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You might be interested in the story of the Citicorp Center, a building in NYC that was dangerously susceptible to being literally blown over.

>...LeMessurier calculated that a storm powerful enough to take out the building hits New York every 16 years. In other words, for every year Citicorp Center was standing, there was about a 1-in-16 chance that it would collapse.[0]

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/04/17/the_citicorp_t...

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During hurricane Sandy I lived directly across from the Chase building in the financial district. The motion of the Chase building made me sea sick looking at how much it swayed in the wind. You could see the window shades flying back and forth, some office chairs moving around. The displacement was obvious with the naked eye, it reminded me of palm trees at the beach during high winds.

I worked in that building in 2012, and when we got back into the office later that week there were huge cracks running down the drywall from ceiling to floor.

Swaying is not necessarily indicative of a problem. The Sears Tower has a fair bit of sway as well. The general idea is "bend, don't break" and allow some give in high winds.

They didn't even give the student recognition, sleazy basterds. Should have given her a job right away!

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