Windows keep falling off skyscrapers. Why?

Stewart Hicks is a professor of architecture and design in Chicago. In this video, he discusses some of the materials engineering, structural decisions, and physical forces that result in failures of skyscraper windows in cities.

I didn't know that that many people died from falling debris from buildings every year. That's a pretty horrifying way to go, like an artificial avalanche. Or like getting smited. Not much you can do about that sort of thing as an individual. I hope that cities around the world learn from these fatal lessons and enact stricter legislation around building codes for tall buildings in order to prevent failures of the facade in the future.

I don't think the moral of the story is to avoid spending time around tall buildings, but rather to do a better job as a society of keeping our cities structurally intact. And if we can't do that economically with certain kinds of buildings, we shouldn't construct buildings that way. But I think we can, it's just a matter of setting up systems that enable safety.