Original subtitles

This time on Impossible Engineering.

A mega hotel like nothing else on Earth. I feel so excited and proud.

This is the greatest engineering in the world.

A giant structure that's underground and underwater.

The result is a very unique hotel designed with the latest engineering

technology. And a pioneering historic innovations.

This place is epic.

375 feet from the bottom to the top.

During an earthquake, this bridge will move back and forth.

That made the impossible possible.

Shanghai, city of the future.

Vying for attention in this fast -growing high -tech metropolis

is some of the world's most cutting -edge architecture

and some of the most extraordinary feats of engineering on Earth.

There is a great competition for creating these landmark buildings.

The clients have always asked me, build me a landmark.

Architect Martin Yokeman has been given a seemingly impossible challenge to

design a radical new hotel that will stand out in this hotbed of innovation.

But the unique site totally defies convention.

It must be built nearly 300 feet below ground level in an abandoned, flooded

quarry.

When I came here almost 12 years ago, it was just a hole in the ground.

Now, over the years, against all the odds, this has changed.

Martin's master plan is one of the world's most inventive buildings.

Resembling something from a James Bond movie is the Shanghai Wonderland.

This giant quarry hotel spans 1 ,076 ,000 square feet and is the first of its

kind on the planet.

Helping to realize this epic multi -million dollar fantasy project is chief

engineer Xiaoxing Chen.

I'm very proud of being a part of the project.

Everybody is excited because it is the only one in the world.

What at ground level first appears to be a two -story building is in fact only

the tip of the 337 -room hotel.

It projects out from the precipice and descends to the base of the quarry 295

feet below.

The glass wall in the center is designed to look like a waterfall cascading to

the quarry floor.

This will be flooded to create a lake submerging the two lowest floors.

It's an epic engineering challenge once thought to be impossible.

Such unusual location brings its problems to be solved.

These can be summarized into the building shape, the seismic

the fact that the building is partly underwater.

Not only must it be waterproof and earthquake -proof, but the engineers are

faced with a giant problem that looms all around them.

The biggest problem when we started designing this building was associated

the quarry itself, the composition of the rock.

This rock has come out as part of volcanic erupts and it has cooled rather

quickly, which means some of it is quite solid, but some of it is crystallized

and very, very crumbly. I can demonstrate how this... Crumbles easily

hands. This problem had to be really solved before we could start on the main

part of the construction, both for the safety of the guests, but also for the

safety of the workers on time.

Failure to secure the unstable cliffs will mean disaster for the project.

Building this groundbreaking hotel will need some impossible engineering from

the past.

There's one device that's so effective at holding up rock walls that climbers,

like engineer Dan Dickrell, are willing to trust it with their lives.

Oh, here it gets spicy.

So right now I've climbed this rock face. I'm hanging in the air. And all of

weight is going through that rock bolt, which is anchoring me to the surface.

The rock bolt is a smart and simple idea developed over 100 years ago.

And this simple idea might hold the secret to solving the problems at the

Shanghai Hotel.

In the 19th century, lead mining was big business.

The number one producer was the St.

Joseph Lead Company, and their mine in Bonterre, Missouri, was the biggest and

most profitable.

This incredible piece of engineering ambition was, at the time, the world's

largest man -made cave at over 375 feet high.

And it was also the first deep earth -led mine in the world.

Really quite impressive.

This vast cathedral of a mine was operational for 97 years.

This place is epic.

When it closed in 1962, the water pumps that had kept the tunnels dry were

turned off, creating a 17 -mile -long underground lake.

And now the only way to get around is by boat.

Mining this lead is no easy task.

The miners are looking for the ore in thin veins, which are spread through the

rock. They have to chip it out in large chunks of ore.

If we look over here, some of the richest veins extend vertically,

375 feet from the bottom to the top.

So the question was, how to reach that precious metal buried in the walls 375

feet off the ground?

St. Joseph's was a forward -thinking company that prided itself on

It recruited so -called experimental engineers, whose job it was to devise

of extracting every ounce of ore.

These early problem solvers faced the challenge of scaling the heights of

walls.

So this is what they came up with.

The trapezes.

A series of scaffolding suspended from the ceiling.

The workers would work chipping away almost a skyscraper above the ground.

The tools they used weighed 50, 60, 80 pounds.

The men themselves were large. The rocks were heavy.

Such a large amount of weight suspended above that cavernous drop.

And responsible for bearing all that weight, the newly invented rock bolts.

This is actually an original 100 -year -old split rock bolt. You can see the

split on the end.

How would this be installed?

drill a hole in the ceiling, and then pound a piece of oak in, which

would be a wedge, that when you put the bolts into that hole and pound it in,

the wedge would slowly split open the bolt, creating a very, very strong

anchoring point.

Trapeze mining was a great advance, but it was these rock bolts that proved to

be the real innovation.

It was noticed that after the scaffolding was removed, the rock bolts

remained in the ceiling were holding up the loose rock that otherwise would cave

in.

Securing a rock face is precisely what the team in China needs to do.

So how did the rock bolts achieve this?

I have a container that I'm going to fill with loose gravel.

Now the thing about this container is it doesn't actually have a bottom.

So now what we need to do is insert the bolts down into the temporary bottom.

All right, let's put some gravel in here.

We're going to take the top washers and nuts and tighten them down.

This will create a compressive force that binds all the gravel together.

This will replicate the forces at work when bolts are inserted into a crumbling

rock ceiling.

I'm optimistic.

I'm optimistic this is going to work.

I'm going to need a bit of help. So I'm going to have Adam from the Bonterre

mine come in and assist me with this.

There we go.

All right, Adam.

Slowly try and take the bottom off.

Temporary bottom.

What do you know? It worked.

You wouldn't think it's possible.

But check it out. It's really, really solid.

Management concluded that long bolts placed close together would safely knit

loose rock in the ceiling above us. Without knowing it, the miners here at

Bonterre had inadvertently invented real innovation, which is used all over the

world today.

What an accomplishment.

So how can the engineers in Shanghai take this century -old discovery and put

to work?

This process is quite unique to this project.

It has never been done on this scale before.

To build on the crumbling rock base of this unstable Shanghai quarry, engineers

will have to supersize it.

In Shanghai, China, engineers are attempting to use 19th century inspired

bolts to secure the building site for one of China's most innovative

the Wonderland Hotel.

Here are the rock bolts, which are a very important part of the stabilization

the cliff.

Architect Martin Jokman and the engineering team know the importance of

this part of the job right.

The rock bolts are in positions where they can be most effective in securing

cliff face on a certain grid.

First, the rock walls are blasted in several places to level them off.

Then, they insert 6 ,000 supersized rock bolts.

The mega bolts.

measuring up to 50 feet in length, are placed at regular intervals to make up a

giant grid across over 61 ,300 square feet of rock face.

For added security, the whole area is covered with a layer of metal mesh, then

sprayed with a thin layer of cement called shotcrete.

The mesh together with the shotcrete will prevent the crumbly face of the

falling down on and endangering the guests and the visitors.

This process is quite unique to this project.

It has never been done on this scale before.

It is in fact one of the great challenges that had to be overcome to be

end up with this amazing building.

And Martin has the tech to make the most of seeing his design come to life from

every angle.

Every time I come here, I'm amazed about the transformation of the site.

To be able to actually get a picture from the same angle as you're rendering

then be satisfied that this is really as close as you can get to your concept

vision. That is very satisfying.

But this unique design has to be built to withstand the most destructive forces

on the planet.

There's no precedent for this type of building in terms of seismic design.

There is no greater destructive force on the planet than that generated by an

earthquake.

And China is one of the most active seismic regions in the world.

As the point of convergence of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, the

country is riddled with fault lines.

Engineers here are experienced in using methods to combat earthquakes in

conventional buildings.

But nothing like this has ever been attempted before.

There's no precedent for this type of building in terms of seismic design. So

this creates a completely new problem to be solved.

had to be done from the first principles with the latest engineering technology.

To help it withstand the forces of an earthquake, massive foundations are

required.

As you can see, the foundations are immense, almost 50 ,000 cubic meters of

concrete. It had to be so to give the steel structure the rigidity it needs.

The concrete for the foundations has to be mixed at the surface, then delivered

to the base below.

But sending it straight down a vertical drop means it's traveling too fast.

The mix would start to separate, and by the time it reaches the bottom, it's

unusable.

Completely new method of pumping had to be devised for this.

It's up to Chief Engineer Xiaoxian Chen and his team to come up with a

pioneering solution.

During the construction, we have encountered numerous challenges.

And sometimes in the midnight, I wake up to think of the project, to think of

the problem.

I should result.

The team needs to find a way to slow down the concrete's rapid descent to

sure they end up with a stable mix.

So they insert additional mixing stations.

The concrete drops down the first 50 feet, then enters the station.

It gets remixed and sent on its way, passing through two further mixing

stations.

So once it reaches the base, it's the perfect consistency.

I'm very happy about the result.

But incredibly, over 1 .7 million cubic feet of concrete on its own is not

enough to protect it from an earthquake.

Due to the hotel's unique design, the team needs an extra engineering solution

to prevent it from being pulled apart by opposing forces.

It is a tall building attached at both ends, and in the event of an earthquake,

both. parts of the building move in different direction and different speed.

So this creates completely new problems.

To prevent disaster, the engineers have to find a way to protect this unique

structure.

Italy has suffered centuries of devastating earthquakes, more than any

European country.

So engineers here have been developing new ways of building, which won't yield

to the forces that regularly rock the landscape.

These might hold the key for the team in China.

During the last 40 years, we learned to build the structure safe

to withstand earthquakes.

Seismic protection engineer Samuele Infanti.

works for the company that designed Europe's first bridge engineered to be

earthquake -resistant.

The Sanplago Viaduct.

Its twin decks run in parallel across Lake Cavazzo.

And despite being three -quarters of a mile long, it remained standing when a

powerful earthquake destroyed the nearby village.

So how exactly did the bridge remain intact?

Like the Wonderland Hotel, it's attached to high ground at the top and low

ground at its base.

The secret of its success can be found where the underside of the road deck

meets the top of its vertical piers.

The idea was to isolate the deck above the bearings from the

ground.

Using a principle known as seismic isolation, the key mechanisms are the

bearings which cap each individual pier.

These are made up of sliding metal plates, which allow the deck to move

protecting it from tremors at its base.

During an earthquake, this bridge will move back and forth along the

longitudinal direction.

The ground will move in a very quick manner, while the deck will move slowly

immediately after the earthquake.

the bridge can be ready to survive another event, an aftershock.

And this way we can avoid the damage.

The principle of base isolation has been applied to structures around the world,

saving countless lives.

But can the engineers of China's Wonderland Hotel use the same method to

their revolutionary building from destruction in the heart of a major

zone?

Building on the side of a quarry presents a number of unique issues, and

building in a seismic hot zone only intensifies the challenge.

The structural solution is totally unprecedented and comes with the fact

it's a building fixed up to end.

Architect Martin Jokman explains how he and the engineering team behind

Shanghai's unprecedented Wonderland Hotel made the structure earthquake

In order to satisfy the seismic requirements of the earthquake, it is

that this structure can move to a certain extent.

Here in the inner atrium, the rear of the hotel looks out onto the rugged,

exposed wall of the original quarry and the steel framework that supports the

building.

It's this that provides the ultimate defense against earthquakes.

The structure consists of horizontal trusses that sit on a concrete beam.

These are then connected to the vertical trusses that are firmly embedded in the

mass concrete at the base of the hotel.

Together, they form very rigid structure, but in case of earthquake,

still move.

The horizontal trusses are not fixed to the platform at the top.

Should the worst happen, the horizontal trusses can slide back and forth.

and ride out any seismic activity.

It's actually sitting loosely on a platform that will allow it to move

This will make it possible for the building to stand up during a very

earthquake. It is a unique solution to a unique construction problem.

With a structure that's earthquake -proof, the engineers must face the next

impossible engineering challenge.

creating rooms underwater.

Such unusual location brings many challenges.

One of those is the fact that part of the building is underwater.

In fact, where we are standing will be submerged.

Once the quarry is filled and construction is complete, walkways will

man -made lake to a central island and a brand new waterfall will be built on

the west face of the quarry.

The bottom two stories will be submerged below water level, and an underwater

restaurant and bedrooms will be surrounded by giant fish tanks.

One of the biggest problems to overcome when designing this building was the

underwater rooms and public area.

Architecture design manager Hao Tseng is overseeing this part of the project.

You can see there is no light in this corridor because right now we are

on the water space.

Here is our very special and exclusive room.

There is no traditional window.

Instead of that, we have a big aquarium here.

To make this experimental concept a reality, The designers are giving

a seemingly impossible task.

Our biggest challenge is how to deal with the water pressure and how to deal

with the waterproof.

The volume of water required exerts so much pressure that ordinary glass would

break and flood the rooms.

In order to realize their dreams of underwater living, the engineers needed

look to the skies of the 1940s.

At this airfield just outside of Los Angeles, engineer Dan Dickrell is

out what the team in China can learn from one of the most important planes in

wartime history, the Boeing B -17.

As a child, I built models of this.

One of the most iconic bombers of the Second World War.

It's absolutely breathtaking.

Known as the Flying Fortress, this heavily armored warbird was designed to

penetrate deep into enemy territory to carry out precision daytime bombing.

One, two, three, four, five, five, seven, eight, nine, ten, starting number

three again.

This is one of the few airworthy models left in the world.

This is the aircraft that captured the world's imagination.

It has a cruising altitude of 35 ,000 feet at a speed of 287 miles per

hour.

It weighs 29 tons.

It's really, really a solid, solid aircraft.

At one point during the war, one of these B -17s returned, missing two out

the four engines.

180 black holes in it like a piece of Swiss cheese. But it returned safely,

which is a testament to how strong this particular airplane is.

However, the early versions of the B -17 had a weak spot.

The original nose of the B -17 was composed of a metal frame and large

of real glass.

And the solution past visionaries discovered might just inspire the

engineers of today's Wonderland Hotel.

We want a view of water tank as big as possible, but due to the water pressure,

the material has to be very thick.

The original model of the iconic World War II fighter plane, the Boeing B -17,

was a stalwart fighting machine, but it had one glaring vulnerability.

The original nose of the B -17 was composed of a metal frame and large

of real glass.

To solve this shattering flaw, in later models, this was replaced by a clear

dome made of a new, hardier material, plexiglass.

It was the invention of chemist Otto Rum.

Rum's life's work was in the development of new plastics, but he discovered

plexiglass by accident.

Rum had NMA, which is a rudimentary acrylic in a Petri dish.

Sunlight hit the dish, heating up the NMA and polymerizing it, creating PNMA,

which we call plexiglass.

He discovered that if it was heated, it could be molded.

So I'm going to keep mechanical strain on it while it hardens.

As it cools, it will retain the shape.

Yeah, it worked.

It's a great material.

But crucial for aviation engineers was how it responded to stress.

Plexiglass doesn't shatter.

And that particular property is what enables this aircraft to be such an

effective daylight bomber.

This was a major development.

The nose is one of the most tactically important parts of the plane because

where the bombardier sits.

And plexiglass was not only safer, but greatly improved visibility.

This tough, transparent material could help the team in China achieve their

vision.

Within the giant concrete foundations, fit massive water tanks.

We want a view of water tank as big as possible, but it has to be very

clear. And due to the water pressure, the material has to be very thick. So we

found acrylic glass.

It's like 13 to 16 centimeters.

And you can see it's very clean and people can easily see through it.

But with added thickness comes added weight.

This window alone weighs more than two tons.

The

largest

windows on site weigh four tons, used in the hotel's underwater restaurant.

So now we are standing in the biggest space underwater.

This is the dining room of our specialty restaurant.

You can see there are five pieces of acrylic glass.

The big acrylic glass is more than 5 meters wide and 3 .5 meters height.

It's very, very big and heavy.

But behind them, it's a big water tank. It's like 30 meters wide.

We really want the client to feel like they're staying in the ocean.

From the watery depths of this extraordinary construction to its heady

the engineers still face a high -level challenge at the summit of the cliff

face. To build something at the top of the cliff is a really big challenge for

us.

Building in a quarry is an enormous undertaking.

But the setting has provided inspiration for its biggest and most complex design

feature. Dreamed up by Martin Jokman.

The glass waterfall is symbolic of the connection of the rock face, the clips

with the water.

And the shape is itself suggesting the falling water shape.

The most difficult part of the whole structure.

It's curved, it's irregular, it's covered with glass.

So it was a great challenge to actually put it together.

A complex steel framework is being covered with over 53 ,800 square feet of

flat and curved frameless glass panels to create the illusion of a glass

waterfall.

Now we are actually inside the glass waterfall.

It is a vertical circulation containing observational lifts which will take

guests and visitors from this floor down to the base and to their guest rooms.

When I see what's been produced, I'm very happy that my original idea

that I escaped a long time ago is there.

All credit to...

The team, the people involved in the design, the structural design and the

construction.

The next phase is to start filling the quarry pit to create the man -made lake.

It will need over 52 .8 million gallons of water.

With such a huge volume, it's a slow process.

Filling water of the pit, I'm very excited for it.

It will take four months to fill it, but I'm very patient.

But the Wonderland Hotel team isn't done engineering the impossible just yet.

It's a wonderful engineering feat.

We are using ideas that are 100 years old mixed with modern

technology.

Shanghai's Wonderland Hotel is all coming together.

The quarry is filled.

The main building is both water and earthquake -proofed.

But for architecture design manager Hao Feng and her team, there's one more

challenge.

An audacious final addition to make the most of this unique location from

every angle.

It's a really magic and amazing view here.

The team wants to somehow create a walkway right at the top of the 295

-high cliff base.

It's an ambitious plan.

To build something at the top of the cliff is a really big challenge for us.

want to build something sticking out of the cliff wall, and it should be strong

and safe enough.

It's really tough for us.

The solution could lie in an engineering innovation embraced by a famous

trailblazer of the past.

In the wilds of Pennsylvania, tumbling rivers cut through the forests of the

Appalachian Mountains.

It's here that a landowner threw down the gauntlet to a renowned architect to

design him a home.

Civil engineer Professor Scott Hamilton is here to see how it might help the

team in China.

Falling Water, a truly amazing architectural building.

It challenges the very landscape it sits upon.

And many have described it as America's most famous house.

The Falling Water House is the brainchild of innovative architect Frank

Wright.

Falling Water was commissioned by wealthy Pittsburgh businessman Edgar J.

Kaufman.

Kaufman wanted a home where he could hide away in nature.

Yet it had to be a big enough space where he could entertain lots of people.

Like the hotel in China, the location of the site proved the biggest challenge.

Surrounded by rock faces and a river, the plot of land wasn't big enough for

house Kaufman craved. So he left it to Wright to find a solution.

What Wright came up with is this, a series of rooms and gigantic balconies.

with seemingly no support beneath, essentially creating spaces in thin air.

Wright pulled off this balancing trick by anchoring these platforms so deeply

into the central chimney they didn't need any other support, providing he

them strong enough.

This will be my falling water house, just like Wright's design.

So we take our ground -level balcony.

As you see, if we put it out, we need something to counterbalance.

We might use this chimney stack and the main structure to do that.

So I'll use a brick.

And then we have our next level. And again, we need something to

that. And then we have our top level.

And we'll counterbalance that.

So here's my falling water house model.

So let's have a look with what can happen when things go wrong.

As we take our load and we put it on our balcony, we see it starting to bend

down. As we increase the load, we see it bending more and more. We get closer to

our limits and we have a failure.

So Wright's ingenious solution was to reinforce these cantilevered floors with

lengths of steel.

So there we have our reinforced cantilever.

So let's give it a go and see what happens.

We put our load on and we see it hold, just like we want it to.

This design relied on a careful balance of both geometry and tension and

compressive forces.

If one part of this was off, the whole structure would fail.

It was so radical for its day.

Falling Water is a national treasure and a truly great engineering feat.

Wright's innovative cantilever design made Falling Water an icon.

But Hao Zeng and her team will need to supersize the engineering behind it to

make their impossible skywalk a reality.

Innovative design relies on impossible engineering.

Architecture design manager Hao Feng and her team at Shanghai's Wonderland Hotel

are turning to Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic falling water design to inspire

ambitious Shanghai walkway.

But Wright's cantilevered platforms started from 32 feet above the water

In China, they're eight times that height.

This is the skywalk.

You are 80 meters high above the bottom of the quarry.

To create this impossible structure, the team turned to Wright's cantilevers.

We use cantilever series to support this skywalk.

We cut holes into the rocks and insert many reinforced bars to build such

a horizontal concrete base.

Using the cliff itself at the anchor point, 42 holes were drilled up to six

a half feet deep.

Steel beams were then inserted to carry the 243 -foot stretch of reinforced

glass.

It's a wonderful engineering feat.

We are using ideas that are 100 years old mixed with modern

technology. I love it up here. It gives you the best possible view of the

amazing engineering that went into building this hotel.

12 years in the making, from the first concept to five -star reality.

The Shanghai Wonderland is almost ready to open its doors to the world.

Creating this unique subterranean structure has been an epic undertaking.

When I first saw the site, what I saw is really, really incredible.

Working on this project. It's like a dream comes true.

The engineering challenges in turning an abandoned quarry into a luxury resort

have tested those involved to the limit.

The whole idea seemed too fantastic to be realizable.

I'm happy to say that the results are quite amazing.

By drawing on the great pioneers who've gone before.

It's absolutely breathtaking.

adapting, supersizing, and creating innovations of their own.

The engineering and architectural teams of this real -life wonderland have

succeeded in making the impossible possible.

This is the most important project in my life.

When the first guest arrives, I will want to cry.

I love every part of the hotel.

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