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"   cellpadding=&amp;quot;0&amp;quot; cellspacing=&amp;quot;0&amp;quot;&amp;amp;gt; (Illustration by Sinelab) Innovators: Gregory Deierlein, Stanford University; Jerome F. Hajjar, Northeastern University For decades, the goal of seismic engineers has seemed straightforward: Prevent building collapse. And so they add steel braces to a skyscraper&amp;#039;s skeleton or beefier rebar to concrete shear walls. After absorbing the brunt of seismic shaking, however, the compromised structures often must be demolished. &amp;quot;The building, in a sense, sacrifices itself to save the occupants,&amp;quot; says Gregory Deierlein, a Stanford University civil and environmental engineer. A team Deierlein led with Jerry Hajjar, a Northeastern University engineer, hopes to change that, designing a system that protects both people and the structures they live and work in.  Last fall, the engineers successfully tested a 26-foot-tall, three-story, steel-frame building outfitted with the new system, built atop the E-Defense shake table\u2014the world&amp;#039;s largest earthquake simulator\u2014in Miki City, Japan. Steel &amp;quot;fuses,&amp;quot; not structural elements, absorbed the shock of an earthquake greater than magnitude 7, and cables pulled the building back into plumb once the shaking stopped. After an earthquake of that scale, the deformed fuses could be replaced in about four days\u2014while the building remained occupied. Jim Malley of the San Francisco firm Degenkolb Engineers calls the system the next step in the evolution of green building. &amp;quot;As structural engineers,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;our sustainable design is the ability not to have to tear buildings down after earthquakes, but to use them for hundreds of years.&amp;quot;      Editor&amp;#039;s Note: As with many of our Breakthrough innovations, the team behind this earthquake-resilient building technology was much larger than we had room to acknowledge in print. In particular, engineers David Mar of Tipping Mar and Greg Luth of Gregory P. Luth and Associates made important contributions to this technology. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/a11759/earthquake-proof-building-that-is-built-to-collapse/?click=main_sr>