In recent weeks, our Endure project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), was featured by some of the most important media outlets in Spain, and by international ones.
Testament to the recent media coverage of our work includes appearing on the front page of the newspaper El Mundo on 2 March 2023, with a report on the Valencian engineers who design the most resistant buildings in the world. “We work on the last line of defence, when everything has failed, to avoid a global collapse. “Their buildings include fuses that separate a collapsing part from the rest of the structure to prevent total collapse”.
Also noteworthy is the report in the magazine XL Semanal: The Spaniards building the Future. “They investigate why bridges and buildings collapse and transform this knowledge into resilient designs”.
Nius Diario, from the Mediaset group, published a story on how to build “resilient buildings”. “The Endure project is based on segmenting buildings and avoiding the domino effect”. “It divides the building into safe zones so that if one part gives way, the remaining parts are safe and do not collapse. This is only activated when total collapse is inevitable”.
In international media, The World radio network has reported on the engineering laboratory that designs buildings resistant to earthquakes and other catastrophes.
Other news about the Endure project included the following:
– BBVA: They have been studying since 2017 how to build safer and more robust buildings, avoiding the progressive collapse of their structure. They obtained the support of a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) in 2020, a grant endowed with 2.5 million euros. “The key to our Endure project, which will run from 2022 to 2026, lies in a radical approach to building design, based on segmenting buildings and linking the different parts with structural fuses to prevent the propagation of failures throughout the structure”.
– La Ventana, Cadena Ser: This is how a Spanish project is fighting against building collapse: “We removed three columns and the structure held up perfectly”. “Adam and his team are working on ‘structural fuses’ that prevent the progressive collapse of a building in the event of an external threat such as an earthquake”.
– Hoy por hoy Locos por Valencia, Cadena Ser: Interview on the European-funded Endure project to prevent buildings from collapsing in the event of a catastrophe such as earthquakes, floods or explosions. “We are currently working on creating construction systems and strategies that contribute to reducing the vulnerability of critical buildings such as hospitals, schools or passenger terminals, guaranteeing greater robustness and safety of the buildings”.
– Cope: Apocalyptic earthquakes: is it possible to build the indestructible building?. The Building Resilient team is asking that question through the Endure project, “can we stop buildings from collapsing?”. “We are currently working on what we call ‘robustness’, i.e. we design the building to withstand earthquakes, but also provide a last line of defence. Specifically, by ensuring that the rest of the structure is unaffected even if part of the building were to collapse”.
– Onda Cero: Tell me how it happened: Building indestructible buildings. “In the Endure Project, we are designing very special structural fuses that during disasters such as those in Turkey and Syria would prevent the total collapse of buildings exposed to seismic tremors”.
– Telecinco: How buildings in Spain are prevented from collapsing in the event of earthquakes: experts explain. “In Valencia, they are studying how to avoid total collapse, and when failure is inevitable, to allow one part to collapse without affecting the rest of the structure”.
– aPunt: Per què els edificis de Turquia s’han ensorrat en massa? (Why did so many buildings collapse in Turkey?).
– Europa Press: Video interview on Endure. “Endure studies how to build buildings with a robust structure capable of surviving extreme events”.
Finally, José Adam has written an article for the BBVA Foundation entitled: The challenge of constructing buildings resistant to collapse in the face of earthquakes such as those that occurred in Turkey and Syria. “Endure is proposing a new paradigm for the design of buildings based on ‘virtually’ segmenting them into different parts that are connected with what we call ‘structural fuses’. In this way, when one part of the building fails, and the propagation of failures to the rest of the building is inevitable, the fuses are activated to protect the rest of the building. In other words, the failed segment is separated from the rest, thus preventing major disasters.
