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History By The Numbers
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CreativityTranscript
00:03Why are we obsessed with building skyscrapers?
00:05We're just like, yeah, let's see if we can do this.
00:08Like, hey, can we make buildings go more up?
00:11The higher up you go, the closer you are to the birds.
00:14I'm not supposed to be here.
00:16Look at me, the homo sapien.
00:18Men have to break records constantly.
00:20Just always seems to be a size competition, doesn't it?
00:25Whoever has the biggest skyscraper wins, you know?
00:29Not so long ago, our cities looked like this.
00:33100 years and 5,400 skyscrapers later, they look like this.
00:38Today, we're building skyscrapers around the world collectively
00:43at something like 26 feet every hour.
00:47As long as it just keeps going up that fast,
00:49doesn't come down equally fast, I think we're okay.
00:52Skyscrapers have transformed the world we live in.
00:55They literally and figuratively are bringing the world closer together.
00:58Urbanization is probably the most important social and economic phenomenon in human history.
01:04They've inspired our imaginations.
01:06Who's to say what's too tall?
01:08You ever watch the sunset on top of the Empire State Building?
01:12It's breathtaking.
01:13And they've stoked our darkest fears.
01:16I mean, King Kong did not climb a house.
01:18He climbed the Empire State Building.
01:20This is the history of the skyscraper and the race to the top.
01:24From the 10th floor to the 163rd.
01:27And the 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 1, 5, 4, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2,
01:413, 4, 4, 3, 2, 3.
01:52We're gonna bring it at least 100 feet, right?
01:54I'm gonna say 500 feet.
01:561,000 feet is what I'm gonna guess.
01:58The question about what is the height
02:01that makes a skyscraper a skyscraper
02:03is a debatable question.
02:08The word first was used to mean
02:10a building that was 10 stories or more.
02:12Today, most experts would agree
02:14that a skyscraper ain't a skyscraper
02:16unless it's at least 492 feet high.
02:19If we were to stack all 5,400 skyscrapers
02:22on the planet, one on top of the other,
02:25they would reach four times as far
02:27as the International Space Station.
02:30But our dream of touching the sky is nothing new.
02:40Skyscrapers are just part of a long line
02:42of a human desire, really a need,
02:45to build grand projects.
02:48We've told ourselves the heavens are up there,
02:50and so we're that much closer.
02:51I think humans have long tried to ascend to the heights,
02:56whether it's climbing a mountain or building a tower.
02:59To dream big is to build high.
03:02But how high is too high?
03:05If you lived 5,000 years ago in the land of Babel,
03:09you'd find the answer lies in the number 5,433.
03:13Give or take.
03:17According to the book of Genesis in the Old Testament,
03:20the people of Babel try to build a tower so tall,
03:23it will reach as high as heaven.
03:25The closer we get to the gods,
03:27the better connected we are to the gods.
03:29We're trying to tickle God, baby.
03:31That's what we're doing.
03:31We're trying to tickle the Lord.
03:33You know what I mean?
03:33Scripture describes a tower precisely 5,433 and a bit cubits high,
03:41making it three times taller than the tallest skyscraper today.
03:45See, now I'm concerned.
03:47Like, these are people trying to go to heaven
03:48without earning the right to.
03:50You want to knock on God's bathroom door?
03:52Stop.
03:53But even the number 5,433 isn't big enough to reach heaven.
04:00So God comes down to earth instead and destroys the tower.
04:05Why?
04:06He scatters the people about the earth
04:08and they end up speaking different languages.
04:11All right, tell me.
04:12No hablo ingles.
04:13Unable to understand each other,
04:15the dream of touching the sky has become a nightmare.
04:19But as history will prove, it's a dream that refuses to die.
04:30Ever since people began building,
04:34they've been building things taller and taller.
04:37I mean, the pyramids are thousands of years old.
04:40Those were built to impress.
04:43The pyramids at Giza, Gothic cathedrals, Eiffel Tower,
04:47these huge structures are built to make an impression,
04:51but they're not meant for actual human habitation or regular use.
04:57Humans were originally hunter and gatherers,
04:59and so, you know, basically evolved to work, live, eat, play on the ground.
05:05It turns out that dreaming big is one thing.
05:08Being able to live and work in the sky is another.
05:11And the higher you want to go, the greater the technical challenge.
05:18New York in the 1880s.
05:21It's the city of the future.
05:23But surprisingly, the architectural jewel in its crown isn't a skyscraper.
05:27It's the newly built Brooklyn Bridge.
05:30The eighth wonder of the modern world.
05:33Standing at 272 feet, its towers are the tallest structures in the city.
05:38Because New York is still a low rise city.
05:41Blame the number five.
05:44There was no actual law saying that you couldn't build higher.
05:47And of course, engineers had figured out ways to do so.
05:50But we don't see buildings higher than that at the time
05:53because of a physiological issue for humans.
05:55The maximum height of buildings is based on the willingness of people to climb a flight of stairs.
06:02Nobody is going to climb more than five flights of stairs.
06:06The most amount of floors I would walk up without an elevator really depends on what's at the top.
06:12Uh, yeah, if I was carrying a bunch of groceries, like I'd have to hire someone to walk up the
06:16stairs for me.
06:17And then another person would carry me on their back.
06:19If I don't want to carry groceries on four flights, it's probably going to be like two flights.
06:23No, it's going to be three flights.
06:25And New York might still be stuck somewhere between the second and fifth floors.
06:29My legs.
06:30If not for an uplifting technological demonstration.
06:34Williams.
06:35It's a story that begins 30 years earlier at the 1853 World's Fair in New York City.
06:41Where an exhibit will change the world using one axe and two ratchets.
06:47Factories and warehouses already have elevating systems to lift and lower goods, but not people.
06:53No one wants to dangle from a rope.
06:56Now, there were lifts that could hoist goods and supplies up many stories with a rope, you know, and pulley
07:06system.
07:07That existed for a long time before there were elevators.
07:10The problem was, what if the rope breaks?
07:13Ah!
07:13Oh my God, that would be so scary.
07:16I would just be regretting all of the decisions that led me up to that point.
07:21I would be terrified.
07:22I'm claustrophobic, actually, so that would be bad.
07:26Panic.
07:27Have trouble breathing.
07:28Might pee myself a little bit.
07:29I'm a screamer, and I tend to projectile vomit when I'm scared.
07:33So it's not going to go well for anybody that is in the elevator, including myself.
07:39If you think going into this elevator is endangering your life, you're not going to do it.
07:47Enter a man named Alicia Otis, who rides an elevator car to the top of a demonstration tower.
07:54And then his assistant on the ground picks up an axe.
07:56Don't do it!
07:57The crowds were scared.
07:59They thought the thing was going to fall.
08:02They're not wrong.
08:03The platform does fall, but only for a few inches, before it's stopped by an ingenious locking mechanism comprised of
08:11two ratchets.
08:13Science.
08:13History has recorded that was the pivotal moment in elevator technology.
08:18Otis had come up with the first elevator that had a braking system, so that if the elevator rope snapped,
08:25that the elevator wouldn't just crash to the ground.
08:28It would stop.
08:29Otis's safety brake is a game-changer.
08:32The elevator is one of the fundamental innovations that make skyscrapers possible.
08:39So having a form of vertical transportation that is safe, rapid, and comfortable radically alters the building height equation.
08:55The first skyscraper that had elevators in it was the Equitable Building.
09:01It was an insurance company building right on Broadway.
09:03It was only eight stories tall, but still eight stories in 1870 was a ridiculous number of stories.
09:11In many respects, the Equitable Building sort of established the precedent that business can be conducted in the clouds.
09:17Standing at a height of only 155 feet, it's one small step towards the sky.
09:24But to trigger the giant leap into the age of the skyscraper, one really bad thing has to happen in
09:30Chicago at number 137 West Decoven Street.
09:34So in 1871, Chicago was the fastest growing city in America.
09:41Similar to many cities during that time, the vast majority of the buildings were made of wood.
09:47Even the sidewalks are made out of wood.
09:49Not only was the city of Chicago probably made out of wood, there was an aggressive drought.
09:55All you need is a spark and the whole city is ablaze.
10:01The first spark is in a barn behind 137 West Decoven Street.
10:05From there, it spreads and engulfs an entire city in a three-day conflagration.
10:12So the fire did two things.
10:14It cleared away, for lack of a better term, the old city.
10:18And it created a kind of a blank slate on which a new city could emerge.
10:24The Great Chicago Fire wipes out three square miles of the city, destroys 17,500 buildings and 120 miles of
10:33sidewalks.
10:34It kills 300 people and leaves 90,000 homeless.
10:39Chicago needs to rebuild.
10:42Architects, draftsmen, engineers, builders, construction workers poured in from all around the country to rebuild this great growing young city.
10:55And rebuild they do.
10:56In the wake of the fire, 10,000 new building permits will be issued.
11:01Including one for Chicago's first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building.
11:07At 10 stories, it's two stories higher than New York's Equitable Building.
11:11Which might not sound like very much, but from here on in, the sky will be the limit.
11:16Because Chicago's Home Insurance Building has an advantage, the secret of 33%.
11:23Up until now, walls have been built of stone or brick cemented with mortar.
11:27Since the pyramids, it's been the way to raise yourself above the competition.
11:32Time to innovate.
11:34Fundamental problem to building tall was that a building relied on the walls to bear the load of the building.
11:43And those walls were made of brick or stone.
11:47The problem with load-bearing masonry walls is that as you go taller, walls have to get thicker and thicker
11:55and thicker on the bottom floors.
11:58And this creates several problems.
12:02The medieval Italian town of San Gimignano is famous for its towers.
12:07They were built as displays of wealth and status, which is all they were good for.
12:11It doesn't really allow for a whole lot of light to get inside it.
12:16And other than being tall, it's not terribly useful.
12:21As the walls get thicker, your rentable space on the inside gets smaller and smaller.
12:26One young Chicago architect has a bird brain solution.
12:30William LeBaron Jenny's inspiration is a book and a birdcage.
12:34Tweet, tweet.
12:35And the birdcage is made of these very skinny pieces of metal, but it nevertheless was able to support a
12:44stack of heavy books.
12:46The idea was by adding iron inside the masonry wall, you could reduce the weight of the building by reducing
12:55some of the masonry that was needed.
12:58Once your building doesn't need to be held up by its exterior walls and instead can be held up by
13:05steel cage or framework or skeleton,
13:08that allows a lot more space for windows and that crucially allows a lot more light.
13:16And suddenly, bing, in his mind came this eureka moment of, I can build a skyscraper.
13:23I think that's a great story, so I'm not going to say whether it happened or it didn't happen.
13:30Jenny's 138-foot home insurance building is made possible by a steel frame structure 33% lighter than traditional masonry.
13:40That metal steel skeleton has really been one of the hallmarks of what is a skyscraper.
13:47In the race to the top, it's Advantage Chicago.
13:50But New York has its own secret weapon, the five and dime.
14:00In 1889, just four years after Chicago unveils the home insurance building, Paris reveals what's truly possible with the new
14:08technology.
14:09The Eiffel Tower becomes the tallest tower in the world, breaking the 1,000-foot barrier.
14:15One of the early sightseers is Frank Woolworth, the five and dime king.
14:21He starts out as a potato farm and then he goes on to the Eiffel Tower and he loves the
14:24Eiffel Tower.
14:25So it wasn't very hard to convince him when he came back to America to build the world's tallest skyscraper.
14:32And people flocked to it.
14:35It was the Woolworth Building in New York when it opened in 1913.
14:38They called it the Cathedral of Commerce.
14:41Unveiled in 1913, it cost $13.5 million and was paid for in cash.
14:48Standing at 792 feet, it was the highest office building in the world.
14:53And America's skyscraper frenzy was set for liftoff.
15:03It's the 1920s, the decade when New York City becomes the Big Apple.
15:08Since the turn of the century, its population has doubled.
15:12Never before has it had such confidence and such wealth.
15:171920s New York, we just got past the Spanish Flu of World War I.
15:21Things are building, people are innovating, people are growing.
15:27Penn Station is a gargantuan transportation hub.
15:33Eleven platforms, 21 tracks, 144 trains an hour.
15:37Everyone wanted to be a part of what was going on in New York City.
15:40Whether you were investing in construction or you were a construction worker.
15:44As the city's population grows, so grows the demand for space.
15:48And New York City was growing at an insane rate.
15:51And literally to the point where buildings were being put up every single day.
15:56So between 1924 and 1929, the price of land in Manhattan shoots up 44%, which says a lot.
16:04Fundamentally, a developer builds a skyscraper to fill it with people who are paying money.
16:10There's a careful calculation that anyone making a skyscraper has to go through.
16:16And that has to do with at what point is the height the most profitable.
16:23If you can break even on ten floors, then every floor above that will be hugely profitable.
16:29So the bigger the skyscraper, often the better the rents you can charge.
16:35But the dream of reaching the sky isn't fueled only by money.
16:39What kind of personality does it take to build a skyscraper?
16:41I think you kind of have to be a little bit of an egomaniac to build a skyscraper.
16:47Because it's very much like, hey, look at me. I am the tallest out of everyone. Pay attention to me.
16:53You have to be the big swinging D in the house in order to be able to build one of
16:56those.
16:56Frickin' Jeffrey from my third grade probably built skyscrapers.
17:01He took all the cake at my birthday party. Not cool, Jeffrey.
17:05It's a race to the top that's powered by money, ego, and seven million cubic feet of hydrogen gas.
17:12In 1928, Walter Chrysler announces to the world that he's going to build the world's tallest building, over 800 feet
17:17high.
17:18Taller than the Woolworth Building, the previous tallest building.
17:21At the same time, the Bank of Manhattan, lower down on Manhattan Island,
17:26is building what it claims is going to be the tallest skyscraper in the world.
17:33Well, Chrysler didn't like this idea.
17:37Chrysler, in secret, developed a plan to make his building taller.
17:42The people at the Bank of Manhattan building got wind of Chrysler's plan to extend their building.
17:46So they went ahead and extended their building higher.
17:50So when the Bank of Manhattan was completed, it was looking like the tallest skyscraper in the world.
17:57It was going to win the contest.
17:58But secretly, as the Chrysler Building was being completed, its architect had built, on the inside of its dome, a
18:08120-foot-tall steel spire.
18:10On October 23, 1929, Chrysler's secret spire rises like a telescoping antenna.
18:18At the point that the Bank of Manhattan building was topped out.
18:22All's fair in love and war and skyscrapers.
18:26And not only the tallest skyscraper, but also the first skyscraper taller than the Eiffel Tower.
18:31At more than 1,000 feet tall.
18:34And Walter Chrysler had the tallest skyscraper in the world.
18:38And he got to brag about it for a year.
18:42Only for a year?
18:43Because less than a mile away, another group of developers is watching the competition.
18:4861, 62, 63.
18:51And adding floors to their design.
18:5397, 98, 99.
18:56The original Empire State Building was going to be 80 floors and 1,000 feet.
19:01That would only have been a little bit taller than Chrysler's building.
19:06That wasn't a lot of room for comfort because maybe Chrysler had something up his sleeve.
19:11And they came up with this idea of a mooring mast.
19:14The idea was to add another 200 feet to the top of the Empire State Building.
19:18Really, to make it taller.
19:20But they told the world,
19:21OK, we're going to build this mooring mast for airships.
19:25The airship docking station puts the Empire State Building over the top.
19:29Oh, yeah!
19:31These passengers would walk down a gangplank, 102 stories above the ground, and go in through
19:40the top of the Empire State Building.
19:44But 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen gas will prove inherently unstable.
19:48Just six years after the Empire State Building opens, the Hindenburg explodes in New Jersey,
19:55killing 36 and the dream of airships over Manhattan.
20:02So the image that you will see of the airship docked to the top of the Empire State Building
20:08is actually early Photoshop, so it's faked.
20:11Not the airships!
20:13So it never happened.
20:14But who needs an airship when you've got an elevator to the clouds?
20:18When it officially opens on April 11, 1931, the Empire State Building is beyond comprehension.
20:241,454 feet, 66 elevators, 102 floors, $44 million, over 2 million square feet of office space,
20:37and a great view of the Loser's Building.
20:43Vision, money, ego.
20:45But that's not all it takes to build a skyscraper.
20:48Because when you're 1,000 feet in the air, just six inches can be the difference between life and death.
20:55Mm-hmm.
20:56Am I scared of heights?
20:58Um, when I was 10, uh, I cried when my mom made me go off the high diving board.
21:07It's not the height that's the problem, right?
21:09It's the falling that's the issue.
21:11Um, that was a lie.
21:13I tried to go off the high diving board last week and I cried.
21:16Iron workers back then had to have been the most courageous or foolhardy people that there were.
21:24Die if we have to!
21:26The iron workers who built the steel skeletons of skyscrapers were often first or second generation immigrants.
21:32Many First Nations workers traveled from Canada, particularly from the Mohawk Nation near Montreal.
21:40In my classroom, obviously, I have the iconic picture of the construction workers sitting on probably a six inch beam,
21:47300 feet in the air, having lunch.
21:49Uh, but they're all white.
21:50Which, therefore, gives the impression that construction workers were all white.
21:54One reason we might not remember these workers of color and indigenous workers is because there were so many publicity
22:02photographs done of the construction of these skyscrapers, but they focused on white or European immigrant workers.
22:10The Mohawk beam walkers are famous for their fearlessness.
22:14Their aerial ability is prized by the skyscraper builders.
22:18An American judge rules that because their historical lands straddle the U.S.-Canada border, Mohawk iron workers are free to
22:26work in America.
22:28They'd come down during the building season.
22:30They would live, um, in New York City, for example.
22:33They would live in Brooklyn.
22:34They would just save all the money that they earned, and then they would sort of send it back home.
22:39According to official accounts, five workers lost their lives building the Empire State Building.
22:44Unofficially, that number may have been as high as 42.
22:47People did it because they were willing to take the risk.
22:53It was the heyday of New York's skyscraper craze,
22:56but that dream is about to turn into a nightmare in the shape of a 55-foot gorilla.
23:02The rise of the skyscraper coincides with the Great Depression.
23:06So as people are suffering under all of this economic collapse,
23:11they're doing it under the shadow of these huge monuments to capitalism.
23:17As incredible as skyscrapers are, when they were being built, people were very apprehensive and suspicious.
23:23What are our overlords plotting high up in those towers?
23:28Popular culture begins to reflect this fear.
23:32Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which was filmed in 1927, really explores the shift that's occurring in cities at the time of
23:41these skyscrapers for the wealthy,
23:44and the exploitation of the poor working in his underclasses below.
23:48It's no coincidence the Empire State Building is the backdrop to King Kong.
23:54But nothing dreamt up in Hollywood can come close to the real nightmare.
23:58July 28, 1945.
24:07The Empire State Building, like all New York, was hidden by fog as a Mitchell bomber,
24:12trying to reach Newark Airport, crashed into the tallest structure in the world.
24:16It's a horrifying moment in the city's history.
24:19America's still at war with Japan in 1945, and you have this iconic skyscraper hit by one of its own
24:26bombers.
24:27It's such an irony.
24:32After the war, the GIs return.
24:35There's a boom in jobs, wages, and babies, and the demand for office space skyrockets.
24:42Developers spy an opportunity, fueling a second skyscraper boom,
24:47one that relies on an 80-foot-high bamboo pole.
24:51Profit margins are key, and the skyscraper's traditional steel skeleton is beginning to show its limitations.
24:58There's a column and a column, and the bigger the building, the more columns.
25:03So the floor plates were not open. They had columns in them.
25:07The amount of leasable floor space is being compromised.
25:10A new technical solution is required.
25:13Enter Fazla Raman Khan.
25:16Many people consider him kind of like the Einstein of structural engineering.
25:21His innovation was to come up with new ways to build tall buildings in a much more efficient manner.
25:28Khan grows up in a Bangladeshi village surrounded by bamboo forests.
25:33The young bamboo shoots grow into poles that soar 80 feet and are as straight as they are strong.
25:39But what inspires Khan is on the inside.
25:42Nothing.
25:44Khan invented a tube system based on his understanding of the way bamboo is so strong.
25:51And bamboo is a hollow material with a void in the middle.
25:56Khan's eureka moment is to place columns around the perimeter of the tower to create a tubular structure, rigid on
26:02the outside and open on the inside.
26:04This perimeter tube would span from that outside structure to the elevator and stair core in the center.
26:13And they were able to start to eliminate the columns in the floor plate.
26:17From bamboo jungle to urban jungle, Khan's tubular design is the new blueprint for skyscrapers.
26:25So we talk about revolutions in structural engineering, but fundamentally it was about answering the needs of developers who wanted
26:32to build taller but using less money.
26:35Well, any system that allows you to get 75% more leasable space on a floor absolutely is a game
26:44changer for skyscrapers.
26:46It triggers another orgy of skyscraper construction through the 60s and 70s.
26:51The Chicago-New York rivalry rises again.
26:54Chicago has the one-two punch.
26:56The Willis Tower at 1,729 feet and the John Hancock Center at 1,499 feet.
27:05Probably the two most famous skyscrapers that use this tube system.
27:09And you can make a much bigger space and a much taller space because the rigidity of each tube works
27:17with the rigidity of the other tubes and together they make a much more rigid structure.
27:23New York makes a stunning statement with not one tower but two.
27:27The other most famous buildings that use the tube system were the twin towers completed in the early 1970s in
27:34New York.
27:35The American skyscraper scene holds steady through the final decades of the 20th century.
27:40Between 1970 and 2000, nearly 400 skyscrapers are completed.
27:46An impressive number, but innovations were few.
27:54Then, a terrible tragedy threatens to change everything.
28:00After 9-11, people thought, okay, cities are dead, skyscrapers are over.
28:04There were some years there where just the thought of putting yourself at the potential risk of another dreadful attack
28:13like that just ruled that idea out for people.
28:17What 9-11 taught people is that skyscrapers are necessary and important for cities, but they're gonna need to have
28:27more safety features, better fire safety, better structural design that might help against terrorist attacks.
28:33So, the effect of 9-11 on the skyscraper world is basically to make them safer.
28:38Evidence that 9-11 didn't scare off Americans from skyscrapers is the fact that half of the skyscrapers in America
28:45today were built after the twin towers fell.
28:51The higher you go, the greater the technical challenges.
28:55For engineers, it often means going back to basics and skyscraper 101.
29:01Take, for example, the wind.
29:03The first use of the term skyscraper was a reference to a tall sailing ship.
29:08As with a tall sail, a tall building gathers more wind.
29:12It's what we call a vertical cantilever.
29:15When you start to build tall, you have wind resistance and that can cause a tower to shake.
29:20It's imperceptible when a building is only 30 or 40 stories high, but if a building is 100 stories tall
29:27or more, you can notice that swing.
29:29It's attached at the ground and it's just sticking out at the top.
29:32So the wind, the wind can cause it to move.
29:36So what about areas of the world prone to high winds?
29:39Or earthquakes?
29:40Or even both?
29:42A place like Taiwan.
29:44On average, the island is hit by 3.7 typhoons every year.
29:49It's also located in what's known as the Ring of Fire.
29:53And is hit by an earthquake 7.0 or higher every four to five years.
30:00Yeah, if I was at the top of the skyscrapers started wobbling, I guess I'd just pray.
30:04Hold on to something and pray.
30:06It's concrete.
30:07Concrete doesn't wobble, right?
30:09Or maybe it does.
30:10Does it?
30:11Disaster prone it may be, but Taiwan has one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, Taipei 101.
30:18101 floors, 1,667 feet to the tip of its spire.
30:23Big boy.
30:26The reason it doesn't topple over is an ingenious technical innovation high up in the building.
30:31At the top of the Taipei 101 is this giant damper.
30:36It's basically a large pendulum.
30:38They hang that at the top of the building.
30:41It's attached back to the structure with shock absorbers.
30:46So the idea is when the wind starts blowing, the damper starts to swing in the opposite direction and it
30:54slows down the sway of the building.
30:58Welders sandwich steel discs in concentric rings, creating a single giant cannonball.
31:04It weighs 728 tons.
31:08And it swings.
31:09Essentially a big weight hanging in the center of the building, which offsets the push and the sway from heavy
31:18wind.
31:19For an engineer, it's kids play.
31:22Imagine you're on a swing.
31:24Instead of pumping your legs to make yourself swing higher, you draw your legs back beneath you.
31:29You kill the swing.
31:31That's what the damper does.
31:33It counteracts and kills the structure's sway.
31:36So you can rest easy when the wind blows.
31:40And the earthquakes.
31:47Technical innovation is making the dream of living in the sky a reality.
31:52Or if you're in China, one billion dreams.
31:58In China, since the 1970s, we've been seeing this huge movement of people from rural areas to urban areas seeking
32:05economic opportunity.
32:06Something that we saw in Europe in the previous century.
32:12Over one billion people will move from rural into urban areas over the next 20 years.
32:18It's an unprecedented mass migration.
32:21And it promises to be vertical.
32:25In 1979, four out of five citizens of mainland China live in rural areas.
32:31By 2020, over half of the population lives in a city.
32:36Mainland China didn't have any skyscrapers for most of the 20th century.
32:40They got their very first one in 1976.
32:44This is Shanghai in 1987.
32:47This is Shanghai in 2013.
32:50Today, 10 of the tallest 20 skyscrapers in the world are in China.
32:55And six more of them are under construction.
33:00So within a couple years, China will have 16 buildings in that top 20 skyscrapers in the world.
33:06China has really taken over in the race to the sky.
33:09The Chinese are building so many new skyscrapers.
33:13They can demolish old ones by the dozen.
33:15Many small cities or non-existent cities basically get built from scratch.
33:20So Chinese officials will create a master plan and they'll say,
33:23OK, over here we're going to have our skyscraper district.
33:26So that is part of the reason why we're seeing them spring up across China,
33:30is they're not quite as constrained by the profit motive.
33:38For more than a hundred years, whether you're in New York, Taipei or Shanghai, skyscrapers have looked pretty much the
33:44same.
33:45They're all tall and upward.
33:46It's all these engineers and like architects just trying to impress a girl, you know?
33:50Are skyscrapers phallic symbols? Absolutely.
33:52100% skyscrapers are phallic symbols.
33:55But that's about to change, thanks to the number 360.
33:59In 1958, women represent only about 1% of registered architects. By 1988, it's up to 4%.
34:06One of these female architects is Zaha Hadid.
34:10Zaha Hadid's practice really began to challenge form and she started that very early on in her low-rise buildings.
34:19And that just sort of naturally seemed to evolve into all of the skyscrapers you see coming out of that
34:26office.
34:29Zaha Hadid, an Iraq-born British citizen, famously said there are 360 degrees. Why use only one of them?
34:38Hadid is called the queen of the curve.
34:41Zaha Hadid is a good example of someone with amazing ideas that took a really long time to actually see
34:47them realize.
34:48She was awarded a number of contracts for projects that never actually went through.
34:52It wasn't until much later in her life that she saw her first major construction project.
34:57Hadid took the skyscraper and gave it a twist.
35:01She was the first female to win the Pritzker Prize, which is basically like the Nobel Prize for architecture.
35:07Hadid really challenged the idea of a skyscraper as this obelisk phallic monolith.
35:13And that there really are other shapes you could use, not just from an aesthetic perspective, but would also change
35:20how people utilize the building.
35:22Students in architectural programs today are about 50-50, male and female.
35:28But when we look at registered architects, it's still only 17% female, so we still have a long way
35:33to go.
35:36From Chicago to New York, Taipei to Shanghai, it's a race to be number one.
35:42But now there's a city where one isn't enough, only two will do.
35:46When I think skyline, I think Dubai.
35:49You want to break records and get higher.
35:51I mean, if they're anything like me, they just like getting real high.
35:55It's 2003.
35:56The oil-rich emirate of Dubai wants the world to know there is more to life than crude.
36:01They commission a skyscraper that will break every height record standing.
36:06You have a central core that's buttressed by sort of three wings on each side of the central core.
36:13It gives us this pyramidal shape.
36:15When the Burj Khalifa topped out in 2009, it surpasses the Taipei 101 as the world's tallest building.
36:23In fact, it's the tallest structure in the world, period.
36:28It's so high you can watch the sunset twice.
36:31Sunset number one from the base of the building, and sunset number two from the 124th floor.
36:39When the Burj Khalifa was unveiled to the world, one man was invited to the top, but not via the
36:45elevator.
36:46I don't even know what I'm looking at.
36:48Is this man climbing a building freehand, like no, no nothing?
36:54Whoa!
36:54Oh, this guy's trying to steal something.
36:57I could do this.
36:57No, I couldn't. I would die.
36:59Is he okay?
37:00Why am I asking? He's clearly not okay.
37:05Alain Robert is known as the French Spider-Man.
37:07But instead of eight legs, he uses only two hands, some chalk, and one pair of rock-climbing shoes.
37:14They wanted to do a big event that was for the kind of, for the opening of the building.
37:20I enjoy climbing buildings because it's a pure vertical.
37:28It is something that actually you cannot really find it if you're climbing a natural landscape.
37:33There is always a reference point. Visually, when you climb a building, you can see the cars, you can see
37:41the trucks, and you can see people.
37:43In his time, Alain has climbed over a hundred skyscrapers.
37:47I climbed the Empire State Building, but not all the way to the top because I get caught by the
37:54cops.
37:59It might look like Alain's one in a million, but he's actually one in three.
38:04That's how many of us are afraid of heights, including, surprisingly, Alain.
38:09Everybody is afraid of heights. It's not that you're afraid to fall, you're afraid to die.
38:14I guess, not I guess, I know, my love for climbing was bigger than my fear of heights.
38:23I am one of those three. I'm deathly afraid of heights.
38:26I cannot look over a ledge without having some sort of panic attack.
38:34The race for the sky has been driven by a series of astonishing technical breakthroughs.
38:39Honestly, I don't think we'll ever hit this idea of too tall, and the reason is because of the technology.
38:44But what if that technology becomes out of daze? Like, 169 years out of daze?
38:50Right now, all of the elements of the technology, except one, are in place to create a mile-high skyscraper.
38:57The invention that made the skyscraper possible is now the holdup.
39:01The only thing that we're missing right now, in terms of the technology, is the elevator.
39:05So, elevator salesmen have their jokes. Ask me how business is doing.
39:10How's business, Nick?
39:12It has its ups and downs.
39:16Alicia Otis introduced the passenger elevator in 1853.
39:22169 years later, his invention will make or break the next big thing.
39:30In 2013, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia begins construction of the Jeddah Tower.
39:36Plan to be over one kilometer, or 3,000 feet high, this is an ultra skyscraper.
39:42But to get that high, you've got to go back to the elevator drawing board.
39:48An elevator car weighs 3,500 pounds.
39:52Its passengers weigh 3,500 pounds.
39:55That's three and a half tons.
39:59The steel cable that lifts the car weighs 1.78 pounds per foot.
40:04A vertical run of 3,000 feet will yield a cable that weighs 2.7 tons.
40:10That's a total of 6.2 tons.
40:14Well, the problem is that if you had a steel cable stretched a kilometer, it would stretch.
40:22It's not a stable mechanism.
40:27It's a new technical challenge to overcome.
40:30One solution is to replace the steel cable with carbon fiber ribbon, which is 80% lighter.
40:39How do you test something to go a kilometer in the sky before that building has been constructed, knowing that
40:48everything that's being constructed in the core of that building is relying on this technology to work?
40:54The quest to build taller forces elevator engineers to go deeper.
40:58So what they did was to construct a test pit down into the earth.
41:02One company constructed its test facility in an active limestone mine.
41:07It's the only one in the world that can test over 984 feet vertical.
41:12With an elevator traveling over 40 miles per hour, you need that much distance to ensure a smooth ride from
41:19liftoff to arrival.
41:23But there may be another solution.
41:25Instead of a 3,000 foot cable, what if there was no cable at all?
41:29The big problem with building tall is you can't just have one elevator going from floor 1, 2, 3, 4
41:37up to 300, 400 and so forth.
41:39You need different shafts and express elevators and so forth.
41:42Sooner or later, your ground floor has almost no room for offices or apartments anymore. It's just elevators.
41:53It's an elevator equivalent of a traffic jam.
41:57But what if instead of a cable, each cabin had its own motor and the ability to travel horizontally?
42:04Elevator cabins would be more like passenger vehicles, able to move independently and allow other cabins to pass.
42:14But it turns out that the future of the skyscraper is subject to forces more powerful than gravity.
42:22In 2017, intrigue in the Saudi royal family puts the Jeddah Tower on hiatus.
42:28The planned kilometer high building is a 328 foot stump.
42:33And in the skyscraper capital of the world, Chinese President Xi Jinping declares a moratorium on buildings over 1,640
42:42feet.
42:42And then this happens.
42:45The COVID pandemic has really put a giant question mark on the future of skyscrapers.
42:49Now that employers have recognized that employees can work from home, they don't really need these big commercial leases in
42:56skyscrapers.
42:57When the Empire State Building opens for business in 1931, it features an astonishing 2 million square feet of office
43:05space.
43:07In 2021, 40% of its tenants are reportedly exploring hybrid work options.
43:13That's not the only problem facing the modern skyscraper.
43:16Just ask 600 million birds.
43:21Skyscrapers are clearly unnatural, but they're particularly dangerous for birds, especially at night, because they're attracted to the light, don't
43:29realize that they're flying into something.
43:31So skyscrapers kill around 600 million birds in the U.S. every single year.
43:37And the city that's the greatest offender is Chicago because it lies on some major bird migratory routes.
43:44Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of the concrete industry is considered one of the world's worst.
43:49There's, you know, an increasing interest and experimentation with wood high-rises, trying to reduce the embodied carbon element and
43:59replace steel and concrete with wood.
44:02It just goes to show you that you can't always predict what direction technology and development is going to go.
44:10Sometimes it will surprise you.
44:11For as long as there have been human beings, there's been the dream of reaching for the sky.
44:19The history of skyscrapers is the history of American cities.
44:24Skyscrapers grew up just as America's cities grew up and became an essential part of that transformation into the modern
44:32age.
44:33And in a way, the technology that they manifested has a similar story in the space program, the space race.
44:42It's an example of what had been unthinkable technology blossoming into something that became commonplace.
44:52Because I'll be honest, if I could, I wouldn't go to space. I would want to build the biggest building
44:56in New York City because I feel like they forget about your space trip if you're a billionaire.
45:01But that building will be there forever.
45:03If you go to Rome, if you go to Paris, you're going to look at a church.
45:07Well, if you're in the United States, you should look at our cathedrals of commerce.
45:14Our contribution to architectural grandiosity, you should walk inside these buildings and just look up at a space that was
45:25made to impress you.
45:27That's the point of these skyscrapers.
45:29Honestly, I don't think we'll ever hit this idea of too tall.
45:33Eventually, we're going to have skyscrapers in space.
45:35I always picture this kind of Jetson thing where the buildings are, like, avoiding traffic, right?
45:41And I think we're going to get those flying cars soon, right?
45:43So it'd be easier to park up by your apartment that is in the sky.
45:48And they're all made of glass, too. All it takes is one little meteor.
45:51P-choo! Your head explodes.
45:53Space elevators. It's going to happen. I look forward to it.
45:58But I'm still in the broadcast of the Mount of Plains.
46:02Let's just move on to the outside.
46:02The entire valley is a stone trap, right?
46:04The stone trap is a stone trap.
46:04A stone trap.
46:04He'll be a stone trap.
46:04The wood of the wall is a stone trap.
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