Original subtitles

How do you build a massive airport expansion

with a nine-acre roof

without disrupting a single flight?

We had to keep the existing airport

open and operational.

Some people have said it’s like doing open-heart surgery

while you’re running a marathon.

How do you create a breathtaking building

in the middle of the desert

that provides its own water and power?

It was a real opportunity to show

that you can do something totally sustainable.

And if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere.

And an iconic tower that defines the city skyline,

but is hated when built.

The controversy was so vitriolic.

And he said, "That’s it,

I’ll never do anything in San Francisco again."

Welcome to a world where anything is possible.

The space where innovation and creativity collide.

This isn’t just impressive, it’s revolutionary.

Where the only limit is human imagination.

This wasn’t just ambitious,

it was audacious.

No one had ever attempted anything like it.

Unpacking the miracles

and mysteries of construction.

Sometimes buildings can change the world.

And this is one of them.

To ask, How Did They Build That?

Whoever said the journey is more important

than the destination could have been talking

about this next beauty.

A game-changing airport terminal so sustainable,

stylish, and inviting, it’s worth missing your flight

just so you can enjoy it for an extra three or four hours.

I’m not kidding,

because no matter what type of ticket you have,

Portland International is first class all the way.

From Singapore’s Changi

to Abu Dhabi’s dazzling Zayed International,

there’s no better way for a city to welcome visitors

than with an incredible airport.

But if you were touching down in Portland, Oregon, in 2017,

that wasn’t the greeting you got.

The original airport was built in 1956.

And it was actually nine different buildings

that have been kind of stitched together over the decades.

The small and outdated terminal

was best known for its geometric pattern carpet,

which became popular on social media.

But with passenger numbers

expected to double to 35 million by 2045,

Portland International needs

to wow them with more than just carpeting.

We needed more room for passenger ticketing,

baggage systems, security checkpoints.

So the airport put out a call for architects to design

a stunning expansion program.

Local firm ZGF are determined to be chosen.

This was hugely important to us.

And we just put everything in it to ensure that we could win.

After some serious brainstorming,

they’re ready to pitch their idea.

They came to us with this concept of a walk in the forest.

And being this natural resource state,

it really resonated with us to have our airport

literally be what we’re about.

We want to create a building that’s built upon

the materials that are from our region.

In this case, it was wood.

It’s the twinkle of the light

that it hits the moisture in the leaves.

It’s the smell of the wood.

It was a chance to redefine what is the front door to our city.

The new Portland Airport Terminal

will create one million square feet of dramatic space.

A new terminal that will welcome the millions of travelers

passing through it each year.

But first, they’ll have to find a way

to support the new building on the soft, sandy soil underneath.

Then, they’ll need to create a terminal

that’s double the size

while the airport is still in operation.

And it needs to be super eco-efficient

so that they can halve its energy consumption.

Finally, to bring it all together,

they will have to create the world’s biggest timber roof.

Installing all 9000 tons of it

without disrupting a single one of the 400 flights a day.

Oh, and it also has to stand up

to some of the most powerful earthquakes in America.

This is a very ambitious project because we had to keep

the existing airport open and operational 24-7

while we’re building right on top of it.

You know, some people have said it’s like doing

open heart surgery while you’re running a marathon.

Work begins in March 2020.

Installing the new utilities needed for the expanded airport

means excavating 35 feet below ground.

And nothing about the site is going to make it easy.

The challenge is we’re right next to a river.

We have silty sand.

And the problem with construction in that soil

is that, when you make deep excavations,

you’ve got to get men and equipment

down to place the new materials.

But sandy soil will collapse.

And that’s a safety hazard.

When you’re building something big,

you typically start by digging down

and supporting the sides as you go.

But, here, the soil is sandy and loose like quicksand.

The minute you dig into it, it wants to cave right back in.

So getting support into place fast enough

becomes a real nightmare.

So the team turns to an ingenious solution.

It was a process called soil freezing

where we can get a structural wall

that is a solid sheet of ice.

And then we can dig out within the center of it.

It works by inserting tubes into the ground

around the perimeter of your construction site.

And then you pump in a liquid that freezes

and, over time, will freeze the soil.

What it does is it basically creates

a block wall around the perimeter.

With the dangerous soft ground conquered,

work begins dismantling parts of the old airport in April 2021.

The new terminal will be a hug, uncluttered open space

if they can work out how to build it.

The existing terminal had

over 600 columns supporting the roof.

The new design has only 34 columns for a footprint

that’s over 50% bigger.

The minimal number of columns means

the roof beams will span distances over 80 feet.

The heavier the sections each column needs to support,

the more force it needs to transfer into the ground.

The old columns just won’t be up to the job.

To cope with all this extra strain,

the engineers design a special Y-shaped column.

The Y-shape is quite efficient

for supporting the load because it keeps the load

as it comes down the legs of the Y-shape.

And to stop them splaying apart, we have a tension rod

between the tops of the Ys.

Made in a factory 10 miles away,

the 55-foot columns are shipped to the site.

In over 17 working days,

each is carefully lifted into place.

With the 34 columns all installed,

the team turned its attention to their next challenge:

creating the enormous nine-acre roof

that will sit on top.

We wanted to make sure that this building has

the smallest carbon footprint in terms of material,

and that is the use of wood.

In many ways, wood was the perfect choice.

Oregon is almost half-covered by forest.

So you have all this timber

readily available right at your fingertips.

All of the timber

came from Oregon and Southwest Washington

within 300 miles of the airport.

They really wanted to work with Sustainable Northwest,

tribal communities, local timber industries,

and capture the essence of the Pacific Northwest.

But there’s a problem.

Standard timber isn’t available

in beams strong enough to support the roof.

The only way to create these spans

with timber is to create what we call glue laminated beams,

or glulams.

Rather than being solid timber,

it is made up of a series of small laminations.

And they are glued together and built up

to create the larger sections of the beams.

By using individual lamination,

we can really key in the strength of the beam,

using different grades of laminations for where we need

the strongest portions of the beam.

It requires 3.7 million feet of wood.

Once completed, it will be the biggest mass timber project

of its kind in the world.

It is a massive coordination effort

to get this much timber processed through the mills,

processed through the glue laminators,

onto the project site.

To speed things up, they assemble huge sections

of the roof in an area at the end of the runways.

The prefabrication was incredibly complicated.

At times, required over a thousand workers

working on their various trades.

In August 2022, they are ready

to install the first prefabricated section.

Many the size of an American football field

and weighing 700 tons have to be moved

half a mile across the airport.

They were lifted on several of these movers at one time.

These massive wooden sections had to be installed

during a tiny four-hour window in the middle of the night

when there were no flights.

Everything had to be precise.

There was no room for mistakes.

Once each module reaches the terminal,

getting it in place is an even tougher job.

There was a lot of stress and tension about,

"Can you do this?"

The fear is the tower could lean over and fall.

is moving 18 huge wooden panels into position

to cover the enormous roof.

It takes a long time because it’s very careful,

very dangerous work.

Those movers were not in perfect sync.

They could have unseated

or put stresses on the roof as they moved

and pulled the roof apart.

It takes six nights to carefully slide

the first module into position.

When the first piece was finally put into place,

it was a huge relief.

With 17 more pieces to fit,

there’s no opportunity to relax.

You see that roof come together and this vision that we’d had

on a piece of paper was becoming reality.

It takes another three months

of high anxiety night shifts.

But, finally, the last piece of the nine acre roof

is put into place.

It was just a phenomenal thing to see that happen.

The next threat to the project

comes from deep below ground.

They’re building in earthquake country.

You can’t skip seismic precautions here.

This is one of the few places

that can see this size of an earthquake.

A mega thrust earthquake with a magnitude

of over seven could be catastrophic.

So the team has to design a way

for the nine-acre roof to withstand it.

The Y columns support double steel girders.

The steel girders sit on top of what we typically call

base isolation bearings.

What that allowed the roof to do is essentially float

on top of the Y columns in a seismic event.

We calculated up to two feet of movement

where the roof would be moved independently of the Y columns.

With the beautiful roof protected from earthquakes,

in November 2023, they can stat

to wrap up the new terminal in 928 glass panels.

But there’s still a major hurdle to overcome:

making climate control

in the huge new space as sustainable as possible.

The primary energy use was heating.

And it was about half of the total energy usage

of the entire airport.

The team hopes the solution

is under their feet.

The airport sits above a huge aquifer.

Water runs down through the sandstone

at a constant 63 degrees Fahrenheit,

regardless of the weather above ground.

We’ve drilled a series of wells

upwards of 500 feet deep

to reach the aquifers down below.

We draw the water out.

Then we pump the water into the mechanical systems

for heating and cooling.

It’s a system that basically saves energy.

For the finishing touch,

the team crane in 72 trees to join the 5,000 plants.

They’ll help mediate the terminal’s climate

and create the architects’ vision

of a walk in the forest.

In August 2024,

the revolutionized Portland Airport

proudly opens its doors to the public,

giving the city an incredible gateway to greet new arrivals,

as well as a glimpse of its iconic 1980s carpet.

Watching people come in the front door,

and kind of look up,

and really have this amazing response to this building

was pretty special.

This place means a lot to me.

And this is beautiful.

The wood, I mean, it’s so Oregonian, you know?

Born from Oregon’s forests,

the roof is a majestic swooping site,

made possible by the clever columns

and complemented by a forest of plants and trees.

It’s a source of immense local pride.

I know that our ancestors and everybody else

that came before us are smiling down on us

in a very proud and honorable way.

As an immigrant,

the Portland International Airport

was the first doorway into my new country.

And to have the opportunity to redefine what it could be,

it shows you great hope in what America represents.

This was a project of a lifetime

for me and a lot of us.

And we’ll always remember this as probably the greatest project

that we’ve ever been part of.

If you saw a museum in the middle of the desert,

you might think it was a mirage,

unless you’re in the middle of Dubai,

in which case that museum

is a very real, state-of-the-art,

100%-energy-efficient public space called Terra,

which also produces its own water deep beneath the desert.

Three floors deep, to be exact.

The city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates

boasts some extraordinary architecture,

including the world’s tallest tower,

the Burj Khalifa.

It also has to deal with one

of the world’s most extreme environments,

with temperatures reaching over 125 degrees Fahrenheit.

And climate change is making that worse.

When the city’s water has to be desalinated

and you’re dealing with these sorts of temperatures,

the challenge is being able to live sustainably.

But in 2013, it gets the chance

to prove that the city can do just that.

The city of Dubai won the bid

to host the World Exhibition here in our city.

It’s the first ever held in the Middle East,

and they promised the world something groundbreaking,

an Expo dedicated entirely to sustainability.

With the world watching,

hosting the Expo will not only be a great honor,

but a very big challenge.

There have been 34 World Exhibitions

since the first in 1851,

and they are a chance to showcase

what the host nation is capable of.

But it means creating something extraordinary as a centerpiece.

The first World Expo

showcased Crystal Palace in London,

boasting 293,000 panes of glass, the greatest area ever seen.

In 1889, Paris built the Eiffel Tower.

At 1,000 feet,

it was the tallest building in the world.

Almost 125 years later, it’s Dubai’s turn

to amaze the world and open minds.

We wanted to talk about themes that matter to humanity.

And one of those most critical themes

were actually sustainability.

The Expo team calls for ideas

for the show’s centerpieces.

So the brief was simple but not an easy one.

We wanted to create the space

that remained as a center that continues to educate,

inspire action around environmental issues.

Architects Grimshaw, the firm behind

Britain’s remarkable eco-attraction,

the Eden Project, rise to the occasion.

It was a real opportunity to show that you can do

something that’s totally net zero,

totally sustainable.

And if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere.

I remember sitting in the room

where Grimshaw were presenting their initial sketches.

It just looked like a tree. It was a building.

And this notion of the structure being inspired by nature

was precisely one of the key foundations

of what it is that we wanted to create.

Called Terra, it will be

an extraordinary and beautiful building.

Inspired by nature, it will be net zero,

where any greenhouse gases released are offset

by those removed, a beacon to sustainability.

Despite the sun and the 122-degree heat,

they will look to the natural world for ways to keep it cool.

A large canopy will harness the weather

to cool the air underneath,

which, at 400 feet wide, will need to be super strong

without using materials

that create a huge carbon footprint.

Somehow, it will need to power itself,

cool itself, and make its own water.

It’s massively ambitious.

But it also wins the competition.

For everyone involved,

the pressure to deliver is huge

because the whole world is watching.

In September 2017, work begins on the site.

The single biggest challenge on this project

was making it net zero.

And they had to look at every single aspect

of the build to work out how to pull it off.

In Dubai’s desert heat,

the team behind Terra is looking for a way to cool

the 240,000-square-foot building

without relying on air conditioning.

What you do first of all is think about how design

and ingenuity can solve the problems before technology.

The solution is remarkably simple.

We realized, from the beginning, we could actually sink

half the building below ground.

And that immediately keeps the building naturally cool.

The team digs 45 feet under the desert.

Sand is a poor conductor of heat.

Think of sticking your toes in at the beach.

The sand is scorching to walk on and it’s cold underneath.

So you can use that to cool anything you put underneath.

The remaining part of the building,

we effectively took the landscape

over the top of it.

So it’s all underneath a very heavily insulated garden.

The team has to excavate three stories down.

Finally, they’re ready to start the build.

The question is, with what?

Concrete is an enormous contributor

of the world’s CO2 emissions.

It’s said that, if the cement industry were a country,

it would be the world’s third or fourth largest emitter

of carbon dioxide.

Not ideal if you’re trying

to create an eco-friendly building.

At the moment, it’s impossible

to build a building without using some concrete,

especially at any scale.

We had to use concrete to the main foundations and slabs.

The challenge is, how can they

build something strong enough

using as little concrete as possible?

Their solution is ingenious.

But we used a new technique called bubble deck.

By putting spherical balls throughout the structure,

it actually uses 30% less concrete and makes

the whole structure lighter as well,

but yet with the same strength.

Not only that, these hollow balls

added to the concrete are made of recycled plastic.

In October 2018,

with the structure well underway,

the team turns its attention

to the canopy that’s going to cover it.

We were really inspired by the gaff tree,

which are these solo trees

that you find in the desert on their own.

And they provide shade

for everyone in a very harsh environment.

The plan is to build a huge gaff tree-like canopy,

400 feet wide and 115 feet above the ground, to sit on top.

It’s a challenge straight from the start

because it’s not perfectly symmetrical.

There’s a slight imbalance one way and things can buckle.

With winds of up to around 80 miles per hour,

the gaff tree canopy will need to be pretty strong.

What they come up with sounds simple,

but it’s incredibly clever.

It’s like the spokes on your umbrella.

Each one is individually engineered

to cope with the forces that are placed upon it.

So we have 36 ribs, as we call them,

and they are up to about 85 meters long

if you unfold them from their curved shape.

They crane the sections of the canopy into place,

attaching the ribs one by one.

I’ll never forget that moment, you know,

watching the first one go in,

the second one go in very slowly,

and once they got into a flow,

it went a little bit faster and faster.

But until they’re all in place, it has no integrity,

so we had to prop them as they go up.

Because you’ve got that radial arrangement,

we were able to add a series of concentric tension rings,

which tied all of those together

and meant that, as they try to fall,

it creates a tension

which balances them against one another,

so it’s hugely efficient.

In February 2019, all 36 are in place.

And then, of course, it was that beautiful moment

when it was time to "de-prop" the canopy

and remove the support.

Now they have to hope what goes up

won’t come crashing down.

It’s a moment where you hold your breath.

It stands up to the test.

So that was a sigh of relief when it was all there

and stayed where we wanted it to be.

With the main structure complete,

they face their next challenge, green power.

The challenge can often also be the solution to change.

And so one thing we do have is an abundance of sunshine,

albeit very hot.

Before, the team looked to the ground

for sustainable solutions.

Now they look to the sky.

Over the top of it, the roof canopy

has over 6,000 square meters

of very highly efficient monocrystalline photovoltaics.

To you and me, that’s solar panels.

Over the next few months,

the 86,000 square feet of roof canopy

slowly transforms into a sea of energy-producing panels.

But we realized that wasn’t enough

to meet all of the power demands,

and particularly the cooling in the summer.

Although it’ll provide four gigawatt hours per year,

in the words of Captain Kirk, Scotty, we need more power.

So we thought, well, if we create

a series of shading structures,

it can both shade everyone down below,

but it can also harvest more energy.

Again, the team looks to nature for the design.

We were inspired by these dragon blood trees,

and they have these beautiful waxy leaves

and a canopy that shades down below.

The plan is to create 18 of them,

and each will harvest the sun.

Those, of course, also covered

with an additional 4,000 square meters of solar panels,

so an additional engineered solution.

The genius doesn’t stop there.

Rather like a sunflower, they can track the sun.

So they start in the morning facing east

and, at the end of the day, face west.

In August 2019,

they start constructing the energy trees.

They had to keep them very light and nimble.

So we actually made them all out of carbon fiber

because it’s extremely lightweight

but incredibly strong.

Mounted on motors, each will be capable

of moving to follow the sun.

The rotating nature of the E trees,

that can increase the production of the energy trees

by up to 25%.

The panels are bifacial,

which means they’re collecting sun

directly from the sky and also the reflected sun

off of our light-colored paving.

That gives us all the energy

that Terra needs throughout the year.

The team turns its attention

to the next challenge, water.

Terra will need almost two million gallons a year

and that’s a problem.

Because water is so precious in this part of the world,

the water that we get from our tap

is actually desalinated water from the ocean.

Salt is removed by pumping the brackish water

through very fine filters.

But to do this at scale is super energy intensive.

In Dubai, the team are building Terra,

the centerpiece for the 2020 Expo.

In the middle of the desert,

it will somehow have to provide its own water.

They plan to do it with morning dew.

It’s seriously clever stuff.

They first make a concrete tapered column

over 30 feet high.

And, at the top, they put a massive metal funnel

with sides sloping down at a 30 degree angle.

The membrane collects water,

but it doesn’t allow it to sink in.

It forms little beads.

So it’s exactly the same way as a Namibian fog beetle works,

and it has the same thing on its shell.

So in the beetle’s case,

it then collects it on its head and drinks it.

We basically collect all of that,

and, of course, bring it back and bring it into the system.

As well as providing its own water,

it also reuses it too.

This time, nature is more than just the inspiration.

This is greenery that’s doing a job.

It’s not just there to look nice.

Across the site, the team plants

over 100 different species,

including some astonishing grass reeds.

So those reeds are actually taking

the dirty water from the building

and they’re cleaning it.

The captured water is channeled over the bed of root.

It’s not actually the plants

that do the filtering.

It’s the microbes and the bacteria that live

on the roots of those plants.

With all these measures combined,

the team reaches its net zero target.

The water demand for the project was reduced

from around 80 cubic meters a day

down to about 20 cubic meters a day.

On October 1st, Expo Dubai 2020

officially opens to the public.

If that building symbolizes anything,

it’s the idea of capturing beauty

with ingenuity of thinking.

What we wanted to complement

the architectural beauty

was with the impact that it had on people.

Including the hundreds of thousands of visitors

every year.

And now, it’s become a permanent inspiration

for energy conservation around the world.

The most exciting point was seeing lots of people

going through it and enjoying interacting with each other.

It’s leaving a lasting legacy

on the team that built it too.

You felt you were really at the center of something special

that was not just for this building,

but was for the region.

The site has won countless awards

for groundbreaking solutions to sustainability.

From using eco materials to copying nature.

But there’s one recognition that’s right on the money.

I think a moment of pride for everyone

is when the government decided

to have this icon of sustainability

on our 500 Dirham note.

And that was a moment that really solidified

the iconic place of this structure.

Not every architectural icon is a hit right off the bat.

When this next tower was built in the 1970s,

it was one of the most hated buildings in America.

But having been designed for earthquake-prone San Francisco,

it could easily survive a bit of name-calling.

And 50 years later, this California icon

is finally getting the love it deserved.

It’s 1969, and San Francisco is hippie town.

Two years after the Summer of Love,

San Franciscans are determined to avoid being taken over

by soaring towers like New York.

Plans to build a skyscraper

for the Transamerica insurance company

brings them out to protest in the streets.

When the building originally was presented,

it was quite controversial.

It was such a, ahead of its time,

that people just couldn’t imagine

a building like this being built.

The building is the brainchild

of former Hollywood art and special effects director

William Pereira.

My father moved to Los Angeles, and he won an Oscar there

but decided he did not like

the people in the movie industry,

so went back to what he had actually studied,

which was architecture.

Pereira went on to design

the Geisel Library at UC San Diego,

and the theme building at Los Angeles International Airport.

He was really innovative in the sense

that he was not scared to take risks.

In 1969, he takes

what’s probably the biggest risk of his career.

When the CEO of Transamerica went to Pereira’s office,

Pereira showed them a bunch of things

and then he saw their-- the model for this building

and he said, "That is what I want."

He really believed in it.

And the Transamerica Corporation always also was in love with it,

was in love about, you know, this becoming

really a symbol of innovation.

Unfortunately, it was the last thing

its neighbors wanted.

Why is it a pyramid?

The shape was what really drove people out

to the streets with signs.

There were emotions against it.

At 1,000 feet,

it’s set to be San Francisco’s tallest building

and second-tallest in the world.

Although the mayor believes

a modern high-rise city will entice business and money,

the city council appeases the protesters.

They had to shrink the tower from 1,000 feet

down to 853 feet.

And, trust me, nobody was thrilled about it.

I just know that he was, I think, angry about it

because he had a vision,

he had his building, and you want to mess with it?

But it was just enough to get the project approved.

Ready or not, the city of San Francisco

is going to get its futuristic new icon.

But it’s going to take some serious engineering.

First, they will need to create

a stable base for the four-sided pyramid,

capable of holding it steady against a serious earthquake,

while also honoring the elegant and futuristic

vision of Pereira’s design.

Then, they will have to create the rest

of the huge, sloping-sided structure,

rising over 850 feet into the sky.

I don’t know of any other building that is that tall

that employs such an aggressive pyramid shape.

The team breaks ground in December 1969.

Their first challenge is to make sure

the city’s tallest tower is capable

of surviving a potentially devastating earthquake.

What really worked in its favor was the pyramid shape.

Think about it.

It’s like standing with your feet wide apart

versus standing narrow.

Someone pushes you,

you are way more stable with a wider stance.

It’s also going to need a solid foundation,

which is far from straightforward.

The building is located in an area

that, in the 1700s, was actually the shoreline of San Francisco.

So the upper 20 feet of soil is actually pretty poor.

It’s bay mud.

But by excavating through the bay mud layers,

you’re into really competent, stiff soil.

The team excavates 52 feet down

before they reach solid ground.

On that, they pour a nine-foot-thick concrete mat.

Now they have to make sure

the building itself will be tough enough.

They look to one of the city’s worst disasters for a solution.

In 1906, San Francisco had its worst quake ever.

It leveled 30,000 buildings and killed 3,000 people.

All the buildings that survived

the 1906 San Francisco earthquake

and were still standing were riveted steel frame buildings.

Pereira uses the quake-resisting steel frames

as the basis for his tower.

But the height of his building creates twisting forces,

which means the frame won’t be enough on its own.

Imagine a simple square frame.

Each beam connects to the column at a perfect 90-degree angle.

But if you apply force here at the side,

those right angles begin to shift,

and the beams then twist and rotate at the joints.

Engineers call this twisting action a moment,

and it can tear a structure apart.

But, thankfully, there’s a solution.

Reinforce those connections.

At the base, Pereira comes up with a solution

that’s both functional and stunning.

On the outside, you have those, you know,

pyramid-shaped colonnades all coming together

at points along the fifth floor.

In 1970, the steel frame

covered in concrete and crushed quartz

climbs towards the sky.

However, it will take

more than a sparkling finish to win over the locals.

The controversy was so vitriolic that he said, "That’s it,

I’ll never do anything in San Francisco again."

Protests against the building

of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid

aren’t the only problem the team is facing.

Theoretically, a pyramid is a very sound structural shape.

Why I say theoretically is because, in practice,

every single floor plate is different.

You also get smaller floor plates as go up the building,

which means you have less usable space,

because, you know, you need, you still need

your elevators and your stairs and all the main elements.

Pereira’s solution is to add two wings.

The east wing contains the two elevators

that go all the way to the 48th floor.

The west wing is actually stairs

that people would walk down if there is a fire.

In spring 1972,

the Transamerica Pyramid is complete.

Its office spaces welcome workers

with the latest in cutting-edge technology

and the trendiest decor for the 1970s.

But that’s not where the story ends.

Fast forward 50 years,

and while the building is now loved by the city,

it’s also down on its luck.

In 2020, Developer Michael Shvo buys the building,

intending to change that.

People want amazing

historically important buildings.

But they want them to feel and operate

like a brand-new building

with all the architectural details

as they were designed in the ’70s.

He appoints

internationally acclaimed Architects

Foster + Partners.

That building is a monument from the past.

Like any building any period,

you get additions.

Things get covered up.

Mostly, those changes

tend to compromise the original fabrics.

So with this kind of project, there’s always the unknown.

What they do know is that the top of the pyramid

is going to require some serious work.

I was brought on to come look at the spire,

and I was warned that it was corroded.

And I think we recorded over 500 locations of corrosion

and ended up with about 144 total repairs.

One was a full element that had to be repaired.

The restoration is fraught with challenges,

some from unexpected places.

And then it rains.

So on a foggy day, if you’re standing on the 50th floor,

it is raining on you, quite literally.

I mean, I wore a rain jacket most days

when I was up there, working.

Meanwhile, at the bottom,

the building has been closed of to the public.

Lord Foster and his team are determined to change that.

We opened it up.

You can come off the sidewalk

and walk directly into the lobby,

and there’s easy seating.

It’s all a series of individual moves,

but, cumulatively, the site becomes accessible.

On September 13th, 2024, the renovation is complete.

The results speaks for themselves.

In many cases, when architects present work,

they show you renderings.

The renderings are always the best product

because they’re machine-made.

This is the first project I’ve ever built

that the reality is better than the renderings.

I don’t know, it just felt so different.

You know, it’s kind of your neon lights,

your low ceilings,

and now it’s just this incredible,

open, tall, beautiful, light space.

The wood and the stone,

it’s really, really amazing what they’ve done.

For the first time, the public gets to enjoy

the inside as well as the outside.

With access to a new cafe

shops, and a rejuvenated park at its base.

It was like a new world.

So many things different,

so many things more convenient than before

and, matter of fact, were more beautiful.

And I’m glad to be a part of it.

And anyone who wants

can step through the seamless divide

between outside and in

to enjoy the newly opened up lobby and exposed ceiling.

So we discovered this K brace,

and this was actually on the cover of a magazine,

believe it or not, as a marvel of engineering and architecture.

To the citizens in San Francisco,

instead of a private ivory tower, it’s a people’s tower.

Above, the refurbished offices

have been brought into the 21st century.

Taking down partitions,

taking down ceilings that had been added,

and revealing the structure

that was holding up the building.

There’s a spiritual uplift when you go into these spaces.

And beneath the glitz, the fabric of a structure

that has gone from the city’s most hated

to one of its most beloved buildings

has been safeguarded for decades to come.

What Dad did was unique enough at the time

to maintain its individuality up until today.

In a way, Transamerica Tower is a symbol of San Francisco.

♪ MTV ♪