Masonry Magazine April 1965 Page. 13
This detail of the load-bearing brick columns of the First National Bank, Loveland, Colo shows the interesting design created by the alternating column types. See next page for photograph of complete elevation.
BEARING WALL CONFERENCE
Pittsburgh, Pa. - May 27-28
Architects, engineers, and educators from all over the nation will meet in Pittsburgh, Pa., May 27 and 28 to attend a landmark conference on the design and construction of new load-bearing masonry buildings.
The National Brick and Tile Bearing Wall Conference will be held at the Pittsburgh Hilton Hotel and will be sponsored by the Structural Clay Products Institute with the cooperation of the Allied Masonry Council.
AMC, the masonry industry's cooperative promotional arm, is suported by SCPI, the BM&PIU, and the Mason Contractors Association of America. AMC's functions will be to bring to the two-day conference a selected group of architectural educators and top government specifiers, and to play host to a reception and cocktail party for the guests. Participation in the load-bearing conference is one of four key projects being undertaken by AMC this year.
Architects and engineers are attending the unprecedented Pittsburgh meeting by invitation only. Except for the "national" list of educators and government officials being sponsored and invited by the Allied Masonry Council, architects and engineers are being invited and in many cases brought to the meeting by the regional directors and manufacturers of SCPI. In some cases, chartered airplanes will bring guests from distant spots.
Pittsburgh was chosen as the two-day meeting site for a very specific reason. While major load-bearing masonry projects are now in the planning stage in several parts of the nation, Pittsburgh is the site of a $4,250,000 urban renewal project which encompasses 15 apartment buildings ranging in height from four to 10 stories.
The first phase of the Pennley Park project, now completed, consists of eight buildings. They are entirely of load-bearing brick wall design. Transverse walls of exposed brick bear the building loads. The 12-inch walls interact with 8-inch precast concrete floor planks as stiff diaphrams. The architect, Tasso Katselas, says a comparative cost study requested by FHA showed that the brick bearing wall system was 20 per cent less expensive than a conventional steel frame and bar joist system.
A tour of Pennley Park is one of the major events of the bearing wall conference. The program will be as follows:
Thursday, May 27
Opening remarks, R. W. Otterson, Executive Director, SCPI. Discussion of bearing wall research, theory, and codes: James Gross, SCPI director of engineering and technology; assistant chief SCPI engineer Robert Dikkers; and research specialist C. B. Monk, Jr., of SCPI's research division in Geneva, Illinois.