What makes a building strong?
Answer:
Triangles.
Any structure that is made of triangles is by definition not deformable from simple rearrangement of components; deformation is due to material elasticity and plasticity alone.
So, if you have a structural component that needs to be a 4 sided polyhedron (a rectangle), bracing it with a diagonal member will convert it into a pair of triangle, and that will stiffen it.
concrete
You need triangles. Lots of triangles.
In engineering, nothing is 100%. An engineer was once asked, "Is that bridge strong?"
He answered, "Yeah, it's pretty strong."
Then he was asked, "Will it fall down?"
The engineer said, "Probably not."
originally buildings were limited in size by the amound of weight the bottom rock could hold with out crumbling. That was a little over 400 feet. Then when steel became relatively cheap and was mass produced, buildings began to use steel beams for support. Concrete is nice, but without steel reinforcment it will break.
You need to make sure that the joints are strongly held together. Your structure is going to be most vulnerable at the joints.
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