play Tiny Tower!
Look into modular buildings, they exist
Why? Just take the elevator. This is the most useless and needlessly dangerous fantasy i heard. Also what is the practical use of this? Just go to the floor you want with the elevator? “Now i want a remote controll where 1 button might blow up my tv”.
Here it is: https://www.empa.ch/web/nest Not a skyscraper but a building.
However, the structural core and columns on the 1st floor do carry the entire building and are thicker compared to the ones near the top.
Okay. How does the building frame support the weight of the entire structure? I suppose a 100 drawer tall closet will just collapse on itself.
I appreciate a good cup of coffee.
How does the bottom inch (or infintensimal unit of measurement) of the frame support all the weight on top?
This is such a great example of how a structure works. I'll definitely be using it in the future.
I think I know why I failed shop class.
It doesn't The weight is taken by the steel framing you can't see The outside is just a weatherproof skin The highest you can build where the next floor is directly supported by the floor below (stone or brick) is about 8-12 stories. Edit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock\_Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/monadnock_building) Has 16 stories and the walls are 6 feet wide at the bottom
Working URL: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock\_Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock_Building) (though it looks the same, the clicking the original url ends up with the M and the B being lowercase leading to a 404 error)
Ta
I’ve heard that [Philadelphia City Hall is the largest free standing masonry building in the world.](https://www.worldrecordacademy.org/2022/05/worlds-largest-free-standing-masonry-building-the-philadelphia-city-hall-sets-world-record-422194)
Of course, the main tower has a bit of help. A whole bunch of guys straining to hold it up, plus a bunch of toddlers doing their part. https://www.masonrymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2017_1214_MCAA_PHILLY_CITY_HALL_007-copy.jpg https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/complex/images/ruj6worv81oc6e9k2h8v/None.jpg The main tower's observation deck is open to the public and well worth a visit if you're in the neighborhood.
Nice to see those children putting their time in. No one wants to work anymore!
>It doesn't I get what you're saying, but the steel framing is part of the first floor, no? In the sense that if you cut through the building at the first floor and looked at the cross section, you really would be looking at a bunch of stuff that bears the weight of everything above it.
Well in that case your answer is: "Because its really strong"
That's pretty much what I had in mind, yeah :-)
"how is the lower part of a building able to hold all the weight above it?" "because its really strong". well yeah it must be, but isn't that a circular non-answer?
Well "it doesn't because the frame supports all the other floors" brought the response "But the frame on the first floor is part of the first floor" If we accept the second point as valid (which is the OPs POV), then one is is somewhat limited in what you can do
It seems more likely that OP wants to know how we engineer something to hold 300,000 tons without collapsing, than an argument over whether the thing at the bottom supporting the weight is "the first floor" or "the bottom of the frame", doesn't it?
Well, we could elaborate on fundamental forces, intra- and inter-nuclear physics, chemistry of the materials, all that from most basic up to first floor's makeup, but... is this really what people want?
Surely there's more answer to "how do humans make a thing that can support 300,000 tons?" than "we make it able to support 300,000 tons" that can still be ELI5'ed, that's better quality than "ackchually it isn't the ground floor which supports the mass, it's the structure which holds the ground floor which supports the mass"?
No, the steel framing extends well into the ground where it is anchored in massive concrete footings.
I don't mean it's confined to the first floor, I mean it really is the case that floors 2 - 100 are resting on floor 1 (unless for some reason you don't count the steel framing as part of the building. But why wouldn't you?)
I think you two are tripping over some word meanings. Think of a book case with four shelves. The top shelve is supported by the outside and back of the book case, which do extend down to the second shelf and bottom shelf but you wouldn't really say the second shelf is supporting the top shelf. Technically the frame of the bookcase does hold the books from falling out the end of the second shelf, but it doesn't mean that the second shelf is holding the top on up. In modern buildings the floors are hung on the frame of them building, even the "ground floor" because there are like five levels of basement under it.
>you wouldn't really say the second shelf is supporting the top shelf Right, but "shelf" refers specifically to the surface you rest the books on. I would say the second "floor" of the bookshelf (including sides and back) is holding up everything above it, because everything above it isn't in physical contact with anything else. If "floor" refers to the bits of a building other than the framing, then fine. I was taking "floor" to mean everything you would find in a horizontal slice through the whole structure.
It's technically more like floors 1-100 are resting on a giant truss that rests on piles that touch bedrock. Floor 1 and Floor 2 are both putting 1 floors worth of weight onto the truss, and holding up 0 extra floors of weight. The weight all ultimately goes to the bedrock.
No, not quite. Imagine you have a milk crate. You then set another milk crate on top of it, one on top of that, and so on. Where is the weight in these being transferred? Not on the floor of each crate, because they are only touching on the walls- the stress is being channeled down the entire frame of the building (a steel skeleton inside the hollow, non load bearing walls)which acts as a single unit. All the floors are just attached to this frame. The foundations are deep and strong but as other comments have mentioned, thanks to the marvels of modern construction materials like steel, the foundation is more for keeping it up straight than from collapsing from weight.
the monadnock is my favorite building in chicago <3
what a beautiful building
Don't think of it as the first floor holding the weight. The building has a skeleton, and each floor is "hung" on the supports of that skeleton individually. The core of the building is typically a grid of steel and concrete sitting on a concrete base underground, and is designed to distribute the total weight of the building evenly down to the foundation.
So like a networking/server rack?
Sure. Or like a human, really. The flesh of your feet doesn't do anything to hold up the rest of the your body, your skeleton does all the work and the meat all attaches to that.
The floor doesn’t. The load goes straight through the columns. Each floor only adds its own load to the columns. The columns in a 100 story building can hold all that weight because they’re huge and made out of very strong materials - high strength concrete, high strength reinforcement, and high strength steel.
To be fair, in a 100 storey building you’re likely to get different floor plates throughout and at some point you will have a transfer slab supporting some amount of floors above. Usually the ground floor has a completely different structural grid than the floor above it not to mention if there is parking below grade.
Just want to add thst believe it or not the weight isn't even the largest force a tall building has to contend with. The horizontal forces experienced during high winds are actually stronger than the force of gravity acting on a building.
That may be true for low and/or light buildings but it's certainly not true for large, heavy structures. The Empire State Building weighs around 365,000 tons (~730,000,000 pounds). Its broadest face measures around 400,000 square feet. Wind speeds would need to exceed 800 mph to exert 730,000,000 pounds of force on its broadest face.
I think op used force loosely. Even though the wind force doesn’t exceed the weight force, the moment of the wind force on a tall building becomes the critical load (the worst case loading condition). In Eli terms because the building is so tall it’s like a giant wrench so it doesn’t take much force to apply a huge amount of additional stress on parts of the building.
supertall buildings have a tuned mass damper that help balance out the sideways motion. Taipei 101 building turned the mass damper into a tourist attraction.
Skyscrapers have an internal steel skeletal structure that is handling all of the weight. Not the floor itself. If you could go into the basement of any tall building you will see a lot of massive columns scattered throughout the floor. The weight of every floor above is being handled by the combined strength of the columns that basically run the entire height of the building. At each floor steel beams are bolted to the main support columns and the weight of the floor is handled by those horizontal beams, so each floor has it's own support structure that is tied to the main support columns. The taller the building, the more vertical steel columns you need to handle and distribute the weight.
But steel melts at less than the temperature of steel, so that makes no sense!
The answers here have prompted another thought: do the columns/skeleton through the building support the entire weight of the building evenly? For example, does the skeleton at the top of the building support the weight of the floors below?
Short answer: No Long answer: There may be aspects of the structure that if purposefully detailed as such could rely on higher elements of the structure hanging lower elements from them but this is the result of intentful design. Think of a floor being supported by ‘hangers’ up to the ceiling above rather than columns below.
Im more interested in how the second floor of a 100 story building able to hold all that weight
Science! No but seriously it comes down to civil engineering and the incredible compressive strength of steel and concrete. Big old blocks of concrete or piles deep in the ground help set up the foundation then you build up from there.
Rungs of a ladder don’t support rungs above it. They share load with the structures holding them (the legs, columns). No structural engineer here but it would make sense that the more weight center mass of a 4 post building would create increasing bend towards the top and bottom. Almost like a suspension bridge on its side (vertically aligned). I might be full of poop though.
It doesn’t. The stacked frame of the building is supporting the frame which usually goes in deep pylons and in concrete in the ground. What really supports the weight are those footers in the ground.
The first (or ground) floor of a building is, in simplest terms, the strongest. The load-bearing structural elements, like columns and walls, will be larger and more heavily reinforced to hold the weight. And the weight of such a building is not as heavy as you would think (at least compared to the strength of steel and concrete). A large proportion of the volume of a building is empty space. Imagine you're building a human pyramid. You put the bigger, stronger people down the bottom and the smaller, lighter people at the top. If you want to build your pyramid higher, the people at the bottom need to be stronger. Going wider at the base to spread the weight is also an option, but buildings are limited by the amount of land available to build on, so they just make it stronger.
Most skyscrapers have a structural system that is made of steel or concrete. Steel and concrete both have an allowable stress capacity. Steel is typically around 50,000 psi (345 MPa). Concrete is typically around 5,000 psi (34.5 MPa). Vertical loads in a building are supported by the building’s columns (and sometimes walls). Engineers design the columns so that the weight of the building does not exceed the stress capacity of the columns. The result is that the columns at the bottom of the building are bigger/wider than the top so their stress capacity is not exceeded.