Building from the Underground Up

Robert Radske digs New York’s underground scene, but it isn’t neo-punk bands or avant-garde installation artists that capture his fancy. His interests are less subversive – more subterranean.A consulting engineer at Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers and one of the leading building foundation experts in the city, Mr. Radske has descended into the bowels of ground zero, the New York Stock Exchange, and the AT&T Building and he is currently at work on the Freedom Towers.“I see stuff that normal people that walk along the streets have no idea even exists,” he said. He described how “people on the ground,” as opposed to “rats” like him, never see the intricate waterways, subway tunnels, and carved-out rock that interconnect below street level.He admitted that aside from a skeleton here and some cannonballs there, the depths of the city are mostly just “dank and dark.” Still, Mr. Radske enjoys taking a hands-on approach in his projects. “I like to get out there, get dirty, and solve the problem.” Indeed, “I like to assess a job by how much water I have on my shoes,” he continued.“I like foundations, because it’s the first thing that occurs on a building – and it’s unknown,” he said. Each building site that Mr. Radske approaches has a problem, whether it’s dense rock formations or water pressure from the rivers around the city, that must be addressed. “This becomes a challenge – a very interesting challenge – for me to undertake.”As Mr. Radske discussed the technicalities of his vocation, he expressed his feeling that foundations are unsung heroes. “People don’t understand the nature of foundations,” Mr. Radske lamented. “When the World Trade Center came down, the superstructure failed but the foundation survived. This is one of the important factors that no one brought up.”It is even with a hint of disdain that he speaks of “superstructures.” That is, beams, columns – essentially any part of the building other than its foundation.“Superstructures are basically pancake designs that go from one floor to the next, whereas foundations are intricate problems on every site,” he scoffed. “Superstructures are basically an erector set.”Perhaps some of Mr. Radske’s animosity stems from the fact that after he finishes a project, all the credit goes to the building itself. As he put it, “the foundation,” both literally and figuratively, “gets buried.”His company has been the underdog for nearly a century. At 94, MRCE is America’s oldest foundation engineering firm. According to Mr. Radske, MRCE has had some sort of involvement in every major Manhattan skyscraper. Outside the city, MRCE has collaborated on the Ronald Reagan Federal Office Building in Washington, D.C., the Sony building in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, and the Chapultepec Tower in Mexico City.What Mr. Radske and his colleagues at MRCE have over other foundation firms in New York City is history. With an extensive in-house library containing books of century old foundation techniques, antique maps of New York, and yellowed building plans, as Mr. Radske puts it, “we have a thorough knowledge of how things in New York City were built.”A New Yorker through and through, Mr. Radske was raised in Brooklyn and now lives with his wife and two daughters in Queens. The son of a cabinetmaker, Mr. Radske often worked with his father on small construction projects.After receiving a B.S. in civil engineering from the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, Mr. Radske worked for three years as a contractor before he landed his current consulting gig at MRCE, where he has remained for the past 29 years.As a way to give foundations their due, Mr. Radske likes to go around the city and photograph construction sites. For Mr. Radske, there is something artistic, something beautiful about these skeletons, which humbly hold up the city’s townhouses, apartment buildings, and skyscrapers.“There really exists a city beneath the city,” he said.

Building from the Underground Up

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