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Nordenson engineers niche through creativity and collaboration
By Jennifer Greenstein Altmann
Princeton NJ -- In some quarters structural engineering is seen
strictly as a pragmatic field, populated by people who possess a ''let's get
the job done'' attitude. But others approach the profession as a highly creative
endeavor, one that involves close collaboration between engineer and architect
from the early stages of conception to a building's execution.
 Structural engineer and architecture professor Guy Nordenson has
successfully collaborated with many of the leading architects practicing today.
He recently gained attention for his work on an early version (pictured) of the
design that was eventually adopted for the Freedom Tower, the building that
will be the centerpiece of the rebuilt World Trade Center site.
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Guy Nordenson, professor of architecture and founder of his
eponymous structural engineering firm, is one of the leading practitioners of
the second type.
Nordenson speaks the language of architects. And that has enabled
him to become a highly effective teacher of architecture students as well as
one of the few structural engineers whose work has been internationally
recognized for its creativity.
''He's not just interested in structural engineering as a
discipline. He sees it in a broader cultural perspective,'' said Stan Allen,
dean of the School of Architecture. ''At some schools of architecture, a course
on structures is like cod liver oil -- you force it down students' throats
because it's good for them, but they don't enjoy it much. Guy is unique because
he has the students genuinely interested in the material he presents.''
And in his professional life, Nordenson (whose first name is
pronounced GHEE) has successfully collaborated with many of the leading
architects practicing today, including Richard Meier, James Polshek and Steven
Holl, creating innovative projects for the last two decades. He has worked on projects
ranging from the Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art and the Santa Fe Opera
House to a 10,500-car parking structure at Disneyland and Ferragamo stores in
New York and Italy.
A collective approach
Nordenson, who has taught at Princeton since 1995 and recently was
promoted from associate professor to professor, founded his engineering firm,
Guy Nordenson and Associates, in New York City in 1997 after practicing for 20
years in New York and San Francisco. His office is located a block from Ground
Zero. Three days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nordenson mobilized a
group of structural engineers to work in shifts 24 hours a day assessing the
level of damage at more than 400 buildings surrounding Ground Zero.
Nordenson recently gained attention for his work on an early version
of the design that was eventually adopted for the Freedom Tower, the building
that will be the centerpiece of the rebuilt World Trade Center site. The
design, which called for a torqued tower that would taper as it rose in the
sky, was developed by Nordenson using ideas from several different sources in
the collaborative style that he favors.
''We live in a period where there is this notion that creativity is
the work of an individual,'' he explained. ''But one of the mysteries of
creativity is that sometimes something starts to bubble up of its own accord --
an archetypal form -- from different sources.''
But the process of choosing a design and an architect for the
rebuilding ''became a situation where there was no clear way to continue that
collective approach,'' Nordenson said, so his firm withdrew from the project.
Nordenson currently is working on several intriguing ventures,
including: the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, a
76,000-square-foot building with outside walls constructed entirely of glass;
the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, expected to be completed
in November; and a dormitory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
designed by Holl, which makes innovative use of prefabricated concrete.
''Instead of the structure being buried inside of the building, it
is a kind of exoskeleton,'' Allen said of the dorm. ''The structure itself is
the primary expression of the building.''
Holl, who has collaborated with Nordenson for the last 20 years,
cherishes his openness to new ideas.
''No matter how wild and unrealistic my first sketch might be, Guy
listens with a wry smile and never utters the word 'impossible,''' Holl said.
''With Guy every imagined angle is allowed initial validity.''
A love of literature
Not many engineers considered majoring in comparative literature,
but that is the department Nordenson first chose as an undergraduate at MIT. He
thought about pursuing a career in writing, and to further that ambition he and
some college friends founded a literary magazine called Rune.
''We were making a connection between our interest in literature and
art and science,'' Nordenson said. ''There were lots of very interesting,
eclectic polymaths around who inspired us to assume we could do whatever we
wanted to do,'' including Noam Chomsky, a linguistics professor who was a major
influence.
In the end Nordenson decided to major in civil engineering at MIT
and later enrolled in a master's degree program in structural engineering and
structural mechanics at the University of California-Berkeley, which he
completed in 1978.
His diverse interests have led him to get involved with the
University Center for Human Values, where he is now a faculty associate. Last
year he helped organize a conference at the center examining the way that democracy
in Iraq would affect the political as well as the physical reconstruction of
the country. ''It's an interdisciplinary group of people trying to address
questions together,'' Nordenson said. ''I'm getting a lot out of my
participation.''
Nordenson also sits on the President's Advisory Committee on
Architecture, which makes key decisions and formulates critical policies for
the campus, and is involved in a study group on sustainability, which is
developing guidelines regarding campus buildings and the environment.
Michael McKay, vice president for facilities and a member of the
study group, said, '''Collaborative' is one of the first words I think of when
I think of Guy. Our first conversation about the sustainability issue led
immediately to the suggestion that we get a group of people together to talk
about it.''
Nordenson's embrace of the collaborative process and his ability to
convey engineering principles to non-engineers in a way that they can
understand makes him unique in his profession.
''A lot of architects get frustrated with engineers because they
only see things in terms of numbers, and he isn't like that,'' said Rebecca
Nixon, a structural engineer at Nordenson's firm who studied with him at
Princeton, where she was a member of the class of 2001. ''He knows how to
relate to architects, so when architects have an idea about something, he is
able to talk in their terms.''
His approach has made his company one of the most innovative
structural engineering firms around. When Nixon began her job search in her
senior year, she found that most engineering firms were working on ''standard
things like highway bridges, nothing very interesting.'' But Nordenson's firm,
she said, ''made me see that there can be a lot of creativity in engineering.''
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