Old buildings survive earthquakes by learning how to bend
Engineers are saving vulnerable mid-rise apartments by turning stiff concrete into flexible skeletons that sway safely rather than snapping under the immense pressure of a tremor.
In a major earthquake, the deadliest buildings are often the ones that refuse to budge. Many mid-rise apartments in seismically active regions like Turkey rely on brittle concrete frames that shatter once their limit is reached. To prevent total collapse, engineers use a technique called seismic retrofitting to teach these rigid structures how to dance. By wrapping vulnerable columns in jackets of fiber-reinforced polymers or steel collars, they transform a brittle support into a ductile one—meaning the material can stretch and bend significantly without breaking.