Architecture: Prizewinning Arena Collapses

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Kansas City showcase in ruins

Shortly after the American Institute of Architects gathered in Kansas City last week for its annual convention, dozens of members slipped off to study the city's architectural showcase: the R. Crosby Kemper Jr. Memorial Arena, the 17,000-seat sports and concert coliseum that was the site of the 1976 Republican Convention. Designed by Helmut Jahn, of the Chicago firm of C.F. Murphy Associates, the sleek, futuristic building had several distinctive structural features. One was the sweep of interior space, 324 ft. long, without a single interior support. Another was the three huge exterior trusses, or interlocking networks of pipes, that marched up, across and over the cool white structure, holding up the roof and giving the building a light, lacy effect. That combination of lightness and strength had won Jahn one of the AlA's prestigious design awards in 1976.

But evidently something was not strong enough. In the evening, after the visiting architects had left the arena, a tremendous rainstorm hit the city, dumping 4 in. of rain in 30 minutes. Shortly after it began, Arthur LaMaster, the supervisor on duty in the deserted building, noticed water pouring down two sides of the $250,000 Scoreboard, which was suspended from the center of the ceiling. Then he heard a roar "like a pounding of a sledge hammer on concrete." The 18-ton scoreboard came crashing down, and more than half of the arena's roof collapsed. Twisted steel, broken glass and Insulation material thundered onto the seats below. It was the worst architectural disaster since the roof of the Hartford, Conn., Civic Center caved in under 4.8 in. of snow in January 1978.

The collapse of the five-year-old, $12.2 million facility stunned both Kansas City and the visiting architects, among them Jahn, 39. Ironically he had come to receive another citation, this one for a gym in South Bend, Ind., and he heard the bad news while at one of the festive banquets. "It's just terrible," he said. "The building was designed to withstand certain winds and certain conditions, but there are such things as acts of nature."

The cause of the collapse could not immediately be pinpointed, but theories abounded. One held that rain water on the arena's roof had not drained off properly; an estimated 640 tons deluged the roof before it gave way. City Engineer Don Hurlbert had another theory: fluctuations in air pressure, perhaps caused by a blown-out window, might have caused more pressure to build up under the roof than above it, literally blowing the roof off. Privately, some architects speculated that the arena may have been more vulnerable structurally to atmospheric pressures because its main supports, the exterior pipe networks, all ran in one direction; buildings with crisscrossed main supports, or double trusses, are thought to be sturdier.

Two days after the collapse, James Stratta, a California civil engineer who specializes in the analysis of structural failures, was hired by Kansas City to investigate the disaster. After sifting through the debris, Stratta will review the architectural drawings, construct a model of the building and subject it to wind, water and weight experiments.