Original subtitles

[music]

[Jay] How do you create a manmade cave

inside of one of America's national treasures?

[Michelle] We looked at I think every way you could imagine

trying to build this.

[Jay] How do you construct a sleek, space age arts center

topped by an 880-foot-long swooping roof?

Fluid and curved buildings always mean one thing--trouble.

[Jay] And how do you build

a fossil fuel-free university building

from a teetering tower of blocks?

[Nathan] You'd hear the bolts slip, the steel move.

So that was a little unnerving.

[music]

[Jay] This is the age of the extraordinary.

[Dr. Agbedor] It's totally different

from anything around it.

It's like a visitor from another planet.

[Jay] Where ingenious engineers have unleashed

unchecked creativity.

Now their secrets are revealed

as we discover the amazing stories of their construction.

[Mat] You look at this building,

and your brain just screams at you,

"This building does not make sense."

[Jay] To try and understand...

... How Did They Build That?

In a city short on space like New York,

most buildings reach for the sky.

But one mold-breaking exception

is an addition to a historic landmark

that was designed from the inside out

and is not so much a building as a column-less cave fantasy

cast in granite and shot concrete--

which, trust me,

is way more beautiful to look at

than it sounds. Check this out.

[music]

[Jay] This is the Richard Gilder Center

for Science, Education, and Innovation.

Containing galleries, public spaces,

and even a butterfly house,

the brand-new addition

to the American Museum of Natural History

looks like it's been carved out of solid rock.

There's not a single straight line in this building.

[Jay] But despite looking stone age,

it's on the cutting edge.

This project had the highest level of complexity

out of any job I've ever done.

[Jay] And used construction methods

never seen before on a project like this.

So...how did they build it?

It's 2014, and the Natural History Museum

is one of the most popular attractions in Manhattan.

[Sean] This is a place that, you know,

has about 4.5 million visitors a year.

It's been a backdrop in, uh, you know,

in film and television.

Uh, certainly many people will remember the museum from

the Night at the Museum movies.

[Jay] The sprawling museum complex

has been growing over the last 150 years.

Now it's time for a revolutionary addition.

[Sean] We're looking for something

that could provide classroom space,

as well as research space and exhibition space,

all within the same building.

[Jay] They launch a competition to design the new wing.

It's won by architects Studio Gang.

I totally love natural history, and it inspires my work.

How can we design something that will encourage

that kind of curiosity?

[Jay] The team turns to nature for inspiration,

taking field trips to visit natural wonders.

Caves, and canyons, and all those kinds of landscapes

really make you excited about exploring,

and they're also formed and shaped by flow.

So that's kind of where the design headed.

[Jay] The daring idea is to create

a six-story sculpted cavern

that will connect with the existing buildings.

It wins over the museum.

Now they have to build it.

First, they'll need to prepare the site

and figure out how to fit the foundations

around its existing utilities.

Then, they will have to come up with a way

to support the complex structure while it's being built

and devise a way to sculpt the building's organic form,

including creating an 80-foot-tall

manmade canyon at its heart.

Finally, they will need a finishing material

that's both beautiful enough

to reflect the natural rock formations

that inspired the building

and strong enough to support the hundreds of tons

of solid granite cladding without collapsing.

In June 2019, they're ready to break ground

on the edge of Central Park.

The park is at street level.

And we have to dig down about 40 feet, give or take,

uh, to start putting in footings in the foundation wall.

[Jay] Usually footings, or piles,

are sunk at regular intervals

so they spread the building's weight evenly.

Here, that won't be possible,

because the museum's vital gas, electricity, and water supplies

run straight through the site.

[Michelle] That created this kind of area

where we could not put down structure.

Normally it would just be a simple affair

of, like, bringing down a grid structure to the ground.

But we couldn't do that.

We only had one column here, and one column there,

and one column there.

It didn't make any sense.

[Jay] But if they want this extraordinary new building

to stay standing up,

making sense of it is exactly what they need to do.

There were very specific locations on the site

where we could actually touch down

and put our structure.

And then we just designed everything above

to make the forces transfer through this canyon

in a way that made sense structurally.

[Jay] Now they're ready to start building upwards.

They start by pouring

conventional concrete floor slabs,

which are supported by columns

around the outside of the building.

Then, to create the walls,

they use a type of steel called reinforcing bar, or rebar.

It's an ordinary building material.

But the way they use it will be extraordinary.

Rebar is usually just a simple grid of steel,

and then you pour the concrete around it.

Here, though, they have to sculpt with it.

We had this three-dimensional form,

where the rebar needed to follow that shape

in order to create the geometry of the canyon.

That really was one of the big challenges of the project.

[Jay] To create the cave-like interior walls,

they first model the design in 3D

before bending each individual piece of rebar

precisely into shape.

Luckily for the exterior façade,

they can prefabricate big sections of rebar.

But when it arrives on site,

the team has the challenge of putting

the three-dimensional puzzle together.

The rebar cages were brought in from--in panels.

And they each had a piece number.

And they will be put into place

and married with the superstructure of concrete.

[Jay] To make life more complicated,

this manmade cavern can't support its own weight

until the building is complete.

The solution is a specially designed

temporary support system

built from steel beams and pillars.

It was a very unique-showing design

that I had never come across,

both in my professional and academic career.

[Jay] Pulling it off requires a lot of muscle.

[Noori] They just had an army of guys going in,

putting in the rebar,

and then pouring the cast-in-place concrete slabs,

and then moving on to the next floor.

[Jay] After nine months,

the super structure and the rebar are in position,

and it's time for the biggest challenge yet.

[Jay] Working out how to give the walls a cave-like finish.

[Michelle] We looked at precast, at block, at glass block,

at traditional cast-in-place concrete.

We looked at...I think every way you could imagine,

trying to build-- trying to build this.

[music]

[music]

[Jay] In New York,

the extraordinary cave-like design

for the new extension of the American Museum

of Natural History

is proving difficult to pull off.

To create its walls,

the team considers using concrete

poured into molds called formwork.

But there's a problem.

[Michelle] Every surface that you see

would have required a bunch of custom forms

for the entire interior of the canyon,

which would have created a lot of waste in the formwork

and a lot of cost,

and didn't really give that more

kind of natural hand finish.

[Jay] The answer lies in an industrial product

called Shotcrete.

Shotcrete is one of the greatest inventions known to man,

at least for people who work in this industry.

It's a method of applying concrete

projected at high velocity,

usually onto vertical or overhead surfaces.

[Jay] Widely used on the New York City subway system,

Jeanne takes her team to investigate.

[Jeanne] And once I saw them applying it,

the way that the teams worked and how skilled they were

at making beautiful vaults

that no one will ever see under the ground,

I thought that this is really a potential solution

for our project.

[Jay] COST of Wisconsin,

one of the world's few experts in decorative Shotcrete,

arrive on site.

They have unique and highly trained artisans

that mostly do architectural concrete

for theme parks and zoos.

[Jay] Here, though, it not only has to look the part,

but be strong enough to hold up the entire building.

So if you have an eight-inch-thick wall,

you might shoot that two or three times

to get that full thickness.

So you're spraying concrete overhead.

You do that in multiple passes to make sure

that you can actually apply that concrete

without it, um, falling back down.

[Noori] We had to tackle each day

one day at a time, one zone at a time,

one level at a time,

to reach to the point where

the building was self-supporting.

[Jay] Each layer of Shotcrete takes 28 days to set.

But at last, they're ready for the final coat--

one and a half inches of white concrete.

We decided to go with this rough pass,

which was--it's very beautiful with the light,

but it's also good for the acoustic qualities inside.

[Jay] Not only does it need to look beautiful

and support the building's floors,

on the outside, it also has to hold up

huge stone panels.

It's the same material that's used

on the opposite side of the museum.

We even used the same stone out of the same quarry.

[Jay] Created off site,

they now need to be craned into position

and secured onto steel fixing pegs

embedded in the Shotcrete.

The Shotcrete wall on the façade had embeds

that received the stone façade.

[Jay] To achieve the seamless look the architects want,

each of the embeds must be in exactly the right spot.

I think there was some anticipation,

um, some anxiety obviously.

[Jay] As the panels are fixed into position...

they line up perfectly.

Inside and out, the Shotcreting is complete.

[Noori] That was a huge milestone for everybody.

We ended up using 3000 cubic yards, approximately,

of both structural and architectural Shotcrete,

which is a massive scale.

[Jay] The engineers can finally remove all the shoring,

and the exhibits can move into their new home.

[music]

[Jay] May 4, 2023, and the Richard Gilder Center

for Science, Education, and Innovation

is revealed to the world.

The overall response to the building has been amazing.

[Man] When I first walked in there and saw it,

I was like, "It's, it's really cool."

[Jay] The curved stone exterior

draws you into the 80-feet-tall concrete canyon

running right through the middle.

[Jeanne] It's the central atrium.

I think it's like giving a public space

back to the museum,

where people can just hang out

and they can talk about what they saw.

[music]

[Jay] Holes in tunnels lead you into exhibition spaces

that connect to the rest of the museum.

[music]

You should totally come to this museum.

It's like a dream come true.

[Jay] It's a breathtaking building

made with groundbreaking methods

that reimagines what a museum can be.

Visitors not only come for the exhibits,

but they come for the structure itself.

This was the highlight of my career for sure.

[music]

This next fantastic and futuristic-looking building

was one of the final projects overseen

by the internationally celebrated architect

Zaha Hadid.

The canopies of the vast roof are totally self-supporting

and were inspired by the wings of migrating birds.

You know, looking at it, it really wouldn't surprise me

if this building could actually fly.

Either way, in design terms,

it definitely reaches spectacular new heights.

Zhuhai City in Jinwan, southern China, is booming.

In just 35 years,

the population has gone from 180,000

to around two million people.

But despite Zhuhai's size,

it was missing a cultural center.

So, they decided to do something about it.

It's like a visitor from another planet.

[Jay] Built in the middle of a reservoir,

under a giant, wing-like canopy,

are four buildings, including a theater and an opera house.

But creating this most wonderful and unexpected of buildings

was far from easy.

Fluid and curved buildings always mean one thing--trouble.

[Jay] This is Zhuhai Jinwan Civic Art Center.

So, how did they build it?

[Jay] It's 2016,

and in Zhuhai, southern China,

legendary architect Zaha Hadid's practice

is signed up to design a new cultural hub for the city.

Hadid previously designed the nearby Guangzhou Opera House.

But this project is on another level.

It will have four interconnected buildings

and be completely surrounded by water.

It's an artificial lake,

and they wanted to have a signature building

in the middle.

[Jay] The boggy, waterlogged site

will be transformed into a beautiful manmade lake.

But, this will be more than a pretty backdrop.

It's part of a solution to a modern city problem.

China's rapid urbanization has meant

too many hard surfaces with not enough drainage.

That means flooding.

[Jay] In 2012, a flood in Beijing

caused huge damage and killed 79 people.

It resulted in the Sponge City Initiative.

Sponge City's a general approach

to how to mitigate flood water.

This whole district is a Sponge City

in the way that they create areas

where water can be stored.

So the lake is part of storing water.

These lakes and green spaces also make the cities

better places to live.

This is a really holistic approach to urban planning.

[Jay] In the middle of this lake

will be one of Zaha Hadid's most ambitious projects--

four cultural buildings

united under a giant flying roof.

To make the bold design a reality,

they will need to find a way to support the structure

on unpromising, damp, and silty soil.

Creating foundations strong enough to handle its weight.

Around the complex, they'll need to figure out how to contain

hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.

Then orchestrate the simultaneous construction

of a theater, opera house, museum, and science center.

Finally, they'll have to find a way to engineer

the enormous roof,

which needs to look lightweight and birdlike,

yet be strong enough to withstand typhoons.

Tragically, at age 65, Hadid dies

before the project gets started.

But the team is determined to honor her.

[speaking Mandarin]

[Jay] Two years later,

Hadid's initial designs have been fleshed out,

and work is ready to begin.

But the waterlogged site is a big problem.

[speaking Mandarin]

[Jay] The boggy ground isn't strong enough

to support the weight of

the one million-square-foot building,

so it'll need to sit on hundreds of steel piles

sunk deep into the ground.

[speaking Mandarin]

A hundred and fifty feet is right at the limit

of how deep these piles can go.

This is about the same depth as the piles

used to support the One World Trade Center

and the Burj Khalifa,

which gives you an idea of how bad the ground is.

[Jay] Digging that deep would be challenging anywhere.

But the ground is so soft here

that sinking the piles is fraught with danger.

[speaking Mandarin]

[Jay] The risk is that the heavy machinery

could sink into the soggy soil, damaging the piles.

It's a tense few months,

but thankfully, the piles survive.

And in 2019, the team is ready to start pouring concrete.

First, they have to create an enormous concrete slab

that contains foundations for all four buildings

and the basement levels.

But that's not the end of the concrete work.

[Mei-Ling] Then, after basement, they will start

pouring the concrete for the floor of the reservoir.

[Jay] The huge base of the reservoir

is leveled with concrete,

and its borders are marked out.

When filled, it will help Zhuhai store and reuse

70% of its rainwater.

Before that, the team needs to build

the center's superstructure.

[Lydia] So we have four buildings.

One is the museum. One is the arts center.

Then the black box theater and the opera building.

[Jay] The four buildings are all made

out of reinforced concrete.

And all four are built simultaneously

by huge teams on the ground.

Chinese construction starts before

you actually have dropped a pen.

You have so much manpower.

So it's incredible what they can do,

actually, in a short time.

[Jay] As the buildings go up,

they're linked by a series of bridges and walkways.

Each of the lobbies are facing the inside plaza space.

And that connects the four buildings actually together.

[Jay] The construction crews make sure work of the structure.

But the next stage threatens to slow the pace.

Zaha Hadid designs are famous for how complex they are.

They create curves that flow out of

the most unlikely materials.

[Jay] Here, they've chosen concrete panels,

but there's a problem.

If they make them out of standard concrete,

each piece will be very heavy, limiting the panel's size.

The biggest size maybe is 1.5 by 2 meter.

[Jay] Covering the building in small panels will take too long.

So the team turns to a wonder material--

UHPC, or Ultra High Performance Concrete,

which is 10 times stronger than the regular stuff.

Ultra high performance concrete is so strong

because at the molecular level,

there's minimal gaps between the particles.

It's got an incredibly dense microstructure.

[Jay] It's so strong, that they can prefabricate

large 13-square-foot lightweight panels.

And that means they can cover the building quickly.

The installation of 4 by 4 meters panel

is much faster.

The speed of construction, it's, uh, double.

[Jay] Over the next year,

the distinctive Zaha Hadid style begins to emerge

as the buildings grow and are covered.

But now the team faces an even more daunting challenge--

bringing to life Zaha Hadid's 880-foot-long canopy roof,

which will sit over the entire center.

We want really the roof to feel like it's flying,

because there's a lot of water areas in Zhuhai.

It's always this migrating-- this flock of birds.

And when we started looking at how can we make

a very light roof structure,

some of these shapes resembled this flock of birds.

[Jay] This ambitious idea ruffles feathers

among the engineers.

[speaking Mandarin]

How do you build a roof that looks like it's flying,

but is actually firmly rooted in place?

[music]

[Jay] In the city of Zhuhai, China,

architects have designed a beautiful

880-foot-long roof for a new arts center

that looks like a bird in flight.

Now the team needs to find a way to support it

with as few columns as possible.

This was really a collaboration with the engineers.

What can we actually do there?

And what's gonna hold it up?

And what can we accept how it looks in the inside?

[Jay] The solution they come up with

is something called tree columns.

[Corina] You have one vertical column

that joins together a number of supports at the top,

like branches.

It's very strong and doesn't take up much room on the ground.

[Jay] This ingenious solution

means they can support the entire roof

on 22 of these tree columns.

But to achieve the Zaha Hadid look,

they will all need to be clad in aluminum.

[Mei-Ling] The most difficult part of the project

is to manage the cladding of the tree columns

because there are a lot of doubly curved geometry.

[Jay] To reduce the risk of problems on site

and avoid slowing down the build,

they create and test assemble the aluminum cladding

in a factory.

It goes without a hitch.

The final challenge is to design and build the roof itself.

The architects want it to look lightweight and elegant,

but it needs to be strong too,

because this part of China is prone to typhoons,

which can cause winds of over 150 miles per hour.

The solution starts with a clever frame

known as a grid shell.

[Lydia] The grid shell allows you to

only use the thick members where you need them

and minimize where you don't need them.

[Jay] Its latticed shape makes it super strong,

yet delicate-looking.

Now they need to fill in the gaps.

Glass could shatter during typhoons.

The team needs to think outside the box.

They decide on specially made aluminum panels

that are perforated with tiny holes.

These allow the wind to blow through the roof,

reducing the pressure on the surface.

But that's not their only benefit.

[Mei-Ling] The perforation is across the whole roof

to create a transparent look.

[Jay] As well as letting in light,

the panels also offer much needed shade in the summer.

The roof plays a big role in keeping the sun out,

keeping shading,

keeping natural ventilation going

in between the buildings.

[Jay] It takes 12,500 of them to cover the whole structure.

The roof is also designed to harvest rainwater

through drain pipes hidden in the columns.

[Mei-Ling] There is a big ton in the basement.

The water will be then recycled for irrigation.

[Jay] While work is happening on the roof,

the team constructs the inside spaces.

All that is left is to clear the site

and allow the reservoir to fill.

[music]

[Jay] It's November 2023,

and the Zhuhai Jinwan Civic Center is complete,

its wings unfurled like a giant bird.

Zaha Hadid's designs are always incredible to look at.

This one's a showstopper.

[Lydia] Just think about the span,

how long this roof is.

I think that's, that's kind of incredible.

[Jay] It's made even more impressive

by how quickly they turned it around.

Normally we would build 10,000-square-meter building

in six years.

In China, for the performing arts center,

we have 100,000 square meter.

It was built in three years.

[Jay] Four buildings are joined under this roof,

linked by walkways and open spaces with minimal columns

to interrupt them.

[Lydia] Our indoor space is amazing.

It's one the first things I saw when I went to see the venue.

It's like everyone sits on the steps.

There was an event happening in the middle

with music or something.

And it was completely populated with people.

It was fantastic.

[Jay] The artificial lake is now joined

to the Sponge City Initiative,

helping to reduce flooding across the region

and providing the perfect framing

for the building itself.

Now you see it looks like a flock of birds

floating above the water.

[Lydia] I think it's amazing.

To do a culture building, you don't get a chance so much.

So to actually manage to do this

and I get it built?

It's amazing.

[music]

[music]

Boston University is a place

where all kinds of difficult engineering

and scientific problems are posed and solved every day.

So it's probably no surprise

that when they wanted to build a brand-new center

for computing and data sciences,

the design they chose looked more like

a complex, brain-busting puzzle than a regular campus building.

If the question is, what's the wildest-looking

college building in America,

then here is the answer.

Boston University's Center for Computing and Data Sciences.

This is like someone's playing a giant game of Jenga.

[Jay] A mind-bending structure that changed the city's skyline.

[Frank] We knew this was a one-of-a-kind building

for the city of Boston.

Nothing like it.

[Jay] Its gravity-defying shape created

huge engineering headaches.

How do we solve that problem? How do we do it simply?

Getting this building built was a challenge.

[Jay] It's the city's largest fossil fuel-free building.

It's great for the university. It's great for the city.

And it's great for the environment.

So we were all in.

[Jay] Loved by those it was created for.

Definitely feels very special to be here.

[Jay] So, how did they build it?

It's 2012 in Massachusetts.

With the tech sector booming worldwide,

Boston University's computer science,

and mathematics, and statistics departments

are thriving.

But their buildings are scattered across the campus.

There was no center.

There was no way to easily collaborate.

[Jay] They decide to create a single brand-new building

that will both bring everyone together

and make the university stand out in a crowd.

We are going to have to figure out a way to build a building

that will sort of put computer and data sciences at the center,

as it should be.

It needed to be iconic

because of the statement it makes.

[Jay] Toronto-based architects KPMB

are tasked with fulfilling the brief.

The concept we presented was a vertical canvas

of stacked neighborhoods.

So each neighborhood could be identified as one department.

[Jay] To add to the challenge,

the university wants to be carbon neutral by 2040.

The architects need to make sure the new computing center

plays its part.

They were asked to do a fossil fuel-free,

carbon neutral building.

That is a bold, bold request.

[Jay] It's a tough ask.

The way buildings have traditionally been made

means they account for almost 40% of global carbon emissions.

First you've got to build them.

And then loads of energy goes into producing

and transporting the materials you need.

And once built,

they use fossil fuels to cool, heat, and provide power.

[music]

[Jay] This bold Jenga tower of a building

will have to tackle both problems,

starting with finding a way of heating and cooling it

by using the ground underneath.

But it's going to be built on clay,

so they have to find a way of creating

super strong foundations

while using as little concrete as possible,

because making and transporting concrete

produces a lot of CO2.

They then have to work out how to create

the huge overhanging floors

and make sure the 19-story teetering pile of blocks

won't fall down.

Traditional glass isn't good at holding in the heat

in the winter or keeping it out in the summer,

but they need to find a way of creating a glass façade

that does both of those things.

All of this has to happen before the start of the spring semester

in four years' time.

A site is found on a former parking lot.

But before they can begin construction,

there's an important job to do--

laying the groundwork for one of the building's

most unusual features.

The earth has a constant temperature

of around 55 degrees Fahrenheit,

and the big idea is to use this

to heat and cool the new building.

Underneath, they plan to lay a network of pipes.

A ground source heat pump will then circulate water.

In the summer, the heat pump uses

the earth's constant 55 degrees

to bring temperatures in the building down,

in the winter, to heat them up.

But there's 350,000 square feet of building to heat or cool,

which means drilling very deep.

Typically we see geothermal wells in the...

400 to 800-foot range.

These wells were 1500 feet deep.

Going 1500 feet is really a big ask.

At just 200 feet, you're already getting resistance

as you're going through bedrock.

So the whole process is a tough ride.

[Jay] In January 2019, work begins.

There are 31 boreholes to drill,

and they're all very close together.

[Paulo] Our site is very constrained as an urban site,

so there's not a lot of room.

[Jay] Having to drill a lot of very deep holes close together

dramatically increases the risk of something going wrong.

These wells could theoretically collide with each other

as they're being drilled to depth.

[Jay] Each costs around $250,000 to install.

So a mistake could be catastrophic.

As digging progresses,

the team carefully monitors the progress

to make sure the boreholes stay straight.

The deeper you go, the more the borehole

wants to deviate from perfectly vertical.

[Jay] It takes almost a year of painstaking work.

But at last, the drilling is complete.

[John] They did a terrific job controlling the deviation.

It really went remarkably well

considering the amount of footage we've put in the ground.

[Jay] In summer 2020,

they are ready to start work on the foundations

for the 19-story building.

The soil here is going to make that

anything but straightforward.

A sand and clay foundation is a nightmare to build on.

They're not ideal for supporting such heavy loads.

Combating this requires some advanced engineering.

[music]

[Jay] The team building the bold new

Computer and Data Sciences Center for Boston University

needs to find a way to support it

on the unstable sand-and-clay soil.

One option would be to dig down

and build underground supporting walls

resting on the bedrock.

But with the nearest layer of rock

200 feet below the surface,

it would be a huge undertaking,

adding $5 million to the build.

So the team takes a different approach.

We did it with what we call floating the building,

so a raft foundation.

That means digging a big hole

across the entire area of the building

and then filling it in with reinforced concrete.

[Nathan] We're floating the building on the clay

that's below grade.

So that clay is really soft

and it also will slowly compress if you add more weight to it.

So the goal is,

how do we get the clay to not know

there's a building on top of it?

For a raft foundation, success or failure

depends on a very clever trick.

[Nathan] And the way that works is

the amount of soil you take out

should equal the weight of the building.

[Jay] If the team gets the calculation wrong,

the soil underneath could compress,

the building sink, and even collapse.

[Nathan] If you think of it as an analogy,

Indiana Jones, uh, Raiders of the Lost Ark,

where Indy takes that idol, moves it off,

and replaces it with sand of the equivalent weight

so that Belloq doesn't feel the difference.

[Jay] In November 2020,

the hole is dug and ready for the slab to be poured.

But there's another problem.

Making traditional concrete is not very green.

And this building is trying to keep its carbon footprint

as light as possible.

Embodied carbon are the carbon emissions

associated with extracting the materials,

manufacturing the products, delivering the products,

and building the building.

[Jay] Creating the cement that goes into concrete

produces huge amounts of greenhouse gasses.

So the team crafts a concrete recipe

that reduces its carbon footprint by up to 30%.

We added other materials like fly ash and slag

to help reduce the embodied carbon that it takes

to build the building.

[Jay] Now it needs to be laid in one seamless pour.

We started the placement at approximately

4 o'clock in the morning.

[Jay] Fifty-five trucks begin the first of 450 deliveries

to three pumps stationed around the hole.

[Nathan] One pump truck broke. They brought in another.

Another pump truck broke. They brought in another.

[Jay] Thanks to the team's meticulous preparation,

the concrete all goes in according to plan.

We finished it at 10 o'clock at night.

It's 4,500 cubic yards of concrete.

That was a massive undertaking. At the time,

it was the second-largest concrete placement

in the history of the city of Boston.

[Jay] Next, they construct the building's central core.

On its own, this won't be enough to hold up the floors

hanging unsupported in space.

They turn to an engineering trick called the cantilever.

[Corina] A cantilever is an overhang

that's only supported on one side.

To stop it tipping over,

the force is cleverly transferred through the building

and into the foundations.

[Jay] Here, though, the overhangs will be huge.

We have these 23-foot cantilevers

that come off of that center portion of the building.

And those cantilever off of two sides.

[Jay] To support them, the team designs a series

of two-story steel trusses

based on nature's strongest shape,

the triangle.

These will channel the huge forces from the overhangs

back into the building.

[Nathan] By using two story-deep trusses,

we get a very strong, stiff structure

that limits deflections at the ends.

[music]

[Jay] In May 2021, they start constructing

the cantilevered blocks.

Until they're finished,

the building needs to be shored up to support them.

On a structure as complex as this,

it takes some serious shoring.

We require 400 tons of shoring because

every cantilever in the building had to be temporarily supported.

[Jay] Slowly, though, the building

starts to rise from the ground,

with each level carefully supported as it goes up.

It takes around 3,320 tons of steel,

but at last, the trusses and floors

of all 19 stories are complete.

Now they have the job of taking out all of the shoring.

To do that, there are hydraulic jacks

placed all over the building.

This is definitely the most jacking

that I have ever done on a project.

[Jay] The huge weight of the building

is resting on the shoring.

Before they can remove it,

they need to gently lift the building up,

take out the top piece of shoring,

and then let the cantilevers take the weight.

We had to jack all at once, simultaneously,

so that we could slowly and uniformly

pick the whole building up ever so slightly

and transfer the load from the shoring to the building.

[Jay] On November 6, 2021,

it's the moment of truth for the team.

If they haven't installed the trusses correctly,

then the cantilevers will sag and ultimately fail.

As we did the jacking, you could hear the building

take on the load.

[Jay] With the building lifted,

construction workers carefully pull out

the top pieces of shoring, column by column.

You'd hear the bolts slip,

the steel move.

So that was a little unnerving.

[Jay] The building, though, stays standing.

When you saw actually the gap between

the shoring and the building...

you knew it was doing its job.

That was an exciting moment.

[Jay] It's a massive milestone for the team.

[Paulo] Only when they started to pull away

the shoring elements that supported the cantilevers

did the building start to take shape.

[Jay] In December 2021,

the team turns to the final challenge--

wrapping the whole building in a curtain wall

of not double, but triple-glazed glass.

Patterned with solar shades,

it will minimize heat fluctuations in the building,

maximizing energy efficiency.

But the deadline is now just a year away.

This was a fairly complicated system,

especially with the cantilevers.

[Jay] Where they would normally install 30 panels a day,

here, they can only manage 18.

It takes five months to install more than 2000 panels

across 19 stories.

Remarkably, they remain on schedule.

This was a iconic building

with a one-of-a-kind design,

with a lot of firsts for a lot of people.

But it was constructed in a very tight timeline,

48 months.

[Jay] The incredible Center for Computing and Data Sciences

opens its doors to students

on January 19, 2023.

To see all of these students embracing the building

was the best feeling in the world.

This building is the embodiment of what we're tackling

as a society.

It's an embodiment of excellence.

It's an embodiment of passion, of learning.

It's, like, so huge, and, like, very unique and distinct.

And just, like, really puts the university on the map.

[Jay] This beautiful stack of blocks

ushers in a new era of sustainability,

incorporating green roofs to help cool the building,

capturing rainwater for irrigation,

and using renewable energy to power its systems.

There was a real pride that we were building a building

that was one of its kind-- one of its kind in Boston,

not only in terms of its iconic design,

but its incredible sustainability.

This was one of the greatest projects of my career.

[Azer] I just cannot think of a bigger success.

This was everything we dreamt of and a lot more.

[music]

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