Original subtitles

How do you build an arts centre

fit for a Rockefeller?

What is that?

Is it a spaceship

that has landed from alien planets?

Is it a grapefruit on a teacup?

How do you construct not one but two skyscrapers

on top of Americas busiest commuter rail yard?

You had to do it in a way where you were never obstructing them

or stopping that service.

And how do you create a floating fortress

to protect two billion dollars' worth of art ?

Certainly, building anything in Southern California,

earthquakes become a paramount concern.

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?

How do you like your eggs?

Some people want them sunny side up.

Some people want them over easy.

Nelson Rockefeller wanted his to weigh

an estimated 13,000 tons

and come with its own movie theatres.

Hey, that's the super rich for you,

they just build bigger.

It's 1959, New York State.

As it sits on the edge of an ambitious new era,

America is full of optimism.

Computers, automobile, erm, space program,

atomic power plants, all of that seemed to foretell,

you know, a future in which the old was bad

and the new was good.

The 1950s are the age

of the greatest expansion

of American economy

and we began to think that we can do anything.

That includes Governor Nelson Rockefeller,

one of America's wealthiest

and most powerful politicians.

In September 1959,

he's about to host a royal visit

which will change the face of the State capital, Albany.

Princess Beatrix

from the royal family of the Netherlands

visited Rockefeller here in Albany.

The story is that

Rockefeller walked around Princess Beatrix,

and was embarrassed about the centre of Albany

and the state of things.

He sees the city's huge, untapped potential

and wants to realize it.

At the time, Albany had stopped growing,

but it was still a fairly sizeable city,

and it's the state capital really because of location,

because it was accessible by river

from the west and from the south and north.

Rockefeller dreams of revolutionizing Albany

by creating a new 98-acre government headquarters,

called the Empire State Plaza.

Governor Rockefeller's goal

was to create one of the most architecturally significant

capital complexes in the world,

and create a monumental piece of architecture

that would symbolize the economic

and political power of the State of New York,

The Empire State Plaza will be the largest

and most expensive government complex

ever built in North America.

Its look is inspired by the Brutalist architecture

of Brazil's capital city, Brasilia.

People think the Brutalist movement of architecture

was named after the tough, stark, look of the buildings.

But it's actually from the French "béton brut",

which means "raw concrete."

And that's something those Brutalists love.

Reinforced concrete had really taken off

as an architectural medium.

You have the freedom of introducing curves.

It made possible buildings of unusual shapes

that we'd never beholded before.

If you had the skill, you could shape anything.

To pull off his vision,

the governor turns to Wallace Harrison,

one of the men behind Manhattan's Rockefeller Centre.

Governor Rockefeller was good friends

with the primary architect, who was Wallace Harrison.

Er, they worked together and conceptualized the plan

for the plaza itself.

At its heart, will be a signature building

that will stop people in their tracks.

An extraordinary looking performing arts centre.

What is that?

Is it a spaceship

that has landed from alien planets?

Is it a grapefruit on a teacup?

Then it all becomes clear.

The architects and planners

began referring to it

as "that egg-shaped building,"

and the name stuck.

The plan is for the new

1500-seater arts space

to perch on an impossibly narrow stem,

rising out of the plaza's underground concourse.

With the egg made almost entirely of concrete,

keeping it upright in Albany's soft soil,

will involve the engineers building a foundation

six-storeys deep.

Next, to hold the exterior at exactly the right angle

during construction,

they'll have to hand-design

a giant wooden mould ready for the concrete

and 4.2 million pounds of steel reinforcement.

Then they must find a way to prevent the superstructure

from bulging in the middle,

and collapsing under its own weight

before casting a flawless shell

from 6,400 cubic feet of concrete

during a blazing New York summer.

It's just amazing that The Egg was done

without the aid of some of the tools

that engineers and designers

take for, er, granted nowadays.

It's Fall 1962,

and the controversial job of preparing the entire site

for the plaza project begins.

It involves clearing 40 city blocks

and more than 1,100 homes and businesses.

It's followed by the largest urban excavation of its day,

readying the site for the plaza's

underground complex.

The state had to excavate three million cubic yards

of dirt and clay.

A dump truck can carry 20 cubic yards,

so if you just do the math,

that's several hundred thousand

dump truck trips.

Over two years,

the team transports enough dirt

to fill the Empire State Building skyscraper,

twice over.

They filled a ravine just to the south

of the job site called Dutch Hollow.

It was about 150 feet deep at the time

and today it's level.

Even then, they're a long way

from solid ground.

Albany is a difficult place to build

because it was the bottom of a lake,

a glacial lake that was formed, er, ten or 12,000 years ago.

And as streams flowed into the lake,

they would bring clay.

Soft clay shrinks when it dries

and swells when it's wet,

causing the structures on top to sink,

if they're not supported properly.

An example we'll all be familiar with

is Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The plan is to sink 25,000 steel piles

which will pierce through the clay,

into the bedrock underneath.

The foundation for the plaza will then sit on top.

They had to drive piles

between 70 and 90 feet into the ground

to support the entire structure

that ultimately the plaza

and The Egg itself are based on.

It starts well, but then there's a problem.

Because the clay is so wet and sticky,

the immense pressure of driving the steel pile into the earth

displaces the clay horizontally.

This causes the neighbouring pile

which has already been driven into the bedrock,

to pop up into the air.

It's like a real world, giant game of Whack-A-Mole.

To stop this,

they bring in a specialist team

to drill out holes in the clay

before the steel piles are dropped in,

ready for the enormous foundation slab

to be poured on top.

The plaza itself is foundationed

on over 240 million cubic feet of concrete

and nearly 600,000 cubic feet of stone

that was sourced across three different continents.

Secured into the enormous slab

is The Egg's support stem.

Eventually, it will be six storeys high.

It's almost like a lamp post.

You see the top of the lamp,

a narrow structure, and hidden beneath that

is a weighted base.

By 1966,

the team is ready to start work

on the iconic egg-shaped theatre complex

that will sit on top.

It was so stunning and simple,

and in the original marketing campaign,

which was on billboards, just brilliantly designed,

"New York, Your Egg is Ready."

Creating it, though, is going to be far from easy.

The Egg is architecturally unique

because of its shape and the difficulty

of pouring concrete in that shape.

You know, you have different radius of curvature

in multiple directions.

And somehow, this complicated shape

has to be cast in concrete.

How do you make it work?

How do you keep it

from being too thick, too heavy?

And how do you get the detailing

that you want on the building?

Part of the answer lies in creating formwork,

which is a giant wooden mould

following the curving egg-like shape.

That's held in place

by an immense scaffolding rig.

They had something in the neighbourhood

of 80 to 90 feet in height

around the full circumference of this egg

during construction.

When I look at it, I marvel,

but imagine trying to lay out these narrow boards.

It's incredible how it was constructed.

And inside that goes

4.2 million pounds of steel

to reinforce it.

You need a lot of reinforcing steel,

to help hold the concrete together.

It would have to be precisely fabricated,

welded together, bolted together.

The shape, though, throws up another problem.

If this was a complete egg,

that egg would be able to take loads in all directions

three-dimensionally around the shell.

Eggs are incredibly strong shapes

because they spread loads across the entire shell.

Now, cut a bit off,

and it's a different matter entirely.

The danger is that the sides might collapse

under the weight of the concrete and steel.

It's the late 1960s and in Albany, New York,

Governor Nelson Rockefeller's bold new landmark,

known as The Egg, is facing a problem.

Cutting the top off the naturally strong egg shape

means the team must make sure

the concrete bowl doesn't collapse

under its own weight.

They turn to an engineering trick

called a girdle.

It's very much similar

to when you think about a barrel.

The rings that hold a barrel together

is what creates the strength.

Only this one is going to circle around

the entire exterior of the egg.

It is there to take,

in large part, those tension forces,

allowing the loads to transition from a girdle

down into a beam, and then from beams

down into the foundations.

Just as they overcome one challenge,

another one pops up.

The team is ready to pour the concrete shell.

But it's summer and if there's one thing

concrete doesn't like,

it's getting too hot.

As concrete sets it goes through a chemical reaction

that generates heat.

The problem is that

if the atmospheric temperature is also high,

the outside of the concrete can dry,

whilst the inside is still getting hot

because of this chemical reaction.

This means that the concrete can crack and fail.

So, the team borrows a clever solution

first used on the Hoover Dam.

Using ice instead of liquid water,

they can slow down the reaction

and control the heat generated,

as the concrete sets.

Finally, the pour begins.

The shell itself took over 6,400 cubic feet of concrete.

There was over 24 conveyors that were used

to bring the concrete into the mould

and essentially build the bowl of The Egg itself.

It's a huge job just ensuring

the concrete is there when it's needed.

They'd have to carefully schedule

the delivery of, effectively,

thousands of trucks of ready-mixed concrete

that would have to be delivered

to the site and poured.

It also has to be coordinated

with all the other work on the concourse.

By the time it's complete,

the shell's reinforced concrete walls

are up to 54 inches thick.

This is not a cookie-cutter building.

It is a monumental expression

of the power of reinforced concrete.

On May 27th, 1978,

ten years later than its original schedule,

and costing over $40 million,

The Egg is officially hatched.

Seeing The Egg for the first time,

it's breathtaking.

It's a performing art centre

inside a piece of art.

And I love that.

Weighing an estimated 13,000 tonnes,

it rises more than 100 feet on its pedestal.

Sculpted with a flawless shell

it's one of America's most amazing feats of engineering.

And miraculously, it was designed largely by hand.

Hats off to the structural engineers

of 50 to 60 years ago.

They were advancing the state of the art significantly.

I would say The Egg is definitely

a source of pride for our city.

It is a part of our skyline.

Decades after breaking ground,

The Egg is still cracking open the imagination.

The building is very organic,

a wonderful cohesion of function and shape.

The two work together.

That's quite remarkable,

and that's why The Egg is unique.

There's two things in life

that need to be built on a strong foundation,

skyscrapers and relationships!

The engineers behind Manhattan West Towers

faced an almost insurmountable challenge.

There was nowhere to put the foundation.

Which is why my high school romance

with Stella Blumhaus was doomed

the moment I saw that N'Sync poster on her wall.

Luckily for the engineers,

they found a truly ingenious workaround.

It's the turn of the 21st Century,

Midtown Manhattan, New York City

is glamorous, fashionable, and fast-moving.

But just a few blocks away,

an entire neighbourhood called the Far West Side

has been left behind.

City planning rules restrict what can be built here,

keeping much of the area industrial.

You would expect it to be

the busiest place in Manhattan,

but it wasn't.

It was one of the worst areas

in the city.

At its heart, is what should be prime real estate.

Instead, it's an almost impossible plot,

where 65 feet below street level

there's a maze of live rail tracks

feeding into Penn Station through an enormous open pit.

We used to call it the Pit of Despair.

It was just that bad

because people didn't want to live near the place.

A developer, though, sees its potential

and starts playing the long game.

So, Brookfield started acquiring

different components of this site over decades,

starting in the 1980s.

Then in January 2005,

the waiting pays off when the city council

approves a landmark planning overhaul.

It allowed the area to be now utilized

for office use, residential use,

but most importantly,

make it worthwhile financially

to build over highly complex ground areas.

Few sites could possibly be more complex

than the railway pit.

So Brookfield brings in

the renowned global architecture

and engineering firm, SOM,

responsible for many of the world's tallest buildings.

I would say the key goal for the entire team

was to create a development

that was accessible to everybody.

Everybody who lives in the city,

everybody who visits the city.

The huge project will eventually see

a seven million square foot development

with two office skyscrapers

alongside shops, restaurants

and a new two and a half-acre public plaza.

But there will be a lot of hurdles

to overcome along the way,

starting with figuring out how to create all of this

over the live railway tracks

without causing a single delay.

Then, the two massive office towers

will have to rise above the active rail yard,

but with no room for conventional foundations,

each tower will demand its own engineering solutions.

For tower one, the team needs to work out

how to balance a 67-storey skyscraper

without normal support columns.

Then for the second tower,

they'll somehow have to keep a skyscraper standing

with only half a core.

Finally, they must find a way

of creating an entirely new neighbourhood

and revive a city in crisis.

This new neighbourhood will be called

Manhattan West.

How do you do something

that has not been done before?

There are no two towers

anywhere in the world, even today,

that are sitting on train tracks.

It's January 15th, 2013,

day one of the Manhattan West project.

But instead of breaking ground on good old solid soil,

the team is staring into the heart

of NYC's busiest transportation system

65 feet below,

where there are 15 live train tracks

running 24/7.

In the middle of Manhattan is Penn Station,

and all the tracks that feed into the station

basically goes through the site.

With 600,000 people

passing through Penn Station every day,

shutting them down is simply not an option.

It's 2013,

and on Manhattan's Far West Side,

a development which will see two skyscrapers

built over a pit containing 15 live rail tracks

running into Penn Station is just getting underway.

But there are some serious challenges ahead.

600,000 people

come into that station every day.

And so, not only is it complicated

to build over them,

but you had to do it in a way where you were never

obstructing them or stopping that service.

Their solution is to create

a massive 2.5 acre concrete deck over the top.

It will cover the site and seal off the tracks.

Why was that important?

One is that it now gives you this land

that you have available

as you're constructing the towers,

but what was also important is you're not exposing

any of the construction workers

to train traffic.

It's also a massive undertaking.

The deck needs to span an enormous 240 feet.

But because of the network of live tracks,

there's no room for support columns

to hold it up.

Finding a solution takes some lateral thinking.

Okay, why don't we do this as if these are like bridges?

So what that entire middle zone is,

is basically 16 bridges

that are right next to each other.

Prefabricated in New Jersey,

each bridge deck will be brought

onto Manhattan in pieces,

and then assembled overnight

when the trains aren't running.

The last train hopefully came in at 12:00 p.m.,

but it might be 1:00 or 2:00 am.

The first train left at 5 a.m.

And so the window of actual operations on the track

was very minimal.

On January 21st, 2014,

the first bridge arrives at the site.

The team has less than four hours to assemble it

and move it into position before the rails reopen.

The first span is set perfectly into position

in time and without delaying a single train.

It takes another two months to fit the rest of the deck,

but finally it's finished.

When the deck was finally closed,

we all really got super excited

because now the build environment

can rise out of the ground.

April 2015,

the team makes a start on One Manhattan West,

the first of the two towers.

It will sit at the edge of the newly built deck

and eventually rise up 67 storeys

if the engineers can work out how to keep it standing.

Normal towers will have a full bedrock foundation

that the full building can bear down on.

One Manhattan West does not have that.

Instead, there's just one strip

of solid rock beside the pit

where the tower's central core

can be positioned.

A skyscraper of this size simply can't have its outer floors

hanging over empty space.

The further those floors extend

the greater the bending moment caused by gravity.

And at this scale, that could cause

catastrophic structural failure.

So, in a historic world-first

for a skyscraper of this scale,

engineers install a groundbreaking system

of giant sloping steels

known as kickback columns.

Dr. Kwami: Think of rolling a ball down a slope.

Gravity still pulls it down,

but the slope changes the direction it takes.

Kickback columns do the same thing.

Installed between floors two and six,

they redirect the tower's weight

back to the central core.

And the result is a 72-storey tower,

which has no columns at the base of the building.

Not something you can see anywhere else in the world.

By October 2019, Tower One is complete,

and engineers now turn their attention

to the second skyscraper.

Dr. Cosgrave: Luckily, the tracks

underneath the second tower were arranged differently.

So now, the team had space to lower outer support columns

through openings in the deck

and anchor them in between the tracks.

It takes a month

to put all the columns in place,

and as the tower begins to climb the Manhattan skyline,

the team is already working

towards the final piece of the puzzle,

turning the space between the towers

into the heart of a brand-new neighbourhood.

The idea was that you wanted to create a space

that everybody would love be a part of.

You needed green space and a public plaza.

Public plaza is really like

the neighbourhood's lobby of our complex.

The key to creating that public space

is hiding in plain sight.

The centre of gravity of the public space

is really sitting right on top of that deck

that closes the train tracks,

which allowed us to really make the public space

at the centre of each of the buildings surrounding it.

But after decades of waiting and planning,

just before works begins on the new neighbourhood

everything comes to a sudden halt,

as a global crisis threatens

to turn the $4.5 billion development

into a ghost town.

In Manhattan,

a massive project built around new office towers

faces an unexpected crisis

when the pandemic shuts down the city.

During COVID, there was a lot of uncertainty

that commercial buildings would survive.

Knowing that the new model is to work remotely.

When we all got locked up in our apartments,

we all reflected and said,

"Do we have to change something to the project?"

To entice workers back,

the team prioritized health and air quality,

upgrading the HVAC system

to bring in fresh outside air.

They also introduced touchless elevators

and biometric entry,

which allowed for a virtually hands-free journey

from street to desk.

January 30th, 2024,

Manhattan West is finally complete.

After more than 40 years in the making,

there's a brand-new, seven-million-square-foot

neighbourhood in the heart of New York City.

We're very proud and it's been very successful.

We've created a dynamic mixed-use environment

that has become part of the city

and extension of the neighbourhood.

Major firms sign long-term leases

across the campus.

The buildings are almost fully occupied,

it's really the sign of the success of the project

and the success of a city like New York.

A neighbourhood needs more than buildings,

and that's where the public plaza

takes centre stage.

New York is all about a series of neighbourhoods,

and each neighbourhood has its spaces

where the community comes together.

From the office worker to a neighbourhood person

that just wants to sit surrounded by trees

and almost not feel

that there is thousand-foot tall towers.

And the engineering feat hasn't gone unnoticed.

The project picks up major awards

for outstanding achievements in civil engineering.

The greatest challenge that was seen

and overcome was being able to build

over these train tracks.

You don't typically realize now

when you walk in that area

that you have trains running below.

When I first saw the project complete,

I couldn't believe it.

I would go back to when I look down the spit

and it was just a graveyard, no sense of urban life,

and now you see this amazing complex.

So it was just magical, I would say.

Lighting matters.

Get it wrong and nothing looks quite right.

Get it right and everything shines.

So when Eli and Edythe Broad set out to build a museum

for their art collection, lighting wasn't an afterthought,

it was a central challenge, because here,

light has to do two things at once,

protect the art and bring it to life.

And with two billion dollars worth of it,

getting that balance wrong wasn't an option.

Los Angeles is known

as one of the world's greatest centres

for contemporary art.

Its streets are packed with some of America's

most celebrated art institutions.

This has shifted LA from film town

to global art hub.

But unlike Paris or London,

LA's art scene is driven by individual collectors.

Few have assembled a collection

to rival billionaire philanthropists

Eli and Edythe Broad.

Over 50 years, they've built an incredible

two-billion-dollar collection

of over two thousand modern masterpieces.

Eli and Edy Broad began collecting

as a result, of Mrs. Broad's deep curiosity

about visual art and culture.

They just began accumulating this beautiful collection.

The Broads turned their private collection

into one of the world's largest lending libraries

for contemporary art,

loaning their works to museums across the globe.

But there was a catch,

when those artworks weren't travelling

they had no permanent home

and were just stored across five different warehouses.

Then, in 2008,

the Broads decide their collection

needs one fixed address.

And that will be somewhere in Los Angeles.

We went through a number of locations

before we settled on Grand Avenue

where there was already

quite a sequence of beautiful buildings

and perhaps most impactfully of all

was Disney Hall right next door,

designed by Frank Gehry.

Enter architects Diller, Scofidio, and Renfro,

who want to put the hidden part of a museum

in plain sight.

Typically, spaces of storage

for collections are off-site,

or if they're anywhere in a building,

they're really in the back,

back of house, nobody ever sees it.

We wanted that storage, that warehouse,

that collection,

to actually define

the whole experience of the Broad.

And the main idea here

was what we call the Veil and the Vault.

The entire museum will be built

around these two defining elements.

The Vault will be the solid inner core of the museum,

storing and protecting

the Broads' two billion dollars' worth of art,

while also forming the main exhibition space.

Wrapped around it will be the Veil,

a light, porous outer skin

that will not only draw visitors

in from the street

but filter the intense LA sun.

Now, the engineers have to make

this unconventional box on top of a box design work.

First, they'll need to work out

how to create the concrete Vault

that's up to five feet thick

and strong enough to protect the art,

while also making the massive structure

appear to float above the lobby.

Next, they'll somehow need to make

the Veil's 2,500 individual panels work

as one self-supporting skin,

while allowing the facade to withstand the movement

caused by an earthquake.

Finally, they'll need to find a way

to flood the galleries with natural light,

without allowing a single ray of sunshine

to damage the artwork.

The Veil and the Vault-- I mean, it's a couple boxes.

How hard could this be?

But it quickly revealed itself.

March 2012,

work begins on the foundation

that will support the Broads' 18,000-ton concrete Vault.

But this massive structure

has to feel like anything but a fortress.

We wanted the Vault to really kind of float in the space.

The Vault has to extend

over the entrance unsupported.

But there's a problem with that.

Very simply, it's a concrete box

that has support on the back half,

but not the front half.

You know, imagine you have a ruler in your hand,

and you put a five pound weight on the end of it,

and you're trying to hold it with two fingers,

that's the kind of force

you're resisting on a massive scale.

On it's own, traditional reinforced concrete

won't be strong enough to do the job.

We needed to use a special type

of concrete construction called post-tensioning concrete

to actually actively

lift up the tip of the concrete.

If you pull the steel cables within the concrete tight,

it no longer wants to sag, just like this toy here.

If you pull the string tight, the toy no longer sags

and that's what makes impossible possible.

By October 2012,

with the steel cables in place,

the team is ready for the massive

18,000 ton concrete pour.

Once we start the pour, we need to finish it.

If there's an interruption in the pour,

there would be a break in the structural integrity

of the concrete.

Worst-case scenario is we would have to demolish it

and start over again.

October 2012, the team building

The Broad Museum in Los Angeles is facing a critical milestone,

a massive continuous concrete pour

for the museum's floating Vault.

The pour begins in the cool of night,

the team leaves nothing to chance.

We have additional pumps on standby

just in case the primary concrete pump breaks down

to try to ensure a continuous pour

that does not stop from beginning to end.

It worked beautifully.

It will take nearly two years

to build the Vault, and in December 2012,

the team turns its attention

to the second element, the Veil.

The Veil is the facade of the building,

and also the roof of the building.

It was very important to us

that from the galleries looking out,

and from the street looking in,

you had an understanding

of what was going on in the building

that it wasn't just a blank facade

like many art museums.

Before the team can even begin

to wrap the Veil around the Vault,

they must first tackle one of LA's biggest threats.

Building anything in Southern California,

earthquakes become a paramount concern.

Part of that is the frequency of earthquakes we get.

The type of ground we have

and the type of buildings we have.

Diller's Veil,

which will wrap around the Vault,

will add thousands of tons of weight

to the outside of the building,

and that brings with it a problem.

The Veil is gonna attract seismic forces

because it's just a very massive thing.

Of all places, to do this in Los Angeles,

it's the perfect storm in a way.

They come up with a radical idea

something that has never been used

quite like this in construction before.

Instead of fixing the Veil rigidly to the ground,

they support it at just three points.

One of those points is a 32-ton steel beam

buried five feet below the sidewalk.

And that beam has a central pivot

that allows it to move up and down

like a seesaw

just enough to let the Veil move

with an earthquake rather than fight it.

By January 2013,

the team is building the huge exterior facade

which will sit on the rocking beam.

They start putting up the scaffolding

ready to install 2,500 precast concrete panels.

But there's a problem.

When you put that much concrete in the building

we actually make the building stiffer and the stiffer,

because the stiffer a building is,

the more earthquake forces you attract.

That's the last thing

the team needs the Veil to do.

We said, how can we get this

to look like this concrete shape,

but not have all this weight?

And that's when we arrived on the idea

of the glass fibre reinforced concrete solution.

It's a very thin, shelled piece of concrete,

maybe two inches thick.

It's reinforced with glass fibres

to give it strength.

One by one, the panels are

craned into position

and secured to the steel frame.

But as the Veil reaches the top,

another challenge emerges.

We wanted to harness the beautiful light of LA.

We wanted to control it enough

to be able to have a great experience

between the public and the artworks.

But too much could damage the art inside.

This being an art museum,

you need light.

You need natural light,

but handled very carefully.

They turn to the skies for the solution.

North-facing day light

is indirect, consistent,

and basically much less damaging to artwork.

The trick is to make sure that only this type of light

enters the gallery.

With a two billion dollar

art collection at stake,

precision is everything.

We work with our computer models.

Model the path of the sun at different times of the year,

and look at how that affects light

on the inside of the building

as well as how well the building

blocks out direct sunlight.

The team designs 300 raised skylights,

angled toward the northern light

to bounce and diffuse it before it reaches the art.

And when you look at the ceiling,

you're never really looking at a source of light.

You're always looking at the effect of the light.

On September 20th, 2015,

the 140 million dollar Broad museum opens its doors,

bringing the extraordinary art collection

out of the warehouses

and onto permanent public display.

The real pay-off for designing

a building like this

is the way people react when they walk in.

You come in from the street, it's very, very bright,

and all of a sudden

you have this hulking form just over you.

As strong as a fortress,

as delicate as honeycomb.

Where anyone can walk in for free and enjoy the works

on display and those kept in storage.

The response is overwhelming.

The audience that was coming through our doors

was an audience that represents

the great diversity

and communities of our region.

That was incredible.

We initially thought maybe that we'd get

250,000 people a year.

There are now nearly a million people a year consistently.

What's most successful about this project

is that it did well

by making this building not feel institutional,

by basically breaking all the rules

of what a museum does,

by not having that front desk,

by not having, you know, guards stand there,

you feel like it's a place

that you really just want to experience

at your own pace, in your own time.

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.