00:15I'm on top of the world, but the hardest part was down there.
00:33Loose shifting sand, the worst place to build a skyscraper.
00:38Build heavy here, and you sink.
00:46So, how do you stop the world's heaviest building from drowning?
01:06These monsters drill 50 meters down, deeper than a 15-story building.
01:15But the sand wants to collapse.
01:23So they fill the hole with slurry to hold the walls back.
01:31Then comes the steel skeleton.
01:38They did this 192 times.
01:45192 massive concrete friction piles.
01:53But piles are just the legs.
01:55They needed a foot.
02:08The raft poor, the biggest in history.
02:3148 hours non-stop.
02:33If they stop, the concrete cracks.
02:36It fails.
02:38Day.
02:39Night.
02:41It didn't matter.
02:46A solid slab, 3.7 meters thick.
02:54Solid.
02:57Now we can go up.
03:00But going up creates a new enemy.
03:08The wind vortex.
03:16At 800 meters, the wind isn't a breeze, it's a hammer.
03:21The solution came from nature, a desert flower.
03:32The shape confuses the wind.
03:34It prevents the vortex from forming.
03:412005, the climb begins.
03:45The central core rises first.
03:54Meet the jump forms, the machines that build the walls.
04:06These yellow machines are self-climbing factories.
04:19Steel.
04:22Concrete.
04:24Cure.
04:28They hit a rhythm, a new floor every three days.
04:43Faster than any skyscraper in history.
04:47But the higher they went, the heavier it got.
05:03We have a problem.
05:05Buckets are too slow.
05:07You can't build to the clouds with buckets.
05:13Enter the beast.
05:21The Putzmeister super pump.
05:27This isn't a normal pump.
05:29It's a cannon designed to shoot liquid rock.
05:33The pipe runs straight up the side.
05:41If this pipe bursts, it's a bomb.
05:46The concrete would cut you in half.
05:49But speed creates heat.
05:56Hot concrete cracks.
05:59Hot concrete cracks.
05:59It fails.
06:03The solution?
06:05Ice.
06:22They melted giant ice block sinks into the mix to keep it cool.
06:30When the desert sun was sleeping, 2007.
06:45The moment of truth.
06:52We just passed the tallest building in the world.
06:56And we aren't done.
07:04Gravity is fighting back.
07:07The friction is too high.
07:09Pressure down.
07:14Pressure down.
07:15They added super plasticizers.
07:23It worked.
07:41601 meters vertical, a world record that still stands today.
07:51But look at it.
07:52It's naked.
07:56Just a concrete skeleton.
08:04You can't sell luxury apartments in a concrete bunker.
08:08It needs a skin.
08:14The cladding begins.
08:18Twenty-four thousand three hundred and forty-eight panels.
08:34Left!
08:35Left!
08:36Left!
08:36Easy now!
08:38Lower!
08:38Lower!
08:39Stop!
08:43It's like trying to hang a painting in a hurricane.
09:00This isn't normal glass.
09:03It has a silver coating to reflect the desert heat.
09:08Chilang, sunglasses for the building.
09:12At peak speed, they installed 175 panels a day.
09:19Floor by floor, it turned silver.
09:28The Brame Spiderman of Dubai.
09:36And then the foreman says, that's not a support beam, that's my sandwich.
09:51Seriously, don't look down.
09:56Through the heat, through the storms, 2008, the concrete stops.
10:12This is it, the end of the concrete road, but we need to go higher.
10:18Switch to steel.
10:24The world's highest cranes.
10:36I'm climbing into the highest driver's seat on earth.
10:40The crane operator slept up here.
10:42It took too long to climb down.
11:00The spire begins to rise.
11:10Just the tip left, the crown.
11:23But then, the financial crash hit.
11:282009.
11:302009.
11:31The world economy crashed.
11:34Projects everywhere stopped.
11:37But Dubai kept building.
11:40The final push.
11:43The spire.
11:49They couldn't lift it in one piece.
11:51It was too heavy.
11:55They built it like a telescope.
11:58Hiding it inside the building.
12:02Hydraulics pushed it up from below.
12:07Slowly, it emerged.
12:13And 828 meters.
12:16The structural top out.
12:19We made it.
12:21But we have a massive problem.
12:24The cranes are trapped 800 meters in the sky.
12:32No crane on earth is tall enough to take them down.
12:37They are stuck.
12:39Unless the cranes eat each other.
12:42The Russian doll strategy.
12:52Crane one lifts two.
12:55Crane two takes apart the big one.
13:05Then a tine crane three.
13:08And the last one?
13:12It goes down the elevator.
13:13In pieces.
13:15The roof was clear.
13:34It takes three months to clean all the windows.
13:39Then, they start again.
13:49The ultimate lightning rod.
13:56Whoa.
13:57Nature is testing us.
14:00Inside, it became a palace.
14:07Armani Hotel.
14:15Highest pool.
14:23Highest mosque.
14:36Opening night.
14:57Highest sea watershed.
14:58It's alive.
15:18They said it was impossible, too high, too sandy, too windy.
15:25We built the impossible. The question is, what will we build next? Subscribe to NextGen Manufacturing. Next time, she is
15:38going even bigger.
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