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CreativityTranscript
00:10You are looking at concrete being poured higher than any building has ever reached and they are
00:15nowhere near the top. 80 floors, 320 meters, still only one-third of the way up. This building will
00:23reach one full kilometer into the sky. The Burj Khalifa held the record for 15 years. The Jeddah Tower will
00:31make it look like a medium-sized building. Standing at the base and looking upstower, you cannot see the
00:36top. The construction workers up there are invisible from down here. Every four days, a new
00:43floor. 1,000 workers on site. The fastest concrete pour at this height in human history. Concrete
00:50pumped 800 meters vertically, a distance that has never been achieved anywhere on earth before.
00:55Then, nothing. In 2018, the cranes stopped. The workers left. For six years, this building stood
01:03frozen, going nowhere. January 2025. The cranes moved again. The world's most ambitious building,
01:13abandoned for six years, came back to life. The site is so large that workers use vehicles to
01:19travel between areas. A construction city built around one impossible tower.
01:24Before a single floor went up, they spent a year building underground. And what they built underground
01:30is extraordinary. Coral reef limestone beside the Red Sea. The worst ground possible for a kilometer
01:37tall building. The cores came back full of voids. Gaps where a billion dollar foundation would find nothing.
01:44Every cavity grouted shut before a single pile was driven. Hole by hole. Across 3,200 square meters.
01:53Bauer drilling rigs from Germany. 1.8 meters wide. 105 meters deep. Into coral reef. 270 piles. Each one
02:03deeper than the Washington Monument is tall. 105 meters deep. That pile goes further underground than this
02:10building is currently tall above ground. Each cage built in 30 meter sections. Lowered in sequence.
02:18One sitting on top of the last. 4,400 tons of steel in the piles alone. Before a single floor
02:25existed
02:26above ground. Concrete poured from the bottom up. Displacing the fluid above it. One continuous fill.
02:33The Red Sea soil eats steel. A cathodic protection system wired through every pile fights it permanently.
02:41270 pile heads exposed. Now. The platform that connects them all. 3,650 tons of rebar. Workers tying every
02:51intersection by hand. Across an area bigger than a football pitch. Six layers of rebar. Five meters deep.
02:58The strongest foundation ever built for a building. 18,260 cubic meters of concrete pushing against the
03:06perimeter forms. The pressure of a dam wall. The pour starts at night. Cooler air. The concrete
03:13generates its own heat. It needs help staying controlled. 18,260 cubic meters of concrete poured
03:20without stopping. That is enough concrete to fill seven Olympic swimming pools. 72 hours without stopping.
03:25Stop it. And you get a cold joint. A weakness buried forever. Too much heat and it cracks.
03:32Workers controlled the temperature inside this concrete for 28 days. One year of work. Invisible
03:39forever under everything that comes next. The hexagonal core goes up first. The spine that carries every
03:46floor. Resists every wind. Supports one kilometer. The jump form climbs automatically. Workers ride it up.
03:54It has been climbing since 2013. Core walls 1.5 meters thick at the base. 85 megapascals. Twice as strong
04:03as standard concrete. 85 megapascal concrete. Mixed on site. Pumped immediately. Poured and vibrated within 90
04:12minutes of mixing. One floor every four days. The workers feel the platform rise beneath them. They don't see it
04:19happen. Three wings. Three jump forms. All climbing. All connected to the core at every single floor.
04:27Every floor. The wall angle changes. The rebar changes with it. Every floor is different from the last.
04:34Every batch tested before it leaves the plant. Substandard mix. Rejected. No exceptions. 350 bar of pressure.
04:42Pushing concrete up 800 meters through a pipe the width of your arm. This pipe carries concrete from
04:49here to 800 meters up. The concrete arrives at the top still workable. Two floors below the core. The slabs
04:57follow. Install. Pour. Strip. Move up. Never stops. Post tension slabs. Steel tendons stressed after the
05:05core. No beams needed. Faster. Thinner. Stronger. Each tendon stressed to 200 tons. Locked. The slab
05:12permanently in compression. Each floor slab poured in a single day. Laser screeded to three millimeters
05:19flat. The floor someone will walk on forever. Formwork stripped after seven days. Moved up. Installed again.
05:26The same equipment. Used 150 more times. 12 hoists running simultaneously. Three tons each. The supply
05:33chain feeding 1000 workers at height. Four cranes climb with the building. Bolted to the core as it
05:39rises. 700 meters still to climb. Climbing a tower crane inside a live building. One of the most complex
05:45operations in construction. Monthly. At 300 meters. Wind forces that would topple a conventional building.
05:52The three wings were shaped to stop it. The wings split the wind vortices. The building sheds wind
05:57instead of fighting it. Shape is the solution. No outriggers. No belt trusses. The wings are the
06:04structure. Simpler. Stronger. Faster. 320 meters up. Tying rebar in desert heat. Red sea below. Same
06:12work. Higher every week. 45 degrees of heat. Concrete mixed with ice and chilled water. To arrive workable
06:19800 meters up. Squeeze a 10 centimeter cube of this concrete. It takes 85 tons before it breaks. Nothing
06:27weaker could carry this building. Workers start at dawn. Before the heat peaks. Jeddah is still
06:33sleeping below them. Every bag. Every tool. Every water bottle. Hoisted 300 meters. The logistics are
06:41as hard as the structure. The walls thin as the building rises. Less load at the top. Every meter of
06:47wall designed for exactly its load. Steel embeds cast into every wall. Positioned to 5 millimeters
06:54meters before the concrete covers them forever. Floor 50. 200 meters. Already taller than most
07:01skyscrapers. Still one-fifth of the total height. Construction doesn't stop at sunset. Night shifts
07:08pour in the cooler hours. The tower rises in the dark. November 2017. Saudi Arabia's political earthquake.
07:17Key figures. Detained. The crane stopped the next morning.
07:21The contractor Bin Laden group was tied to the detained individuals. Within months period work
07:26stopped. A thousand workers left the site. The crane stopped turning. 63 floors. 252 meters.
07:33Then nothing. Six years. Frozen. Cranes rusting. Site empty. Going nowhere. Six years of Saudi sun and
07:42Red Sea salt air. The concrete didn't deteriorate. Not a single floor failed. September 2023. 14 contractors
07:51invited to bid. The world's most ambitious abandoned building. Coming back. Same contractor. 1.9 billion
07:58dollar contract. To finish what they started seven years before. Every existing floor inspected before one
08:05new pour. 63 floors of abandoned concrete. All passed. January 2025. Cranes moved. Workers poured floor 64.
08:18Six years of silence. Ended in a day. Same mix. Same method. Same workers. The pours erased in a single
08:26continuous pour.
08:27Floor 64 to floor 80. January to December 2025. One floor every four days. Faster than before the pours.
08:36Old concrete bonding to new. The critical question. Core samples confirmed it. Six years made no difference.
08:45Workers. Rebar. Formwork. Concrete. Repeat. That is what building the world's tallest structure looks like.
08:52February 2026. Floor 100. Confirmed by the structural engineers. The pace is accelerating.
09:00Prefabricated rebar cages hoisted complete. One lift replaces 40 individual bar placements. That is why a
09:08floor takes four days. 800 meters of vertical concrete pumping. A world record. Broken every single day the
09:16workers pour. These hands are building the tallest structure in human history. 5,000 pairs of them.
09:24The workers on this site come from 30 countries. Most earn $20 a day. They are building something that
09:30will stand for a century. 500,000 cubic meters of concrete. 80,000 tons of steel. Truck by truck.
09:38Floor by floor. 80 floors. 320 meters. Taller than everything around it. And 680 meters still to build above
09:46that. At 1000 meters. The building sways. The tuned mass damper moves opposite. Cancels it. Nobody feels it.
09:55Above the occupied floors. The wings stop. The core continues alone to 1008 meters. Pure concrete
10:03reaching up. The top 200 meters are structural spire only. No floors. No occupants. 59 elevator shafts.
10:115 double deck cars. 10 meters per second. The fastest passenger elevators ever built. Elevator rails
10:19aligned to 1 millimeter over 500 meters. Workers do it by laser. There is no other way. Top floors
10:26pouring concrete. Bottom floors installing pipes and wiring. 30 floors of fit out simultaneously.
10:33Glass panels installed from inside. The only safe method at this height. 800 kilograms each.
10:39Floor by floor. Floor 157. 644 meters. The world s highest observation deck. Currently 324 meters above the
10:50highest pore. Every pore sampled. Every cube tested. Every batch verified. Then, and only then, the next floor
10:59goes on. Above 40 kilometers per hour, the cranes halt automatically. The sensors stop them before anyone
11:06gives the order. 45 degree heat. Workers rotate every two hours. Ice vests. At this height, heat stroke
11:14means 30 minutes to evacuate. Every worker clipped to a lifeline at the perimeter. The wind at 300 meters
11:22doesn't care who you are. This clip is what stands between a worker and 300 meters of air. On this
11:27site,
11:28clipping in is not optional. It is the single non-negotiable rule above floor 10. The cranes
11:32visible from 20 kilometers at sea. Sailors navigate by them. The highest construction lights on earth.
11:40Rebar prefabricated at ground. Hoisted complete. One lift replaces 40 bar placements. The reason the pace
11:47holds. Every 30 floors, the wall steps thinner. The formwork adjusts. The rebar changes. The hardest
11:55pour on every cycle. A 30 meter steel balcony at 600 meters. No building has ever cantilevered this weight
12:03at this height. At one kilometer, you can't evacuate by stairwell. Refuge floors, sky bridges, express
12:10elevators. All being built in now. Every 30 floors. A refuge level. Fireproof. Pressurized. Independent
12:17power. Where people wait if it goes wrong. 100 floors. 400 meters. The Burj Khalifa at 828 meters. Now the
12:27target above them. Their fathers poured the Burj Khalifa. These men pour the Jeddah Tower. Their
12:34children will know what that means. 600 sensors embedded in the concrete. Strain. Tilt. Settlement.
12:41The building reporting its own condition in real time. Every sensor in this building tells the
12:47engineer something. At a thousand meters you cannot guess. The building tells you what it's feeling
12:52and you respond. 25 millimeters of total settlement allowed. After 12 years of construction, 10 millimeters
12:59used. The foundation is performing perfectly. Workers tying rebar on the 85th floor right now.
13:06The highest active construction floor on the planet. Today. Every floor tapers. Every facade panel a
13:13different size. 157 floors. No two panels identical. The pump pressure increases as the building climbs.
13:21The target. 1,000 meters of vertical delivery. Never done before. Shift handover at 300 meters.
13:29Every problem passed person to person. The Red Sea from 320 meters. Workers see it every day.
13:37Future occupants will pay millions for that view. 59 elevator shafts. 8 stairwells. Every service riser.
13:45All rising simultaneously inside a single hexagonal core. 5,000 workers per shift. Home to Jeddah.
13:53Back tomorrow. Same floors. Higher every week. Every one of those workers knows they are building
13:59the tallest building on earth. You can see it in how they walk. There is something in building
14:03something that no one has ever built before. Every morning. The cranes catch the sun first.
14:08The highest point of any active construction site on earth. 80 floors done. 77 occupied floors to build.
14:16Then 200 meters of spire. The hardest half. Still to come. 1,008 meters. The first building in human
14:24history to cross one kilometer. This is what it looks like being built. Three times the Eiffel Tower.
14:30Twice the Empire State. 180 meters taller than the Burj Khalifa. 644 meters. World's highest observation deck.
14:39On a clear day. The curvature of the earth is visible. 204 seasons rooms. Floors 19 to 27. The workers
14:48pouring
14:48those floors. They will never stay in them. The penthouse at 600 meters. One apartment. A 30 meter balcony
14:56over nothing. The most expensive address on earth. 270 piles. 105 meters deep each. 38,000 cubic meters of
15:05concrete. All invisible. All carrying everything above. Every project we build starts with one question.
15:13What should we bring to life next? That answer is yours. Drop it in the comments. The next deep dive
15:21might be your idea.
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