Original subtitles

How do you build a museum

that honours the indigenous Americans of Oklahoma

by mapping the Earth's movement around the Sun?

The architects were hearing

the importance of seasonality,

of cycles,

of non-linear time.

What happens when you let one of the world's

most avant garde architects loose

in a medieval Spanish village?

We thought about why not Frank Gehry to help us.

And how do you breathe new life

into one of the world's biggest brick buildings

which is on the verge of collapse?

The condition was pretty horrendous,

concrete falling off the chimneys,

debris all around.

Welcome to a world where anything is possible,

the space where innovation and creativity collide.

Part building, part transformer...

It's incredible.

Where the only limit is human imagination.

This is mind blowing when you think about it.

We're talking about actually living on another planet.

Unpacking the miracles and mysteries of construction.

This was engineering

on a scale the world had never seen.

To ask...

How Did They Build That?

Turning 280 acres of old oil fields into a museum?

That's not a renovation, it's a redemption arc.

25 years later, a museum stands proud,

a beacon crowned with a 40-foot Remembrance wall

honouring the Indigenous tribes

who once called that land home.

It would take over two decades to complete...

There were several times when we felt

I don't know if or when it's going to finish.

...involve moving half a million tons of earth...

It's an homage to the mound-building cultures

...and tracking the Sun for a year.

It follows the cultural practices

that have been important to us since time immemorial.

But when they created The First Americans Museum

in Oklahoma,

boy did they build something special.

We wanted it to be a positive, uplifting story

because the history of native people

has not been so positive.

So, how did they build it?

The heart of Route 66,

home of the Great Plains

and famed for its grass prairies

and ancient mountains,

Oklahoma is named

after some of its first inhabitants.

It's the Choctaw word, that essentially translates

to "home of the red people."

Until 1830,

it's home to a handful of tribes

including Wichita, Apache, and Comanche,

but then everything changes.

Congress passes the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

It's one of the most powerful federal Indian laws

to affect native people for the rest of history.

Native Americans from over 60 tribes

are forced to move to Oklahoma.

A lot of people died along the way.

Around 100,000 people

are resettled here.

And the discovery of oil in the mid-19th century,

brought prosperity to many tribe members

living in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma in 1923

becomes the fourth leading world producer of oil.

It also witnesses a dark chapter

of American history.

We're seeing a lot of gentlemen move in from other areas

and they were marrying native women

who had land resource rights

for exploitation.

There were a lot of unscrupulous,

mysterious deaths that are taking place.

The impact of wars with settlers,

forced relocations and then efforts

to take control of the oil exploitation,

really caused the native population

to be reduced beyond imagination.

By the 1960s, talk of marking the histories

of the 39 tribes in Oklahoma begins.

30 years later, it starts to become a reality.

We tried to figure out what is so fundamental

to all 39 tribes that we could represent

what it's like to be a Native person,

that's what it's like to be American Indian.

Architects Johnson Fain

are chosen to design a museum

that will do exactly that.

It took years to conceptualize this,

because we had to understand the Native people.

It was crucial that the Native beliefs

and traditions were reflected not only in the building

but in the very fabric itself.

The architects were hearing

the importance of seasonality,

of cycles,

of non-linear time.

There was a lot of thought

put into the purpose of

and the role that things like the Sun and the Moon

and the stars play in our various tribal communities.

The design for the First Americans Museum

delivers that in spades.

Its geometry captures the importance

among native people of seasons,

circularity, and cycles.

The mound is inspired by ancestral practices,

while through its middle will be a tunnel

which perfectly frames the winter solstice,

one that's going to have to be strong and stable enough

to sit under the huge earth mound.

They also have to make sure

that 500 thousand cubic yards of soil

won't be washed away by the heavy rains.

Next, they'll have to erect a huge steel skeleton,

110 foot tall,

which will become the Hall of the People,

before covering it in over 900

differently sized glass panes.

Finally, they'll have to craft a reminder

of the native people who've lived and died there

from carved stone.

First though, they need somewhere to build it.

It seemed amazing, it seemed, um, daunting.

After a two-year search,

they find a site in Oklahoma City.

Originally tribal land, by the mid-1930s,

it was the second largest oil field in the US.

There was 56 abandoned oil wells on the property.

And it was terribly polluted.

And they had to clean it all up

and make sure the wells were capped.

That takes a year.

But in spring 2006,

the team is ready to start building the enormous mound

at the heart of the project.

Native peoples have been creating

these mound communities

for thousands and thousands of years.

The mounds were intrinsic

to the culture and beliefs of tribes

across the United States.

And they served many functions

from burials to ceremonies,

to even marking the seasons.

We were very intentional

about making sure the alignment of the Sun

during the solstices and the equinox

were taken into consideration.

So, the plan is to create a tunnel

through the mound which will perfectly frame

the setting sun at the winter solstice.

A tunnel that's strong enough to cope

with 500,000 cubic yards of soil on top.

The foundation is one

of the heaviest foundations I've seen.

As they build, torrential storms

make the work almost impossible.

It kept raining over and over.

Mud would silt into the formwork.

They built the foundation formwork three times

before we could finally get concrete in it.

Eventually, they move on to the tunnel itself.

There's about 4,000 cubic yards of concrete in it.

The tunnel walls are two-feet thick.

The ceiling of the tunnel's 32 inches thick.

In December 2007, the tunnel is cast.

And work starts constructing what will be amongst

the most engineered earth mounds anywhere.

Building a mound, uh, that one,

that was--that was a first for me.

Ninety feet tall and a thousand feet wide,

first, they need a lot of dirt.

Fifty thousand truckloads of soil

imported to the site over months.

The mound was built in layers.

Every 14-inch layer

is a row of reinforced plastic called geogrid.

Geogrid is an engineered polymer fabric

that is used to stabilize soil structures.

It is pinned to wire baskets.

And the wire baskets hold the soil in place.

Creating it requires a staggering

eight miles of baskets.

But in August 2008,

the mound's curving shape is complete.

And the team starts work on the vast central room

dubbed the Hall of the People.

It's built from a vast,

geometrically complex steel frame.

There are ten huge columns topped with massive trusses

that support a vast curving web of interlocking beams.

One of the columns

was about 16 tons,

just one of the 90-foot-tall columns.

That was a very complicated element

for us to make sure was done correctly.

Putting it together will seriously test the team.

It was so complicated.

The risk of steel not fitting was pretty high.

In Oklahoma, the team building

the First Americans Museum is piecing together

the 110 feet high Hall of the People.

But the vast curving web of interlocking steel beams

is so complicated,

there's a risk the prefabricated steels

won't fit.

We set the columns,

then they had cables

that would hold the columns in place.

And then they would take a truss

and fly it into place

and tie it to the top of the column.

Fortunately, everything fit properly, together.

Then, just as the project's

really starting to take shape...

We got two tornadoes on the ground,

we got one tornado there

and we got a second tornado there.

we had tornadoes that were really close together

and they were major tornadoes.

And they caused billions of dollars' worth of damage.

And there were many casualties from them.

Although they miss the site,

public funding is diverted

into emergency relief.

Unfinished, the entire project is put on hold.

When it got shut down, we really did not know

how long it would be shut down.

One year turns into two,

two turns into three,

and still, the funding doesn't return.

We didn't know how this was going to get finished.

After four years,

Oklahoma City and the Chickasaw nation

fund the project's completion.

And in 2020,

the team can finally glaze

the Hall of the People.

it was shrouded in glass to create,

like, the lens of an eye.

The 900-pane facade will be beautiful,

if it works.

Every piece of glass is slightly different size.

So, the level of precision

was just something I'd never seen before.

There was no assurance

that this was going to be successful.

Each piece of glass has four clamps.

So, you can imagine the opportunity

to make an error.

Finally, the last pane slots into place.

It was a very emotional moment

for myself, for all of the team.

There still remains one last challenge,

creating the 40-foot stone Remembrance walls

which frame the entrance.

Their stone carefully selected for its significance.

It was quarried in far south-east Oklahoma.

The colour represents the colour of the sky

at the sunrise and the sunset.

This is no ordinary stone.

This stone was so dense.

They had to have special tools and blades

on their saws just to cut it.

It's an exacting job

that takes another four months to complete.

It reminds us that many of our tribal relatives

who were being removed from other homelands,

perished along the way.

And then it celebrates people like myself

who are the descendants

of those who did make it here and who thrived.

And now we're part of the fabric of Oklahoma.

Finally, in September 2021...

some 25 years

after they first started drawing up plans,

the $175 million First Americans Museum

opens to the public.

The actual day we had the grand opening celebration,

I'll never forget it.

We have had to triumph over tragedy.

This time, it is with laughter and with joy.

Constructed from half a million tons of earth,

that perfectly align with the solstices,

home to several exhibitions

honouring the 39 Tribal Nations

in Oklahoma,

the First Americans Museum is a tribute to them,

their ancestors,

and their future place in the world,

for generations to come.

It's not really a museum.

In my mind, it's a spiritual kind of place

where people can go and connect the dots

where that they haven't had that before.

There were plenty of individuals

who thought it might never happen,

but we're here.

We have a living museum

to welcome all people into the future.

In my line of work, appearances matter.

And if I'm not looking my best, I get a little touch-up.

I still look like myself, only better.

But how do you touch-up an aging landmark

that's too big for a complete overhaul

and too famous to demolish?

Well, you replicate it brick by brick on the outside

and then change just about everything on the inside.

Simple, right?

Whoo, yeah, looks good.

London's Battersea Power Station

is one of the world's biggest brick buildings.

Its four iconic white chimneys,

unmissable and unforgettable.

Battersea has existed in the London skyline

for over 90 years.

At the end of its power producing life,

the building is considered so special

it isn't allowed to be demolished.

It was very dilapidated,

really crumbling.

But ideas to redevelop it fail again and again.

The condition was pretty horrendous,

concrete falling off the chimneys,

debris all around.

Then in 2012,

a multi-billion dollar rescue plan

is put together.

I don't think there'll ever be anything quite like that again.

So, how did they save it?

In the 1920s,

London was facing a power crisis,

not political, but electrical.

Because instead of having one central supply,

its electricity was produced by dozens of small companies.

It was crazy. At one point,

the city had up to 80 different companies.

It was like there was 24 different voltages

used across the city.

Then, in 1925,

a company plans to create

enormous coal-fired power stations

to supply the entire city,

one is Battersea on the banks of the Thames.

It was one of the first power stations of its type.

It was a showpiece, really, for electricity.

It had to be dramatic

and win Londoners' support.

The idea was to bring in

the most prominent famous architect of his day,

Giles Gilbert Scott.

Gilbert Scott's vision

was for an Art Deco masterpiece,

a cathedral-like power plant with four soaring chimneys

that looked like classical Greek columns.

Battersea power station at its peak

powered one-fifth or 20% of London.

But within 30 years,

a new generation of cleaner fuels

heralds the end of Battersea's coal-fired turbines.

In 1980, just before it's switched off,

Battersea Power Station is given a protected status,

meaning it can't be pulled down.

The question now is what to do with it?

The challenges faced by all owners

of Battersea Power Station

is the sheer scale and size of this building.

Its footprint is six acres.

Then in 2012,

the entire site is bought by developers

with plans to create one of Europe's biggest office,

retail and residential spaces.

London-based architects, WilkinsonEyre,

are chosen to design it.

Now, we've got this massive project

which we've never done something on that scale,

and actually now we're gonna need to deliver it.

Battersea Power Station

will be a complicated project

from beginning to end

as they create a luxury super mall

out of the decaying shell.

The first challenge, and it's a huge one,

is stopping the old building from falling down.

But because it's protected,

they have to keep as much as possible

and where they replace anything,

it has to match what was originally there.

Including finding a way to restore

the iconic 164-foot-tall chimneys.

Then, they'll need to figure out how to build

some of London's prime real estate

inside of it.

With 254 luxury apartments,

a brand-new shopping mall with restaurants,

a vast six-storey office and event space,

and two huge column-free entrance lobbies.

All topped off with rooftop gardens

and six acres of public park land.

Oh, and they'll need to figure out

how to install a glass elevator

in one of those iconic chimneys.

In 2013, the project starts.

So, the first time I went down to Battersea,

it was just a sense of awe,

but when you looked to the detail,

it was in a real poor state of repair.

I suppose the first challenge

was trying to comprehend the scale of the project.

Held up by a temporary steel frame

from the 1980s, job number one

is stopping the building's walls

from falling down.

It's 2015,

and in London, the team behind the restoration

of the massive Battersea Power Station discover,

it's in even worse condition than they expected.

So the brick walls at Battersea are enormous.

They are over 500 feet long

and almost 200 feet high.

Although it's made of brick,

it's actually a steel frame building.

The steel frame was erected

and then the brick work was clad around it

and it was tightly packed together

so there's no gap between the steel and the brickwork.

Thirty years exposed to British weather

has left it close to collapse.

So as the rainwater got in

and the steel started to rust,

the ever so small expansion of that steel

as the rust was created

meant that the brick

was popped off the steel.

Which then lets more water in from rain.

Which then corrodes the steelwork some more,

which then cracks it some more.

Almost a third of the bricks

are so badly damaged,

they will have to be replaced.

There are around six million bricks at Battersea.

We estimated that we needed about 1.7 million new bricks.

And with Battersea being a protected building,

that means 1.7 million new bricks

made to the original 1930s standards.

So overall, we ended up with about 21 different types

of brick that we needed to match.

After months of searching,

the team has been unable to find anyone

to match the 90-year-old bricks.

So we made this one phone call

to this brick makers,

all excited, working on Battersea Power Station.

Biggest regeneration project in Europe.

And in the background, I heard a voice say,

"Oh, we did the original bricks for that,"

and I said, "Who's that person?

Put them on the phone to me.

I need to speak to that person."

It turned out they were

the original brick suppliers from 1935.

Eighty years later, they're hand making

over a million more.

The walls, though, are only one part

of this mammoth restoration.

The most recognizable part

of Battersea power station

are its four magnificent chimneys.

Years of expelling carbon and sulphur dioxide

and water vapour has left them in a terrible state.

I climbed up the outside of the chimneys

and I could put my hand in cracks

and there were bits falling off.

It just wasn't safe.

Despite this,

they're considered so important,

the team has to follow strict rules.

We had to prove the concept that we could take

one chimney down and rebuild it.

So in other words, you were only allowed

to start the demolition of the second chimney

when the first one was done

and rebuilt about 50% of its height.

To do that, the team engineers

an ingenious circular scaffolding rig.

The rig is a naturally strong ring shape

that shores up the chimney as it is demolished.

A big funnel or chute is fitted inside it

to drop the rubble into.

Using mechanical hand tools,

operatives basically sort of nibbled away

at the edges of the chimney and it went down the chute,

filled up the lorry and was taken away.

After six months of painstaking work,

the first chimney is down.

The next challenge is building it back up

exactly matching the original.

The chimneys were far from simple to rebuild.

A lot of people don't realize it's not just a circle,

- it's an ellipse. - When you measured them

absolutely properly using GPS,

you found that they were at slightly different heights,

undetectable to the naked eye.

They decide the best way to rebuild them

is doing it how they were built originally.

Each chimney was rebuilt with hand-poured concrete,

just like they did in the 1930s.

You would create a small batching plant

at the bottom of the chimney and make the concrete

in relatively small quantities.

That would then be taken to the bottom with a hoist.

The hoist would then go up

to where the chimney was working.

So that varied from 50 meters at the bottom

to 100 meters at the top.

And then the hoist discharged into wheelbarrows

and then the guys would pull the wheelbarrows over the top.

It was 25,000 wheelbarrow loads of concrete.

Each chimney was over 6,000 loads.

Six months later,

with the first chimney almost rebuilt,

work starts on demolishing the second.

And there's a problem.

Peregrine falcons have been nesting here

on the power station building since 2000.

At Battersea Power Station in London,

one of Europe's biggest restoration projects,

the team has an unusual problem to resolve.

Highly protected Peregrine Falcons

have been using the abandoned building

as a home to raise their chicks.

Which causes a problem because the Peregrine Falcons

are right at the top of protection of wildlife.

Making sure that we looked after them

was a key part of what we did.

So we built a 50-meter-high steel frame mini tower,

temporary tower.

We actually moved that around site three times

over the ten years that I was there.

Whilst the falcons were in their temporary home,

she managed to fledge 22 chicks,

which is an incredible success story.

Finally, in July 2017,

with the falcons rehoused, and the chimneys rebuilt,

the team faces its next mammoth challenge.

And obviously this building was designed for machine,

not for human.

To bring light in, they plan to create

a giant column-free entrance lobby

at the north end.

But somehow, it needs to support eight floors above.

One thing that we had to install was this huge beam,

and it ended up being a 62 ton steel beam.

The girder was 90 feet long.

It arrived via truck with an escort

through the streets of London to the site.

It still is the longest load that was taken into London.

It was an amazing moment for all of us.

And it'll take a supersized crane

to lift it into place.

So there's only two cranes of this size in Europe

that could do the job.

We're right at the limit of what that crane could lift.

Slowly but surely, the massive beam

is hoisted into place.

Seeing it being lifted into place

was a momentous time for us and great to see.

With the steel framework in place,

it takes another 36 months for the offices,

apartments, and retail spaces to take shape.

Then finally in October 2022,

Battersea opens its doors for the first time

in almost 40 years.

And the public gets to enjoy it

from the inside for the first time too.

The power station is all about the original building

and the existing structure

and being able to see that

everywhere you go is amazing.

That includes one of its best-loved features.

And we designed as a bit of a joke.

Why not trying to bring a lift into one of the chimneys?

Using 3D simulation software,

the team designs a unique 160 square foot glass elevator

inside one of the chimneys.

There's a light show and you can see the inside

of the chimney walls as you rise.

And then you pop out at the top

and London is just revealed.

And two of its most important residents

are safely rehoused

at the foot of the chimney stack.

They have a penthouse apartment

with two front doors, a service hatch,

and a balcony overlooking the River Thames.

You know, it's often said that the best buildings

are saying something.

Well, the Rioja Hotel in Spain

sings a show-stopping drinking song.

And that's because the Frank Gehry designed hotel

sits on top of a 160-year-old wine cellar

holding more than 100,000 vintage bottles.

One sec. Hey, somebody give me a corkscrew.

Lot of wine to drink.

Come on.

El Ciego in Northern Spain is wine country.

A medieval town surrounded by acre upon acre

of rolling vineyards and wineries.

They've been producing wine

in the Rioja region

since before the Roman times.

That's over 2,000 years.

Tradition is in the buildings and the soil.

But in 2002, that's all about to change,

when one of the world's most avant garde architects

is asked to design a hotel.

When you choose Frank Gehry to design one of your buildings,

you can guarantee it's gonna be something

out of this world.

So how did they build it?

Set in 30 acres of vineyards,

the Marqués de Riscal winery

remained pretty much unchanged

since it was established.

It was founded in 1858 by the Marqués de Riscal.

Then in the late '90s,

they decide it's time for a change.

We needed a whole transformation

in the world of wine,

which had become completely global.

They plan to put the winery on the world map,

by creating a hotel above the cellars.

Inspired by the success of the Guggenheim

in nearby Bilbao, they want it to be bold.

We thought about why not Frank Gehry to help us.

His style is so unique.

Architect Frank Gehry could certainly do unique.

During his life, he created many groundbreaking buildings

including The Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A.,

and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center

for brain health.

Each project is a new thing for him,

now he needs to have a challenge.

Fitting one of his maverick designs

right next to a medieval Spanish village

certainly offers that.

Frank had a clear idea since the first day

that the building had to play

with the medieval church in the village.

Taking his lead from the village

and countryside, Gehry sketches his vision

for an extraordinary hotel

sitting under an undulating roof

which will change Elciego forever.

You create this new object,

which then starts to create a new history.

Raised up on a pedestal

with a roof of incredible

fluid shapes shimmering in the sunlight,

it will look like a twisting mass

of metallic ribbons blowing in the wind.

Somehow, all of this will need to be built

over the existing cellars without damaging

the irreplaceable wine in them.

Then they'll need to work out how to create

the eye-wateringly complex steel frame

designed to carry the sweeping curves

of the ribbon-like roof

before somehow fitting thousands of titanium panels,

each needing to be perfectly bent,

to form a vast undulating canopy.

I thought at the beginning it's impossible

to build this building.

In spring 2003,

the team's first challenge gets underway,

constructing the columns

on which the whole building will balance.

The building is on top of three legs

because it had to have the view, you know, so that is elevated.

It's a job made more difficult

because all of this is directly above cellars

holding millions of dollars' worth of wine

which can't be moved.

There had to be a way to penetrate

these cellars to bring the forces from the building

down to actual ground.

And so, yeah, that was a huge challenge.

And then...

In Spain, the team building a hotel

designed by Frank Gehry over a cellar

containing an awful lot of irreplaceable wine

has hit a problem.

While 5,000 bottles are carefully cleaned by hand,

above ground, the team is working out

how to balance the hotel on three columns.

We were having only these three main columns.

And this is a problem for the stability

of the whole building.

The base for the hotel will sit on the columns,

but it will overhang by so much,

ordinary concrete won't be strong enough.

To post tension,

you put high-strength steel cables

inside of the concrete,

and then once the concrete hardens,

you release the tension,

and the cables are now tightened on the concrete.

The compressed concrete with the tight steel

makes it more efficient,

by allowing the slab to be longer

and thinner without cracking.

Get this wrong

and the whole slab will collapse.

We were controlling this post-tensioning.

We were checking that all the deflections

were according to the models.

Okay, everything was perfect, but I was feeling like...

Next, the team turns to creating

Gehry's undulating roof canopy

that will sit on a specially designed steel skeleton.

For the steel structure of the canopies,

we were looking to avoid bending moments.

Bending all the steel into curves

would be complicated and expensive.

So instead, they built a framework of triangles.

Because triangles can't bend out of shape,

they remain strong and stable.

Those triangles create long,

rigid spans to hold the roof up.

That means that only the outer columns

need to bend and curve

to achieve those flowing shapes.

The structure won't be stable until it's complete.

Until then, it'll need to be supported.

And on this building, that's no mean feat.

It was like little by little,

we were rowing up the scaffolding,

adapted to the steel structure.

With the steel skeleton well under way,

in December 2003, the team now needs

to source the titanium panels that will cover it.

The inspiration for the colours came largely

from the colours in the landscape,

which obviously is reflected in the colour of the wine.

This, though, is far from a simple task.

We needed to work with people from Japan,

the only people in the world

knew how to get...

titanium coloured.

The question is,

can they get the exact colours Gehry wants

over the 30,000 square feet of canopy?

I was very concerned because if not match the colour,

doesn't work, and it needed to match, no?

They dip the metal into a chemical solution

and then pass an electric current through it.

Change the voltage, you change the colour,

which means even the tiniest variation

in the current will change the colour on the surface.

Thankfully, it's a success.

In May 2005,

work begins riveting the panels into place.

Each piece was laid by hand on the steel,

and when it comes to actually riveting the panels,

you have to be exact down to the millimetre,

because if you weren't,

it wasn't gonna look like the model.

There had to have been hundreds of thousands,

if not millions of rivets.

With the undulating roof complete,

the final challenge is working out

how to keep the incredibly complex shape pristine.

I was worried about the cleaning

with the delicate canopies

flying around the building.

Luckily, there is a very modern solution

to the very modern problem.

Marques de Riscal hotel

was one of the most difficult buildings to clean.

You have different structures

and then the wind affects different areas

in a different way.

It takes 12 days to clean the hotel,

but the results are spectacular.

For us was an honour,

because it's one of those unique places in the world.

We're very happy with the results.

In July 2006,

three years since construction began,

the incredible Marques de Riscal hotel

welcomes its first guests.

It sits in beautiful contrast

to the medieval village of Elciego next door.

It's brought a lot of tourism to the village,

and I think it's brought a new,

kind of, new life, if you will.

One of only two hotels Frank Gehry designed

in his 96 years.

Its curving titanium canopy glistens

among the famous vineyards.

Frank was in love with this building.

He was always very proud about Riscal.

Riscal was, for him, a small project,

but very fantastic.

A 19th century winery,

and its medieval neighbour, utterly transformed.

Nowadays, I think that you cannot understand Elciego

without this building, or this building

without Elciego.

They are so different

that they match perfectly.

It's my baby, I'm very proud of the result.

In a world where imagination,

innovation, and creativity

define the spaces that surround us,

How Did They Build That? shows again and again

that humankind will overcome the seemingly impossible.