Our Grant Program

Structures Workshop would like to help projects engaged in construction, architecture and engineering!

We also support all organizations, especially locally in RI, CT, and MA - that support our communities! Our giving program supports individuals, organizations, and non-profit institutions in need.  We award $500 to $5,000 in grants, through the owner’s Vanguard Charitable DAF (it used to be directly from SW but for ease of paperwork it is now through this donor advised fund). Erik gives a minimum of 10% of all his income this way (ie. 10% of SW profit goes to charity and more). He joined the “Giving What We Can” pledge through the Center for Effective Altruism.

If you have a project that needs some funding, please send us info!

Once awarded, we will have no stake in your project and no marketing is expected or desired.  The award will be your money for your project.  We are simply trying to help with a donation and/or our expertise.  

30: Get a Drawing Pad with Digital Pen For Computer

I haven’t added to my Manifesto for Growth in 7 years, but I think this #30 “Get a Drawing Pad with Digital Pen For Computer” is a worthy add.

We bought Wacom One pads for all of us engineers, and we place them in front of our key boards for easy access to markup an email/PDF/word doc etc just like sketching on a pad.

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We have been using for 6 months now and here are sketches I did last week

In #27 of this manifesto “sketch poorly and sketch often” also applies to computer pads…

Drawing quick sketches is essential to being able to make informed engineering decisions. Drawings help us determine which elements are relevant and which may be safely ignored. These daily hand sketches are needed to help us make subtle discriminations about proportion, member orientation, constructibility, connectivity, etc. So we need to sketch and sketch often, but do we need to sketch well? No. Sketches should only meet one criteria - they need to be useful. They need to communicate a design intent and to help with decision making about the design. Feel free to sketch well as a hobby - by all means - add water color even, but for daily engineering, sketch poorly and sketch often.

In fact, you can even sketch without any consideration of craft and it will still be useful.

Shout Out to Our Steel Fabricators in New England

We are very proud to design steel connections (on too numerous of projects to name) and we sometimes forget to thank the best clients we can have! All those amazing steel fabricators and erectors out there.. Thank you!!!

We don’t just design standard stuff but love the complex connections, here are just a few connection we designed on a recent job… lots of love goes into these details and it is the fabricators/erectors that do the hard part of building them all.

And yes this is just a tiny sample of one single project (14 out of 18,143 connections we helped design on that one single project).

First Hemp Lime House in the US

The team (Estes Twombly + Titrington Architects) used a hemp lime system developed in France for thermal mass. Hempcrete or hemplime is biocomposite mixture of hemp hurds (shives, lime, sand) and according to the owner…

“this is the first cedar shingled hemplime house on the planet with some other notable innovations including a convertible closed-to-open deep foundation; a hybrid air-based / hydronic heating and cooling system; a geothermal system; a photovoltaic power generation system; and locally sourced materials with lower embodied carbon just to name a few.”

And there is no sheathing! No plywood so we developed wood braced frames. We also designed the foundation for wave loads (Cape Cod oceanfront) in the next 100 years with CMU walls that can be removed prior to a storm (or breakaway freely during the storm without damaging the house) which makes it capable of converting from a closed foundation into an open one, predicting a future FEMA code 50+ years from now.

This innovative project adds to our growing list including …

  • 2020 We designed this first hemp lime house in MA with the first convertible foundation on the planet

  • 2017 We designed the 4th Certified Living Building building in MA (the most rigorous building standard in the world, makes this the 23rd certified Living Building in the world)

  • 2015 We designed the first Passive House in RI

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Our FEM Models vs Reality

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David Krakauer of the Santa Fe Institute describes the m^cubed phenomenon or m^cubed mayham as confusions that arise in people minds between mathematics, mathematical models, and metaphors.  I would simplify this and call it m^squared and lump mathematics and mathematical models together as models.  In the past, I have described the FEM models we use in engineering practice differ from the real world and highlight how our models should never be assumed to mimic reality, but are simply tools for us to exercise our engineering (or moral) judgement (in my case, to design safe structures).  We should never mix up the model for what is actually happening in the real world.   This is analogous to Krakaur’s models and metaphors. 

Krakauer says in Harris’s book Making Sense

“you can talk about spring and levers and these are physical artifacts…and then there are mathematical models of spring and levers” and “there is this tendency to be epistemologically narcissistic.  We tend to take whatever current model we’re using and project that onto the natural world as the best-fitting template for how the natural world operates…for many reasons the model is imperfect, computers are not robust”.  

It is not that computers are not robust, they can be robust, it is that they don’t need to be – we humans need to be robust. We need to better understand computer models (and output) and not be subjects to its authority.   This is a actually a question of dominion – we need never forget that we rule over it. Also, to Krakaur’s point, we need recognize when we are being epistemologically narcissistic - it happens all the time and it is really lazy thinking.  This will make us better engineers.  We need to constantly question our models. Again models serve us, not the other way around.

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New Providence Library Ready to Open!

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Projo Article on our new library posted today! We designed new hung floors within, ultra thin, and long span stairs through very large new floor openings (we removed) in the existing art deco 1950s addition downtown (pan joists with concrete encased steel). Arch: DesignLab, Builder: Bond, Steel Fab/Erector: Capco. Picture from Projo links to article.

Silent Trees?

The trees do speak to us,
Their whispers carried by the wind—
Leaves brushing leaves,
Crafting melodies we name silence.

They are not our trees. They never were.
They are simply the trees,
Guardians of epochs long before humanity's dawn,
Their lives stretching beyond our fleeting existence—
Some standing tall for over four millennia.
We felled the eldest, yet spared the second—
Can the second ascend to ancient heights,
Or shall we deny it that legacy?

Once wild, now tamed and farmed,
A monolithic “conserved” forest can never replace the untamed.
Weyerhaeuser’s promises lie hollow,
Conservation is not preservation!
As divergent as Pinchot and Muir—
For Pinchot, nature was a resource,
To be stewarded and shared for human gain.

For Muir, nature was sacred,
Best preserved in untouched sanctuaries,
Far from humanity’s degrading grasp.
Let trees be preserved in their tangled diversity,
Left untouched to thrive beyond our reach.

Trees are not solitary beings. They are collective,
There is no single tree, only forests—
Living, breathing symphonies of existence.
They flourish through connection,
Roots entwining beneath the earth,
An intricate network beneath our feet and above our heads,
Communities interwoven.

We have much to learn from their silence.

Stainless Steel Pipes and Fabric on “Pressure Springs”

We designed the cantilevered steel support structure for a future tensile fabric membrane at the Garrahy Parking Garage in Providence. Capco Erection is currently installing the stainless steel pipes for a future tensile fabric covering.

Glass Elevator Wins Silver Prism Award

We were structural engineers for the glass elevator and worked for Oasis to design this award winning elevator. Our team won the Silver Prism Award last week. Project located in Boston at Union Wharf and check out Oasis for more info…https://oasisspecialtyglass.com/oasis-glass-elevator_wins_2019_prism-award/

Here is our Revit model with some images…

We designed the glass, glass connections, steel and steel connections as well as wood and wood connections. Fun and challenging project!

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Erik to Present at “Steel School”

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Steel School: Practical Wisdom from 3 Industry Experts

3.0 SEAMASS-Certified PDHs

On October 9, SEAMass is hosting Steel School, an informative three-part seminar that will cover several aspects of designing with and working with steel.

Braced Frames, Moment Frames and Cantilevers
Presenter: Erik Nelson | Structures Workshop

• Lateral systems, axial thru forces, collector forces with amplification, and R factors
• Simple design advice on when axial forces are too high for beam web connections and when moment designation should be used
• Load paths on axial thru forces and moments on stiffener welds within the column web.
• Stiffeners and doubler plates within moment frames, a discussion
• Larges difference in connection review and design of cantilevers vs lateral moment connections– what to look out for

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