M.Arch. Gürhan Bakırküre:“Steel is an aesthetic contribution to the structure”
Serious research and development is in it, there are the innovations. These also exist in the structures. Steel allows for prefabrication, therefore allow for numberous fabrication of structures. The building can rise very swiftly, it becomes an industrially manufactured structure in today’s digital age. I believe this is the most important problem of our structures. In Turkey, the least advanced industry among the others is the construction industry since it is still based on human skill. When laying a brick wall, you are depending on the skill of the bricklayer. When laying screed, preparing concrete framework, preparing stirrups, they are all human skills. Works in places hard to check.
Therefore, manufacturing in a workshop, industrialization technology is not in our construction industry at all. You lay brick over brick, place the formwork, place the reinforcement, they are all human effort and skill. The most important characteristic of steel is that it minimizes them all. You have your section, drill the holes, make the cuts at the connection points, it arrives to site as a ready lego piece, manufactured in the factory under control and installed at site with minimum error. Concrete loses plenty in terms of quality from the concrete plant to site until casting. Concrete may change, therefore tests are made afterwards, because you are not sure of anything.
It is not under your control. But steel is not like concrete, risks are minimized. As the technology is getting ahead, more technologically-built structures will come forward. Maybe robots will manufacture parts in factories, which already started, and it will become widespread. You cannot do that with reinforced concrete, but you can with steel, and very easily. Therefore it is promising, steel structure is very open to improvement and more importantly the construction technology will also improve with material. Its research and development is surely underway, with stronger steel longer spans would be constructed with much smaller cross-sections