Original subtitles

How do you build a soaring winged museum

in a desert that uses sand

to keep it cool?

It was probably the hardest building to build

I've ever dealt with, by far.

What happens when 3D printing technology

means you can build almost anything

out of whatever you like?

Can we go bigger?

Can we use 3D printing

and build something grander,

build something more complex?

And how do you build

one of the world's biggest fish markets,

so that part of it lives under the sea?

We have a building where the water wants

to push it back up again.

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.

Dr. Mabry: 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?

The extreme desert heat can really mess with your mind,

you start seeing things that aren't really there.

But the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi,

that's no mirage, it's an oasis.

With 403-foot wings

that draw in cool air from deep underground,

it's the kind of place that gives you the chills

the moment you step inside.

Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates

is home to some of the world's

most exciting architecture.

It's a world away

from the Abu Dhabi of old.

Just 70 years ago,

this was a sparsely populated coastal town

that depended on fishing, pearling,

and Bedouin desert life for survival.

Then in the 1960s,

oil production transforms Abu Dhabi

from a busy fishing port

into a modern capital of hotels and high-rises.

Its leader, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan,

has even bigger plans.

In 1971, he unites Abu Dhabi

with six of its neighbours

to create the United Arab Emirates.

As the first president of the UAE,

Zayed aligned the seven states.

They pooled their resources,

coordinated development.

He remained at the centre of that growth

for the rest of his life.

With his passing in 2004,

the Emirates wants to create a national museum

inspired by his vision, values, and legacy

that tells the ancient story of the UAE.

His Highness was a great advocate

of culture and heritage.

Visionary architect Norman Foster,

the man behind London's Gherkin,

and the awe-inspiring Millau Viaduct in France,

is selected to design something spectacular.

A national museum

is a very special kind of museum,

because it's telling a story.

A story which encapsulates

both Sheik Zayed and what he represents.

Sheik Zayed was an extraordinary person.

And his passions, probably one

of the earliest environmentalists.

The greening of the desert.

And falconry, very traditional.

So how do you merge these separate passions

so it's really one integrated story?

Lord Foster's vision

for the Zayed National Museum

is nothing short of stunning.

A 950,000-square-foot jewel in the UAE's crown,

built out of the sands surrounding Abu Dhabi.

Making it a reality, though,

will mean overcoming huge obstacles,

the first of which

is creating a deep stable foundation

within the shifting sands.

Then the team will need to sculpt

a huge central atrium

that appears as if it's been carved

from a single piece of rock.

Sitting on top, will be four enormous

pod-shaped galleries,

each weighing 12 million pounds,

and crowned by five enormous steel and glass-winged towers

inspired by a falcon in flight.

Oh, and they somehow need to keep the museum cool

in the searing heat of up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

Finally, the team must find a material

suitable to create the thousands of panels needed

to clad the building's base,

which are both light and textured,

to ripple like the desert landscape.

The result won't just be an architectural masterpiece,

but a monument to the country

and its founding father Sheik Zayed.

It was probably the hardest building to build

I've ever dealt with,

by far.

In February 2010, work begins.

The first challenge, digging out

the 250,000-square-foot foundation

without the sand collapsing.

Steel sheet piles are driven into the ground

to hold back the sand,

allowing them to excavate safely

and create the foundations below.

To do that involves drilling 1,100 piles

and 3,000 tons of steel reinforcement

75 feet underground

to stop the building from sinking.

A year and a half later,

the groundwork is complete.

But just as they look to their next challenge,

disaster.

A pivotal moment

in the financial crisis.

Everything stopped.

And they said, "Well, we've got a real problem."

The repercussions of the financial crisis

stopped work for six long years.

But finally, work starts up again

creating the museum,

which will rise up from the sands,

as if part of the landscape.

This building is very unique.

It's placed in Abu Dhabi.

Its colouration is linked to being here.

If you look in the Emirates,

you have different colours of sand.

Abu Dhabi has a very light-coloured sand,

and therefore, the intention was that

the concrete colour then matched that.

The team's first challenge,

creating concrete

the exact colour they want.

Dr. Kwami: Concrete is made up of a mix

of sand, cement, aggregate, and water.

If you wanna change the colour of the concrete,

you can just add pigment to the mix.

But here, the team want the concrete

to look as natural as possible

without using tints or dyes.

We found that utilizing a dune sand

actually makes the concrete go darker.

So the concrete colour comes from a washed beach sand.

For the aggregate,

they turn to a Gulf neighbour.

This white concrete is special marble gravel

that comes from Oman.

And all of these elements are built in a batching plant,

which is dedicated to this project.

It'll take 110,000 tons

of the sand-coloured concrete

to build the museum,

starting with a 47,000-square-foot

central atrium,

which comes with a very challenging design.

Our intention was that it almost appeared

as if it was carved out of one piece of stone,

like it was a cave.

The architect really wanted

a special type of layering,

which gives it this kind of sedimentatious, er, layers

that are--that have been there for like millions of years.

Somehow the team must recreate

a geological process that takes millions of years

from concrete that takes hours

to pour and set.

So what they did was look to the concrete itself,

then they calculated the time it took to dry and cure

when poured at different heights and at different rates,

so they could produce

the natural rock layering effect they were after.

It was found that the layering height

would be 350 millimetres,

and that would be 350 millimetres per hour.

By doing so, once that had been poured,

the concrete had set enough

to be able to start pouring the next layer.

On September 30th, 2019, the team is ready

to start pouring the atrium's 130-foot high walls.

It had to be right first time.

There was no second opportunity to make good.

Giant robotic arms,

known as concrete placing booms,

allow the team to pump the concrete

to exactly where it's needed

at exactly the rate they want.

We had four pipes

pouring concrete at the same time

and we had teams of hundreds of people

just making sure that we weren't having bubbles.

And those operations started at, like, 4:00 p.m.

and lasted to the next day,

till 6:00, 7:00 in the morning.

Once the concrete process had started,

it had to continue

until we completed the first stage.

Over two years, the towering atrium walls

are successfully cast in three phases,

achieving the layered rock finish

the team is after.

I'd never seen such an attention to detail.

To provide that consistent finish

is quite an achievement.

The next challenge is creating

the vast steel-framed pod galleries

that will float above the main atrium.

And with so much time to catch up,

they get creative.

The gallery pods were welded together

right next to the main structure,

which meant that the rest of the construction

could happen at the same time,

so it significantly sped up the build.

By December 2021,

the steel frames for the pods have been assembled.

The challenge now is manoeuvring them

into position.

They're enormous, huh? They are--they are

1,000 feet wide, heavy steel,

which weighs 600 tons.

Everybody was very nervous.

I didn't sleep for three days before.

In Abu Dhabi, construction on the country's

Zayed National Museum, is picking up a pace

as the team running on adrenaline,

prepares to lift the first pod gallery into position

with the world's second biggest crane

brought in specially to do the job.

The time to install the crane took two months,

just installing the crane with other cranes.

One wrong move could spell disaster.

For a construction project of a building,

this is completely, erm, unique

to lift this kind of 600-ton structure.

Gradually, the first enormous pod

is manoeuvred.

It will sit in a hole that's barely bigger than the pod

so it has to be positioned exactly.

You have to understand the pods are held up

from three positions only.

I mean, we're talking about, er, a one-inch tolerance.

After a tense five hours,

the first pod is lowered perfectly into position.

It was a fantastic achievement

because all of the sudden, you got a sense

of the museum coming to life.

You got a sense of the space.

The remaining three pods

follow well within schedule

as the team turns its attention

to the next challenge:

the wing-like towers.

So there are five wings on the buildings

and they have an aerodynamic profile.

The wing structure itself is fully welded.

Each wing has about 5,000 structural welds within that,

and that then forms a rigid shell structure.

Next, they install

more than 6,000 triple glazed window panes,

which not only let light

into the gallery spaces below,

but also helped control the building's temperature.

We needed air movement.

And then we said, "Well, if we create

something that heats up,

then we could draw the air through heat

to the top of these towers."

The ingenious plan is to use hot air

rising up the wings to pull cool air

from a huge underground pipe.

Because even in the fierce midday sun,

go down 43 feet

and it's 86 degrees Fahrenheit all year round.

The air which is going to cool that building

is going to come from under the desert floor,

which is always cool.

With the wing-like towers complete,

in January 2023,

the team begins their final challenge,

creating the intricate mound

which will enclose the museum.

Once again, inspiration comes from

the local landscape.

We travelled around all the Emirates.

And what you found was just quite sharp

angular mountainous areas.

And we said, "Well, maybe we could take those areas,

digitize them,

and recreate the effect

of that landscape as the mound."

Now they just need the right material to build it.

They choose a composite

of concrete mixed with glass fibre.

Dr. Mabry: Glass reinforced concrete,

it's fantastic for that sort of thing.

It's lightweight,

it can be thinly and precisely cast,

but it still looks like stone,

which is the finish they want.

While the 1,700

individual panels are being cast,

the engineers create an intricate steel framework

around the building's base to attach them to.

They're gigantic, they weigh up to 12 tons,

and so getting them aligned and fixed inside the steel

was a big challenge.

It took us a year to develop

and then it took us, er, another year to install them,

and it was five months to get the first four panels up.

And each one had to be laid

with one millimetre, er, adjustments.

It was a huge jigsaw.

Piece by piece, the structure comes together.

We worked night and day

to show it could be done.

And it was, for me, the most mentally

and physically challenging thing,

uh, I've ever had to do.

On December the 2nd, 2025,

the anniversary of the UAE's unification,

17 years after work began,

the Zayed National Museum

prepares to open its doors.

Lord Norman: Nothing really prepares you

for the "Oh, my God" moment

when you--when they take away the scaffolding.

Its soaring falcon-inspired wings

dramatically strike out into the sky,

quietly powering the ingenious lighting

and cooling system within.

While inside is an oasis of calm,

with the rippling concrete walls

diffusing gentle pools of light

across the vast gallery pods.

There are elements that some people thought

it was impossible to do.

It's a building that,

like the ancient buildings,

is built from the sand

it came on.

And that is timeless.

This building is going to be

one of the highlights of my career, for sure.

The museum is not just a monument

to a proud nation's history,

it's the ultimate tribute to Sheik Zayed's

special contribution to the region.

For His Highness, we hope that this museum

is a fitting legacy.

People who come here, they're all astonished.

Lord Norman: It's rare that a project evolves,

which is, in so many ways, unique.

And maybe that's because

there's only one Sheik Zayed

and there's only one Emirates.

On this series, we like to bring you

construction at its most dramatic,

cranes clinging to the edge of a mountain,

divers digging foundations deep under water.

But now, How Did They Build That?

tops them all by bringing you

a man building a bridge and tower,

by pressing print.

The 20th century was built on mass production.

Millions of identical products

rolling off assembly lines

transformed manufacturing

around the world.

Now, in the 21st century,

3D printing promises a new future,

one where unique items can be made by robots

without having to create special machinery

or expensive moulds.

By building objects layer by layer

from a digital design,

you can see how 3D printing has the potential

to create pretty well any unique shape.

So, using programmed robots opens up a world

where the only limitation

is imagination.

From prosthetics and medical implants

to jet engine parts,

it's already transformed industries

across the globe.

But what if you could print our cities of the future?

Well, 3D printing is being upscaled

to do exactly that.

The robot is able to create, erm, surfaces

and articulations on the surface

and ornament that, for decades,

has been prohibitively expensive to create.

It's 2015,

and in Amsterdam, The Netherlands,

the pioneers of this technology, MX3D,

are pushing 3D printing further than ever before.

When we were thinking what is the most radical

but still practical way to convince people

this is a new technology to be looked at,

uh, we came up with the idea of printing a bridge.

The city agrees,

selecting a location

where the bridge will span 40 feet

across the canal unsupported.

What's more, the first person to cross it

will be the Queen of The Netherlands.

What's better to prove that this technology works

than to just print a bridge,

put it in the city centre of Amsterdam,

have the Queen walk over it,

and show everybody it works.

The big question is,

what material to print it from.

You have 3D printers that can print concrete

or plastics, polymers.

Is that gonna be strong enough?

In Amsterdam, the team looking

to 3D print a 40-foot bridge

without any traditional supports

and place it across one of the city's busiest canals,

is figuring out what material

to print it in that's strong enough

to hold 100 pedestrians,

and the Queen of The Netherlands.

With testing, we saw that metal

was much stronger than, er, most, er, people expected.

It'll be the first time

anyone has tried anything like this.

In March 2017,

with stainless steel chosen,

they're ready to press print using a process called

wire arc additive manufacturing.

So, wire is the input material,

the arc is the electric current

that you use to melt the wire,

and additive manufacturing is the same as 3D printing.

Drop by drop, molten metal

is deposited and solidifies,

building up layers to create

the stainless-steel structure.

Robots fitted with welding torches

melt six and a half tons of steel wire

to fabricate the bridge in four main sections.

You don't need manual welders,

manual labourers anymore,

which can be really good in industries

where a labour shortage is growing.

It takes the robots six months

of working around the clock to complete the print.

The system has other benefits too.

Due to the digital process,

there is no human error anymore.

So you don't need extensive control,

um, to see if everything went according to plan,

because you already have a full documentation of that.

The city, though, needs a little more

convincing that the bridge is safe.

We put 20 tons on top and 20 tons is more

than it would ever need to take.

And then we just wanted to test it

in a real life way as well.

And we just started jumping on it

and it behaved perfectly.

With the bridge well and truly tested,

the unconventional gives way to the conventional

as it's transported into the city

and lifted into place.

When it was craned in position,

this really felt like, er,

a big moment for us, for the team,

for me personally as well,

because I had many doubts over the years.

It's an even bigger moment

when the bridge is opened by Queen Maxima

of the Netherlands...

Today and...

Whoo.

...who then safely crosses to the other side.

But if you think printing a bridge is cool,

wait till you see what's coming next.

Because in 2021, the mountain village

of Mulegns in Switzerland decides 3D printing

a tower will really put them on the map.

People have built 3D-printed small one

or two-story houses out of concrete,

and there was this desire to see

can we go bigger?

Can we use this concrete in a structural way

and build something grander,

build something more complex?

Working with ETH Zurich University,

they plan to create an elegant

100-foot tall white tower

with a performance space at the top,

built using columns entirely 3D-printed in concrete.

In June 2021, the team's first challenge

is working out whether a structure

this ambitious is even possible.

There's a computer program

that runs and is able to create

variations of these columns.

We went through hundreds and hundreds

and hundreds of iterations, erm,

until we arrived at a form that we thought would work.

All well and good on paper,

but usually in construction,

concrete is poured into moulds

or "formwork", which holds it in shape as it sets.

But here, the concrete has to support itself

instantly as it squirts from the print nozzle.

It needs to, on the one hand,

be liquid enough that it can be applied,

but it needs to dry quickly enough

so that the layers, um, stick together

and it can't be too runny

so that the entire thing falls apart.

The solution:

engineering the perfect concrete recipe.

They added viscosity enhancers,

which allowed them to control the flow of the concrete

through the print nozzle while accelerators rapidly hardened

each new layer before the robot's next pass.

The next challenge is making the structure

strong enough because the taller it gets,

the more the tower will be affected by weight and wind.

So the team starts working out how to

get steel reinforcement or rebar

into the hollow printed columns,

as you would with a traditional build.

One of the key innovations in this project is that there's

two robots working in tandem, in parallel.

You have one robot that extrudes the concrete,

and then another robot comes in and places a piece of rebar

into the concrete.

And this would allow us to build significantly higher,

and I think it's the first time that,

um, you have rebar robotically-integrated

into 3D printer concrete.

After three years of development,

the team is ready for the real challenge:

printing the tower itself.

We used a large arm that allowed us,

um, the best, er, stability control,

uh, but also still allowed us to print

up to three-metre tall columns.

It has an extruder head on it

that creates a filament of concrete,

and it gets really deposited layer by layer by layer.

Over five months,

the robots print an extraordinary

155 miles of concrete,

adding steel reinforcement

into each of the tower's 32 columns.

In a traditional building, the cost and complexity

of creating different moulds for the columns

would mean they'd likely all be the same.

Here, it's a different story.

As we are eliminating the formwork entirely

from the fabrication process, we can basically individualize

and differentiate these columns

and every single print path

for each column, er, was, er, different.

In July 2024,

after five months of fabrication,

each uniquely shaped column is ready to be transported

the 100 miles to Mulegns,

ready for the final test.

There's several tense moments lifting these

relatively heavy columns.

Because if the team's calculations

are out by a fraction, the columns won't align,

and they'll have to start all over again.

In the village of Mulegns, Switzerland,

the team behind the world's first fully 3D-printed

concrete tower, is methodically assembling

the 32 columns, which will take it soaring

a hundred feet into the air--

that's if they align.

It's the first time when you can really evaluate

if everything fits well together.

As work progresses,

steel cables are threaded

and tensioned through the columns

to hold the tower rigid.

And then they fit together

exactly as they'd been designed.

This prefabrication allowed an incredibly fast construction.

So each floor of the tower was assembled within a day.

In May 2025, the tower named Tor Alva

is unveiled to the public for the first time.

One hundred feet tall

and capped with a performance space,

the tower pushes the boundaries

of construction and 3D printing.

The opening ceremony was, er, quite spectacular.

For the first time, we saw actually the tower

fully at this moment.

Thank God it looked just like it had

in the renderings.

It was a very exciting moment for us all.

It's an extraordinary achievement

and leaves you wondering whether in the future

whole cities will be created

at the touch of a button.

The moment you have a desire

for more expressive shapes and forms,

I think this, erm, technology

can be very competitive.

It's for sure an example

of how digital fabrication

can influence future building.

And very specifically also how concrete printing

can be used for new kind of architectures.

After 60 years, the original Sydney Fish Market

had seen better tides.

So a new plan took shape. The goal?

A working fish market, a marine habitat,

and a landmark worthy of Sydney's skyline,

all in one building.

The result is genuinely remarkable,

which means the talented team behind it can now sit back

and enjoy the sweet smell of...

success.

Alongside the smell of tuna and lobster.

From the Opera House

to the Bridge,

with around two million visitors a year,

Sydney Harbour is one

of the world's busiest waterfronts.

But in 2016, there's one building

that's letting the place down:

Sydney Fish Market.

It's fair to say the old market wasn't purpose-built.

It was a big open room.

You could see the strain the whole site had,

keeping the public separate from the wholesale activity.

A lot of the times, you couldn't do it.

Yes, it was authentic, and you could feel

that you were in a fish market,

but you also had the risk of being backed over

by a forklift as you were walking around.

So in 2016,

the New South Wales Government

decides to demolish the aging market

and build a new destination for locals

and tourists alike right next door.

Danish architects 3XN

and local architects BVN,

who together created Sydney's Quay Quarter Tower,

are brought in.

Our approach was to maintain the authenticity

of an operating fish market, not to hide it.

so we want to allow everybody to see that process.

The brief was to take a piece

of working industrial infrastructure

and make it a joyous public event.

Their vision is to create

a destination location of fish market and restaurants

spread over 280,000 square feet

floating in the bay and topped

with an incredible timber roof.

But building it will be full of challenges;

including creating a dry area

where they can work.

They'll have to find a way to sit the building

above the seabed so it doesn't disrupt

the water circulation in the bay.

Then they'll need to anchor it,

because when it's built,

the entire structure will want to pop up

like a boat and float away.

Having created a dry site to work in,

the first time they'll know if the market is watertight

is when they re-flood the site.

The main building will hold no major surprises,

but the extraordinary roof that tops it

will be difficult to design and build.

Somehow it needs to bring in light,

harvest rainwater,

and keep the building cool

while looking like fish scales.

When all that's done, they need to find a way

of turning back time

to when the bay was full of biodiversity.

A fair amount to do then.

When I first saw the design,

I thought instantly that we knew

that it was going to be a real kind of connector

of the city and another kind of icon of Sydney.

Construction kicks off in January 2021.

The team's first challenge

is how to construct this huge building

out into the bay without affecting the sea life.

It was important that it has the least amount

of impact on water circulation in the bay,

so we decided to put the building on stilts.

And the stilts enable water to actually circulate

under the fish market.

The problem is that the working fish market

needs to be on public display at ground level,

so everything that supports it

has to be pushed down

to the basement level underwater.

But building below the waterline

creates a big headache

because the building

wants to float.

We have a building which, to all intents and purposes,

we are pushing down into the water.

And as soon as we start to try and push it down into water,

the water wants to push it back up again.

So there's actually more uplift

on the fish market than there is

gravitational loads coming down.

Standard vertical piles alone aren't enough

to deal with these powerful forces.

The solution lies in some clever engineering

including raker piles.

Dr. Kwami: Raker piles are columns driven

into the bed rock at an angle.

And by attaching the building to piles which are angled,

as well as vertical, you can compensate

for the forces from the water

which are pushing sideways and up.

Pushing 481 marine piles

ten feet into the bedrock

takes some serious muscle.

And when I say serious...

Most of those were being done with

a pile hammer called Thor's Hammer.

Using massive hydraulic force

to hammer the piles into the harbour floor,

Thor's Hammer lives up to its name.

These hammers could strike

50 to 60 blows per minute.

By November 2022, the last pile is locked in,

ready for the team to start work

on the main structure.

But there's a problem.

The ground floor of this building

will sit entirely underwater.

Because we're building out over the water,

we're going to need to do that in a dry environment.

And so in order to do that, we have to build

what's called a cofferdam.

Now, a cofferdam is a large sheet steel wall,

uh, which goes around the full perimeter of the site

and that allows us to be able to de-water

that area within that sheet pile wall.

In January 2023,

with the cofferdam in place, the team starts pumping.

Over 26.5 million gallons of water

were de-watered from the cofferdam

over a two-week period to allow us

to get building the basement.

With a dry site, the construction team

turns its attention to the huge foundation mat,

which will sit on top of the piles.

And nearly 2,000 truckloads of concrete later,

they're ready to start building up.

It's absolutely essential they get this right,

as the building's lower floors

will sit in and underwater and need to withstand

the immense force of the ocean.

If they're not water-tight,

it will set the schedule back by months.

So as we complete basement structure, lower ground,

upper ground, and start building the mezzanine,

we can then gradually let the water

back into the cofferdam.

It's a nerve-wracking

moment for the team

as they prepare to discover

if their work has paid off.

In Sydney, Australia, the team behind the city's

new fish market is about to re-flood the cofferdam,

where the building's new concrete basement is built.

As 26 million gallons of seawater is unleashed,

they can only hope it's watertight.

If not, the building will flood,

costing millions of dollars, and creating months of delay.

I'll never forget when we re-watered that cofferdam

there was just a buzz in the air...

It was a huge success.

There was, er, a sense of kind of great pride

and achievement by the whole project team.

No leaks. The basement's good.

Working like a charm.

With the building holding back the sea,

in May 2024,

the team is ready to build

what will be the largest timber roof

in the Southern Hemisphere.

We wanted to make a roof that had more of a humane,

uh, feel to it than painted steel.

So timber, also being sustainable,

became an obvious choice for us.

Because we're in a marine environment,

it doesn't corrode like steel would.

But there's a problem.

Constructing the enormous roof frame

will require some huge timbers:

in fact, 594 pieces

each up to 100 feet long.

Making elements of timber out of a single piece of wood,

you know you'd need some pretty big trees to do that.

Instead, the team looks to a type

of timber that's even stronger than steel.

Glue-laminated timber, or glulam,

is made by taking strips of timber

and gluing them together.

And unlike solid timber, you can easily create

very long pieces which won't twist or warp.

I think the real benefit for the glulam

is it really gives a real warmth to it.

Um, but unlike steel,

it can't get knocked around as easily.

So we had to use soft slings and make sure

it was installed correctly.

Eight months and 594 beams later,

the last piece of timber is locked into place.

It's now ready for an extraordinary skin

to be added to the skeleton.

Made up of 407 prefabricated aluminium pods,

it will need to flow like the scales of a fish.

There was what we call the helicopter bracket

that was created that sits on top of the timber.

It could be rotated 360.

It had four arms that could then twist also,

360 degrees on each of those arms,

to handle every angle

where timber beam had to meet roof cassette.

What looks simple is actually part

of a smart roof system with each pod designed to do

more than just cover the building.

They have integrated photovoltaics,

which means harvesting energy from the sun.

It has windows in them, so it brings daylight

deep into the building, creating a market feel

like you're outside in the open under the roof.

And it's obviously also bringing water in on the roof,

making it kind of slide into two collection points.

That goes into a mechanical filtration system

that reuses it for wash down within the fish market.

It takes nearly a year,

but in February 2025,

the rippling roof is complete.

The roof gives the entire building its identity.

It captures the space,

it enables a marketplace connected to your environment.

There is though, one more challenge.

It's fair to say that the site

for the new Sydney Fish Market

was neglected from a biodiversity point of view

in the marine habitat.

A history of heavy industrial use in the area

has taken its toll.

This bay has suffered.

It's bio-adversity, not biodiversity.

Re-establishing the ecology

around the fish market was crucial.

But how to bring marine life

back to the bay?

There were cages that were placed underneath

the fish market which created habitats,

safe habitats for young fish.

They also 3D print tiles

that attach to the building

and mimic habitats in natural rock pools.

That provides the environment for molluscs,

for oysters and mussels

to live and grow and filter the water

to actually start to regenerate the water around us.

In January 2026, the new Sydney Fish Market

is ready for trading.

A new landmark for Sydney Harbour

and a place that celebrates the city's

enduring relationship with seafood.

The core of Sydney Fish Market is that it's still a living,

breathing fish market,

but it still gives the opportunity to the public

to still see what the fish market is all about.

The finished building

delivers exactly that,

from daily landings, through the auctions,

to restaurants full of the best seafood around.

I'm blown away at the architecture.

And I see a lot of fresh food. I'm really hungry.

I haven't eaten all day.

It's fascinating to see

how the fishmongers go about

their early mornings,

and the quality of the fish

is second to none.

All of this sitting under a five-acre floating canopy

that looks cool and cools the building.

For the people who made it possible,

it's a once-in-a-lifetime project.

I think it's a testament

to all of the work that's been done

by everybody, to see people here

under this fantastic timber roof

enjoying fish and chips.

The fish market instantly

becomes a city icon.

We had 100,000 people on the first day.

After eight weeks, we had a million people

through the door.

It's really been a great success.

And there's another sign of its success story

below the surface,

with marine life returning almost immediately.

We're already seeing fantastic results.

We're seeing fish come into the area

that we didn't see at the start of construction.

But we hope over the next, erm, coming years

that it continues to improve.

So now there really are

plenty more fish in the sea.

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.