Original subtitles

Narrator: How do you build a glass dome

big enough to house a mountain?

Woman: They really feel like a wonder of the world.

There's nothing else like them.

Narrator: What happens when a major station

is completely taken apart and rebuilt during the rush hour?

Man: This is like open-heart surgery.

The only problem is, the patient is still jogging.

Narrator: And how did engineers create

the most outrageous building in all of Las Vegas?

Man: You have to build something that gets attention.

Your building is your billboard.

Narrator: This is the age of the extraordinary...

Man:É\ where else can you swim

from one skyscraper to the other, 300 feet in the air?

Narrator: Where ingenious engineers

have unleashed unchecked creativity...

Woman: Everything in this building

pushes at the boundaries of what's possible.

Narrator: Building structures so outrageous, they defy logic.

Woman: The forces on this thing

look like it should be torn apart.

Narrator: Now their secret's revealed.

Discover the incredible stories of their construction...

Woman: These are extraordinary feats of engineering.

Narrator: To try and understand

how did they build that?

In the last 30 years,

the southeast Asian economic powerhouse of Singapore

has seen its population double,

from three million to nearly six million.

Finding the space to build here normally means building high.

Hayley loren oakes: The problem is,

Singapore is a small island city, half the size of London,

so space is at a premium.

Narrator: When the government decided they wanted to give

this booming population

green space among the high-rises,

engineers had to push the boundaries of what's possible.

The end result was a solution packed with world firsts.

Built on over ten million square feet of land

reclaimed from the sea are two huge biomes,

one, the largest on earth,

engineered to keep visitors and residents cool

in the searing tropical heat.

Outside, a forest of giant super trees would be connected

by a stunning skywalk, creating an Avenue into the future.

Hayley: Engineering doesn't get much more remarkable

than gardens by the bay.

Narrator: For the team that took it on,

transforming a soggy patch of sand

into an extraordinary state-of-the-art garden park

would be the challenge of a lifetime.

So, how did they build it?

♪

In 2007, work started on a huge new park

for Singapore's residents.

With over 80 percent of the population

living in high-rise towers, it was desperately needed.

Debbie sterling: Cities need green spaces.

@greenery absorbs carbon dioxide, it makes oxygen,

and it just makes a city

a more pleasurable place to live.

Narrator: Working out where to build

on this tiny tropical island

was the first challenge that faced engineers.

Corina kwami: You might well wonder how they found

an extra 100 hectares in such a densely populated city.

Well, they actually made it from scratch.

Narrator: Today, Singapore is an island of 277 square miles,

but a huge amount of the island's coast...

The marinas, the airport, the industrial shipping ports...

Are actually built on land

that has been created by the government.

For the last 200 years,

Singapore has grown by reclaiming land from the sea.

But over the last 50 years, this process has accelerated,

with Singapore now 24 percent bigger than nature intended.

It was a 250-acre parcel of this reclaimed land

that meant the city could create a new green space.

The plot was created in the 1980s

by taking vast quantities of sand and rocks

from building sites and seabeds

and piling it up until it was above water level.

The plot was created in the 1980s

by taking vast quantities of sand and rocks

from building sites and seabeds.

Neil Thomas: The issue of reclaimed land

is that you are

effectively bringing in

non-compacted gravel,

non-compacted earth,

and you can't really build onto that,

so what they did was actually pile, put piles, long shafts,

beneath each of the foundations

for the building structures they built,

and they would extend down to the rock,

to the base below the compacted earth.

Narrator: These concrete and steel columns

firmly anchored to the bedrock

would be the key to supporting the two glasshouse structures.

Now the architects and engineers could finalize

the designs for building the park.

It would be a project packed with innovation.

Dominating the site would be the two huge biomes, or glasshouses,

one with the largest unsupported glass roof in the world.

Both would use self-supporting latticework design

with arcing beams to create the huge spans of glass

covering the 215,000 square feet of climate-controlled gardens.

Outside, there would be a forest of man-made trees,

which would range from 80 to 160 feet in height.

18 super trees of concrete, steel, and plant life

would be linked by an aerial skywalk

towering over the groves below.

♪

The outdoor park would be planted with tropical species,

which would thrive in the hot local climate,

but the ambition for the two biomes

was to house species from cooler faraway lands.

In Singapore,

with its typical daily high of almost 90 degrees fahrenheit,

that was a huge challenge.

Glasshouses in cool climates work by using the glass

to trap solar energy to heat up.

This way, plants from much warmer climates can grow.

Singapore's two biomes had to do something much more difficult.

They had to somehow let in lots of light

but also stay very cool.

Both needed to be around 77 degrees fahrenheit,

but the huge flower dome,

with its plants from dry mediterranean

spring climate of 2,500 miles north,

also needed to be very bright.

With Singapore's humid, cloudy weather,

the need for maximum light was the first problem

the biome designers had to solve.

Neil: During the day, there's quite often a lot of cloud.

The sunlight, it's not constant throughout the day,

and it's not as much as the plants need to be able to grow,

so we had to get every single ounce of sunlight we could

into the conservatories themselves.

Narrator: With daylight so crucial to the plants,

the designers had to overcome the problem

of how to support the huge roof spans without creating shade.

Ellie cosgrave: Most buildings need columns to stand up,

it's how the load gets to the ground,

but there is another way.

Narrator: The solution to maximizing the light

was to create a delicate curved framework

to hold the 3,332 glass panels.

Incredibly, this grid shell is self-supporting.

It achieves this by mimicking an engineering design

perfected by birds and reptiles.

Neil: A technique in engineering,

an idea of using form and shape

to provide the strength to the way a structure works,

and you see it in nature all the time.

An egg, for instance,

is a perfect example of shape stiffness.

The shell of the egg is that, a shell,

and it's a three-dimensional surface,

and it's very, very thin, but yet very, very strong.

And that strength is created

because of the form of it, the shape of it,

and so we translate that idea into buildings.

Narrator: By replicating the thin, strong,

arcing structure of an eggshell,

gravitational loads are evenly distributed down to the ground,

where it's fixed.

The idea was that a thin structure with no columns

would allow in maximum light and self-support.

But the huge size and the lack of supporting columns

became disadvantages when it came to actually building it.

Paul baker: Because we're creating this very large volume,

there's a complexity in how the hell do you support it

when you're gradually building it in stages,

and obviously it all needs to be supported

until it is the complete entity.

A grid shell doesn't work until it's complete.

Narrator: Engineers needed to work at heights of over 160 feet

to assemble the roof structure,

but a traditional scaffolding platform

would have been complex and expensive,

so instead, they came up

with a simple but ingenious solution.

Paul: So they built a series of working platforms

at substantial heights, so the lower, flatter,

the mediterranean biomes around about 35 meters to the top,

so building something as a working deck

which was 25 meters,

and then doing a regular scaffold on top,

allowed a massive saving.

Narrator: As the structure was completed,

the grid shell should have been strong enough

to support the glass by itself,

but there was a potential problem.

Debbie: Structures by the sea need to be especially strong.

I mean, think about it, with all of the rain that can come in,

and wind and storms, they need to withstand all of that.

Narrator: Winds of over 60 miles per hour

have been known to hit Singapore,

so extra strength was needed

to protect the fragile grid shell domes

of the gardens by the bay.

The answer was to crane in 28 radiating steel arches,

which would stretch over the roofs.

These arches were then bolted together,

connected at their bases to a concrete ring beam,

which itself was anchored to the deep piles

driven down through the reclaimed land.

Then, they were bolted to the latticework frame.

The domes could now absorb any high wind pressures

and avoid a catastrophic structural failure.

Now it was ready for the glass.

Neil: In the conservatories, we have the arched ribs

which provide the resistance to forces which are sideways,

which shells are not particularly good at resisting,

so there we've got two things combined, the shell stiffness,

the shape, and the arch ribs,

which are very stiff horizontally.

Narrator: The success of the two grid shells is clear,

with over 100,000 healthy plants thriving inside.

As well as plenty of light,

they need a maximum daytime air temperature of 77 degrees,

going down to 62 at night.

But with the Singaporean sun burning down at midday,

these glasshouses would naturally heat up

to well over 100 degrees.

How have the engineers prevented this from happening?

Paul: Greenhouses like to get hot.

I mean, that's the bottom line,

you know, glass is a great holder of heat,

and the solar gain is trapped,

and it's a really great thing in a cool climate,

but in a hot climate when you're trying to make something cool

is obviously a big challenge.

Narrator: The first line of defence

was installing spectrally selective solar glass.

This deflects 35 percent of the sun's heat,

but on its own, it wouldn't be enough.

Additional shade comes from bespoke blinds

that roll out when the sun is shining,

again engineered to minimize impact when not in use.

Paul: The shading is tucked within the ribs

and furls right back in, like a roller reef sail,

folds right back into the ribs so it can disappear.

Again, for the very strong principle

that on a semi-cloudy day,

you need as much light as possible.

Narrator: Despite greatly reducing

the solar heat coming in,

the biomes would still get hot enough to kill the plants

in a matter of days.

The solution was building in

an underfloor network of cooling pipes.

Andy kwek: This is something that we have learned

from the northern hemisphere,

so in the northern hemisphere,

@they actually do ground heating.

We just reverse the entire process and cool the slabs.

Narrator: To ensure the cooling system

is as energy-efficient as possible,

biomass boilers burn organic waste from here

and from gardens and parks across Singapore.

This helps generate the electricity to chill the water.

Corina: It's extraordinary that the whole gardens by the bay

only uses as much energy as a Singaporean office building.

Narrator: With the structure completed,

the next engineering challenge

was building a ten-story mountain inside

and working out how to build

the 115-foot structure out of concrete,

all while making sure

its sensitive plants survive and thrive.

Andy: So, for the mountain in the cloud forest,

it is actually made out of,

it's a typical concrete wall structure,

so, first of all, we have the concrete,

and then we have a material called hypertufa.

Hypertufa is basically a mixture of cement and soil

to give it kind of like an organic material

that will help.

Narrator: Clever engineering helped these biomes

imitate the natural world of hundreds of miles from here.

But outside, the designers took inspiration

from the jungles that once grew here in Singapore.

They created an extraordinary alien forest.

Ellie: Super trees.

They're exactly as advertised.

Basically like trees, on steroids.

Man-made, 16 stories high.

Neil: We were never trying to replicate a tree.

We were trying to create a kind of modern 21st-century version,

an idealization of what a tree is,

in terms of using structures of steel and cables,

but working in the way that nature does so,

by being flexible and changing

and, you know, the way it supports nature.

Joshua macabuag: These super trees aren't

just steel and concrete.

They've got plants growing on them, living on them.

Somehow, the designers have managed to incorporate

a web of exotic plants into this man-made structure.

All of these plants are incredibly heavy,

so it's a fantastic piece of engineering.

Narrator: Rising between 80 and 160 feet into the sky,

nothing like these huge super trees

had ever been built before.

With huge trunks and complex canopies,

the engineers had to work out how to build them from scratch.

Neil: So, what we tried to do

was find a construction method which was repeatable.

We build the cores, casting each of the pieces up,

one on top of the other,

effectively using the same shuttering

as you do in standard construction techniques,

and once we've built the concrete core,

we then build the canopy on the ground.

Narrator: To design the steel tree canopies,

Neil drew on his experience

building lightweight but strong staging

for the world's biggest music acts,

such as U2 and beyonceé.

Neil: What's interesting about the world of rock and roll

and staging is they are willing to develop ideas, look at ideas,

which the other part of the building industry would not.

Narrator: That fresh rock-and-roll approach

helped the team create a canopy that was light, flexible,

and easy to install.

Neil: We built a scaffolding system,

built the surface up around it, and then we lift

the whole of the surface of the super tree canopy skin

up to the top of the concrete core in one piece.

Narrator: These incredible trees aren't just for looks.

Some contain photovoltaic cells to generate power.

Others act as chimneys for the biomass boiler exhaust fumes.

And they all help solve another problem

caused by Singapore's land shortage.

Andy: One of the main functions of the super trees

is actually to allow us to showcase our vertical greenery.

So, a lot of people know Singapore is land scarce,

so the only way for us to continue greening the country

is actually to go vertically.

Narrator: The trees, holding 150,000 plants,

and the whole incredible forest

is completed by the 420-foot skywalk,

threading its way through the canopy,

high above the ground.

Hayley: The whole thing is built on land that was once the sea,

it's got one-of-a-kind structures on it,

and it's all powered by offcuts of trees.

Pretty impressive, really.

Narrator: It took five years for engineers to transform

what was once under the sea

into perhaps the world's most stunning man-made wonderland,

the ultimate in human nature.

♪

It's always tough building in the centre of a busy city,

but imagine modernizing

a crumbling old mainline railway station in the middle of London

while a million people a week continue using it.

That's exactly the engineering challenge

that faced the team tasked with reinventing

one of the oldest railway stations in the world...

London bridge,

which, by the start of the 21st century,

was also one of the worst.

And hopelessly unable to cope

with the demands of a modern city,

something had to be done.

Corina: This wasn't just aúgentle reworking of the station.

This was a complete rebuild.

Narrator: The solution was a bold scheme

to sweep away history

and demolish hundreds of victorian arches,

creating a stunning modern concourse

that connects everything like never before.

Up above, the tracks would be moved and raised

with 15 new platforms built, all on polystyrene.

Man: This is like open-heart surgery.

The only problem is, the patient is still jogging.

Narrator: 50 million people a year,

over 800 trains a day,

and one ambitious transformational plan.

So, how did they build it?

Ever since London bridge station opened

with its two platforms in 1836,

it struggled to keep up with demand.

As London grew, so did the station,

but there was never a coherent plan.

Adrian tooth: London bridge station

is 180 years old in places.

It was built in ten stages over a long period,

which means that every little piece of that,

every little stage is slightly different.

Narrator: By 2008, London bridge was very much the poor relation

to London's other major stations.

@hayley: It used to be impossible to find your way around.

So easy to get lost in a real mess.

Man: Very muddled, very old kind of hotchpotch

of different styles.

It really wasn't something like St. pancras.

It wasn't built with one grand vision,

so it was a very kind of down-at-heel station.

Narrator: With plans for britain's tallest building

given the go-ahead, London bridge station

was about to find itself next to the shard.

With another four million square feet of office space,

adding to the explosion of skyscrapers

going up nearby in London's financial district,

the station had to be able to cope with more trains

and a lot more people.

The problem was, the site couldn't get any bigger.

Mark middleton: Well, the ambition, first and foremost,

was to get more capacity, úmore trains through the station

through the existing viaduct width,

because, of course, London's been built up

since the station was made, so we had no more width.

We had to get more trains through.

Narrator: All of London bridge station

is elevated above street level.

Its 15 sets of tracks and platforms fan out

on top of a massive brick viaduct,

50 feet high and around 650 feet wide.

Back in 2009, hidden beneath this viaduct

was a massive Warren of victorian arches

which supported the tracks above.

Most were little used and would make way

for a huge new concourse.

This was construction phase one

and would provide the much-needed easy access

to all the station's platforms above.

Janey bell: If you think of the concourse,

we had a full section of victorian arches,

and essentially what we did was just cut a slice

out of the middle of that, and we did that bit by bit.

Narrator: Extraordinarily, the demolition all happened

right underneath the working station.

The network of arches

underneath the nine platforms and 15 railway lines

were all interlinked and relied on each other for support.

A 250-foot-wide swath of these needed to be demolished

to make way for the new concourse.

But first, to stop the arches on either side

of the demolition area from collapsing,

two huge concrete retaining walls would be built.

With this in place, they would be able to bulldoze

a 600-foot-long corridor through the arches

and create a new space twice the size of a football field.

This would become the all-new street-level concourse.

Then huge new concrete columns would be built to support

new platforms and tracks that would sit on top.

These columns would need to support

tens of thousands of tons of platforms, trains, and people,

so they needed to be very strong and built to last.

The construction team was managed by Adrian tooth.

Adrian: To support the amount of weight

that comes down those columns,

we have to drill what's called piles into the ground.

Narrator: Inserting piles into the strong bedrock below

for added strength wouldn't normally be a problem,

but here, running right under the site,

is the London underground.

Janey: Some of our piles that we had,

our 50-, 60-meter piles right down into the ground

to build our concrete columns,

were really, really close to the jubilee line,

so what we had to do is, while we were piling,

we had monitors on the tracks at the jubilee line

so if the tracks started moving,

we really knew we were in trouble.

Narrator: With the new build

of the London bridge concourse well under way,

the engineers now needed to figure out

how to re-lay the train tracks that ran over it

while 200,000 people a day continued to use the station.

On top of that, with a predicted rise in passenger numbers

driven by London's booming economy,

the rail networks wanted more trains to run through,

across London, and fewer trains to terminate here.

The existing track layout needed a complete rethink.

Adrian: When we inherited the station,

there were 15 platforms,

so with nine terminating and six through.

But to realize thameslink, we had to change that

to six terminating and nine through,

and that meant that every track in the station

had to change position.

Narrator: In order to achieve this switch around,

the tracks all needed to be the same height,

but they weren't.

The terminating lines were eight feet lower

than the lines with trains that continued on through,

so they needed to be raised,

but a big chunk of the track would still be held up

by the 180-year-old victorian brick arches,

and these wouldn't take the weight

of the concrete needed to raise the tracks.

Adrian: So, when we assessed the capacity of the existing arches,

they could only take a relatively low load,

so if we then needed to increase it

by, say, two and a half meters,

if we had done that in something like concrete,

you're adding a massive amount of weight

to the top of those arches,

so they weren't capable of taking that,

so we had to find a new way of doing it.

Narrator: They would also need to carry the weight

of the new platforms.

Joshua: They needed some kind of structural filler,

something lightweight that could take the compressive load.

Narrator: The substance they turned to

was surprisingly simple and very common.

Ellie: They used this.

Not a coffee cup,

but the material it's made out of, polystyrene.

The surprising thing about polystyrene is,

although it's incredibly light,

it's also incredibly effective when it's pushed down.

Janey: We built a foundation, and then we put polystyrene

wrapped in a plastic wrapping that has 120-year design life,

and then we built concrete around it

that gave us a structure for us to get the tracks up

to the level they needed to be,

but it also was light enough

so that it could sit on the arches below.

So, these are the kind of innovative solutions

that we had to come up with,

you know, working on a station like this,

where you have very, very old infrastructure

next to very, very new.

Adrian: The polystyrene itself

is actually carrying a concrete slab.

It's then carrying the platforms,

and it's also carrying the weight of the trains.

Narrator: Achieving all this

and keeping the station open and safe

meant taking it one step at a time.

Janey: The complexity in undertaking demolition,

building new platforms, canopies

while you've got trains running in and out is huge.

What we did at the beginning

was we took two platforms out of use.

We would put the hoarding up, set up our work site.

We would demolish those platforms and tracks

and the arches beneath them and then build up.

Narrator: The new design and layout

called for 20,000 feet of roof to snake over the new platforms.

But the constraints of the site

gave rise to yet another problem.

Ellie: How do you build a new platform

and a platform roof on-site when you have no space to do it?

Narrator: The answer is, you don't.

Janey: Various elements of the station build

were prefabricated off-site.

For example, some of the platform units

and also the canopies were fabricated elsewhere

and then brought into site, so the advantage that gave us

was that it meant less on-site construction

where we had limited space.

Narrator: The platform canopies came in ten-foot-long modules,

and they were put together like ready-to-assemble furniture.

Adrian: They came with all of the containment

that carries the wiring within them.

It came with cameras, speakers already set within them.

All the lights were set within them,

so it was just a process of putting one next to the other,

filling in the gap between,

and then wiring it all together, so very quick.

Narrator: In just weeks, each pair of tracks was raised,

the platforms built, and the canopy completed.

It required the different teams on-site

to operate like clockwork.

Ellie: You don't just have a designer making the design

and handing it over to the contractor

to build it however they want.

They're thinking about the building process

as part of the design.

This is architecture meets engineering

meets project management.

Narrator: The teams also worked to ensure

the historic victorian features of the London bridge station

were celebrated alongside all the modern engineering,

like the 150-year-old columns,

each supporting four connecting arches and the platforms above.

Many of these survived to become part

of the new London bridge experience.

Where they couldn't be kept,

they were mirrored in modern materials,

but clearly defining the new from the old.

Adrian: From an architectural provision perspective,

it was important to repeat the historical importance

of the original arches,

so if you walk through that area,

you'll see the original brickwork arches

and then the new interpretation in board-marked concrete.

Narrator: Thanks to the skill of designers, engineers,

builders, and the rail company,

the London bridge station modernization

finished on time in 2017.

Mark: This project was an amazing endeavour.

Across all of the different disciplines,

there was about 1,600 people worked on the project.

In terms of numbers, I think there's 24 kilometres

of platform edge that we put in.

Janey: We now have ten times as much space as we did originally,

so the journey that this station has come on is huge,

and it's one that it's been great to be a part of.

Narrator: From being unable to keep up

with even yesterday's demands,

London bridge has been readied for tomorrow,

while retaining the best of its victorian character.

It took eight years to reinvent this station

as a shining beacon of railway efficiency,

the ambition and achievement recognized

with the prestigious award, building of the year 2019.

In the beating heart of London,

modern engineering and ingenious design

have succeeded in creating a stunning station,

fit to serve the city's travellers for another 100 years.

♪

Las Vegas, Nevada,

where a gambler can take a quick tour

of some of the world's most iconic structures

before deciding to splash the cash.

Nehemiah mabry: Every building is more extreme than the last,

and it makes sense

because this is Las Vegas.

I mean, you have to build

something that gets attention.

And your building is your billboard.

Narrator: Copies of famous landmarks

might get you noticed on Vegas' main strip,

but how do you make a big impression

if your building plot is on the outskirts of town?

Hayley: To get noticed in Vegas,

they had to build something impossible.

Narrator: But this was no casino.

Here, a man was inspired

to build a hospital so extraordinary,

it could also be a fundraising event space.

Larry ruvo: I said to my wife, Camille,

"if we're gonna do this, we gotta make a statement."

Narrator: The result was a building almost as complex

as the organ that inspired it.

Ellie: There are two halves of this building,

just like the human brain.

The left side is ordered and logical,

and the right side is wild and creative.

Narrator: This is the Lou ruvo centre for brain health,

designed in California, engineered in Europe,

fabricated in Asia,

and built on two acres of Nevada desert.

It's the showstopping outcome

of 65,000 hours of engineering effort,

$80 million,

and nearly 900 tons of steel.

It doesn't look possible.

So, how did they build it?

The building is the brainchild

of American entrepreneur Larry ruvo, driven to create it

after experiencing the moment his father, Lou,

was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Larry: I just said, "I would never want anybody

@to go through this humiliating, lack-of-dignity experience

that I just went through.

If I could ever do anything, I would change that."

Narrator: Larry decided to build a new hospital

for degenerative brain disorders.

As well as being ideal for treatment and research,

he also wanted it to be so visually extraordinary

that people would want to hire it for events.

To design it, Larry turned

to one of the world's greatest architects... frank gehry.

Aged 81 at the time,

gehry was very much at the top of his game,

as one of his projects, the guggenheim museum in Bilbao,

had recently proved.

Larry: The initial day he was here on this site,

I told him what I wanted,

he took out a yellow piece of paper,

and he drew it, and that's what I got.

Narrator: A sketch was one thing,

but gehry already knew this building

would be his most complex to date,

so complicated, in fact,

that only the world's most expert engineers

would be able to pull it off.

Larry: Frank said to me, "so, what would you say

that if I told you this building,

a building like this has never been attempted before?"

It will be engineered in Israel and India and Germany.

And then it's gonna be sent through the Internet,

the design, to China,

and then we're gonna ship it over here

in 555 pieces, no two alike.

Narrator: Budgeted to cost $80 million to build,

the structure appears bent and twisted,

as though it's collapsing in on itself.

At one end, the extraordinary facçade

gives way to reveal

a much more conventional building underneath.

Dylan wint: Looking at the building overall,

if you sort of divide it into two parts,

the part with the sort of metal cladding,

very chaotic and disorganized-looking,

that's our events centre.

The side where the medical care actually takes place

is actually quite orderly.

Narrator: The clinic building is actually

a conventional four-story white block structure,

partially hidden behind the curving steel facçade.

But the south wing had an altogether different purpose

and so needed a different approach.

Larry: When we started out on the design of the building,

I told frank, most hospitals, most clinics,

when they close at night, what happens?

The janitors come in.

Instead of janitors, I want ambassadors to come in.

People will rent this building for weddings and events,

and, you know, we live in Las Vegas.

We could rent that out,

use this as a revenue source to fund our research.

So, somebody can come in here and rent this space

and feel good that they're helping a charity,

and it's beautiful.

Narrator: Gehry's vision for a must-see event space

was a structure that was as jaw-dropping on the inside

as it was on the outside.

The challenge for the engineers was to figure out

how to build it with as few columns

and straight walls as possible.

Oussama beyhoum: As you see, there's a huge structure

without any support in the centre,

and the way it's manufactured in pieces,

each piece, like, it varies

from 2,000 pound to 10,000 pound, each piece,

and are made of steel fabricated off of huge pieces,

like from the size of a couch

or the size of a, of a car almost.

Narrator: The huge sections were heavy

because the steel needed to be strong enough

to compensate for the lack of internal supporting columns.

Hayley: The amazing thing

is that the curved panels on the building

actually provide a lot of the structural support.

Narrator: To achieve this,

the panels needed to be very tightly bolted together,

so engineers perfected a new way of connecting the frames.

Oussama: It was design of friction.

The plates have to be tight against each other

without air gaps, and that's what,

that's the reason why to have so many bolts in each pieces.

Narrator: But the construction team's problems

were far from over.

The people required to create

these unique components were so rare,

they were dotted around the globe.

Dimensions were being calculated in Israel and India,

then the parts being made in China.

The builders on-site needed to be sure

they were bolting it together in the right way.

Joshua: Just try and think about the level of precision

that a project like this would need.

If anything was wrong, they'd have to dismantle

the whole facçade and put it back together again,

so the sequencing, the fabrication,

and the construction were really key to making this work.

Narrator: The answer was to bar code each piece of steel.

Once the steel was on-site and was offered for assembly,

the individual bar codes would be scanned and transmitted

to the main engineering team in Germany,

who would cross-check

to make sure the right pieces were being joined.

Ellie: This system meant that every piece could be checked

before it was slotted into place.

Oussama: 1/16 of an inch or 1/4 off the other side,

it would be disaster.

It had to be perfect.

Narrator: Having worked out

how to build the complicated steel frame,

the engineers turned their attention to the facçade.

Once again, architect frank gehry had a vision.

Larry: Frank said to me, "since you're in the desert,

I want the immediate impact. I'm gonna use stainless steel."

Narrator: But 1,800 curved stainless steel tiles

on a building in a desert

where the sun burns hot for 3,800 hours every year

wasn't without issues.

Hayley: Stainless steel is super reflective.

There's a risk that you'll get blinding light

firing out in all directions, which is not what you want

when your building's sitting on a major road junction.

Narrator: The solution was a special angel-hair finish

applied to steel,

micro scratches brushed into the metal

with a stainless steel wire brush

to help diffuse the light.

Oussama: That's what makes the, absorbed the sun

instead of reflecting it as much,

so it doesn't really shine in people's eyes.

Narrator: With passers-by protected,

the team turned its attention to making sure

the light on the inside was also just right.

Dr. Wint is in charge of patient care at the hospital.

Dylan: The natural lighting, I think, is really important.

It gives less of an industrial feel,

and often that's important for some of our patients

who don't realize they're ill.

Narrator: Engineers installed 199 windows,

allowing a lot of natural light

into the hospital and event space,

but you can have too much of a good thing.

Nehemiah: Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert,

so you're talking about some pretty high temperatures

that can go as high as 40 degrees celsius,

or 104 degrees fahrenheit.

Narrator: To protect occupants from too much heat and light,

every window has blinds installed,

each tailored and controlled by a central management system

that's linked to monitors in the thermally reflective glass.

It's this adaptability to harsh conditions outside

and its sensitivity to those inside

that helps make this building so outstanding.

It is truly the best place for those most in need

of a superbly engineered health centre.

Deeann: It is very unique and different,

and beautiful building,

@and somehow, in a different way, very peaceful.

Narrator: The Lou ruvo centre took three years to complete

and was the most complicated of frank gehry's designs yet.

Larry: This building was exactly what I wanted it to be.

It gave us the credibility.

People knew we were serious.

You want to build a frank gehry building for a disease,

they know you're serious.

Dylan: We built a building that you just cannot miss.

You have to talk about this building when you pass by it,

and hopefully people will also talk

about what's going on inside,

so I think, for sure, that part of the idea

behind this building and its very unusual looks

was to say, "we are here.

This disease is here. We're fighting it."

Nehemiah: I love the fact that something that is housing

work that's so important

is also housed in a building

that looks amazing, as well.

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