skyscrapers

Practical Engineering explains why San Francisco's Millennium Tower is sinking and tilting, covering how geology and foundation design (friction piles in the Colma Formation) affect skyscrapers. It also covers the fix being attempted.

Tourist footage of the 660-ton tuned mass damper in Taipei 101 swaying during tremors from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The damper hangs from the 92nd floor.

A POV video of climbers illegally scaling the 650 m Shanghai Tower while it was under construction, filmed on a helmet camera.

Not Just Bikes introduces the "stroad", a street-road hybrid common in the US and Canada that fails at both jobs. He contrasts it with Dutch design, where each road has a single purpose, and covers cost, danger and ugliness.

The first episode of Stewart Brand's 1997 BBC series based on his book How Buildings Learn, covering how buildings change after they are built. Brand presents and the series has music by Brian Eno.

Practical Engineering's explanation of the February 2021 Texas winter storm and the resulting power grid outage. It lays out the facts about ERCOT, the grid's isolation, and how generation across fuel types failed in the cold.

Isaac Arthur explains the orbital ring, a megastructure launch-assist system that could move bulk cargo cheaply to orbit and beyond. He compares it with space elevators and discusses power transmission.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy explains how medieval engineers designed stone cathedrals using rules of thumb, with no science, mathematics or literacy. He uses it to define the engineering method.

Practical Engineering explains pumped storage hydropower, which makes up most grid-scale electricity storage. It covers how it works and why it fits only certain geographies.

Patrick Boyle's deadpan account of Saudi Arabia's Neom and The Line megaproject, a planned 170 km linear city that has been scaled back to a fraction of its size. He covers the feasibility problems and the financing.

The Primitive Technology channel shows the construction of a tiled roof hut in the bush using only primitive tools and materials made in earlier videos. It includes tiles, a kiln, clay walls and underfloor heating.

Tom Scott tells how John Reber's plan to dam San Francisco Bay was disproved by the Army Corps of Engineers' giant hydraulic Bay Model in Sausalito. The model showed the plan would have been dangerously wrong.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how China built the world's largest high-speed rail network so quickly and why its rail strategy differs from America's. It covers politics, social benefits and the economics of unprofitable lines.

Tom Scott stands by a construction site and explains why reversing vehicles now use a white-noise hiss instead of beeping. The sound is easier to locate directionally and less annoying to neighbours.

Essential Craftsman announces the start of a spec house build on a scenic lot, kicking off a long series. The channel covers every step of building a house from the viewpoint of a general contractor.

Kirsten Dirksen tours new Earthships, homes built from tires, bottles and cans that generate their own energy, collect water and grow food. The video covers the newer, cheaper Encounter model and its passive systems.

A long information session where The Boring Company presents its vision for Loop, an underground high-speed transit system, and the traffic problems it aims to solve. It includes discussion of faster tunnel boring and electrification.

An Odd Lots podcast episode on why converting empty office buildings into apartments is hard. A managing director at Vanbarton Group walks through the zoning, financing and construction obstacles, mostly in New York.

An Isaac Arthur episode on arcologies, self-sufficient habitats that could house whole cities, on Earth or on harsh worlds. It covers how such structures might work and what limits their size.

Tom Scott visits a rotating house near San Diego and explains how electricity, gas and water keep working on the rotating part. It includes a 3D render of the utility connection system.

Practical Engineering compares modern concrete with that of the Roman Empire, covering modern techniques like roller compacted concrete and water-reducing admixtures. It explains the tradeoffs of Roman construction versus reinforced concrete.

A short film following Moroccan artisans from Fez as they build a traditional 15th-century-style Moroccan court inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It shows zellij tilework and other traditional techniques.

Practical Engineering gives a short introduction to concrete, covering the difference between concrete and cement, the ingredients, and reinforcement. It includes a hydraulic press demonstration of compressive strength.

CityNerd critiques the Las Vegas Loop, the Boring Company's tunnel transit system, arguing its design and operation are poor. The video covers how the system actually runs.

Kirsten Dirksen profiles Steve Rees, who buried two shipping containers to build an earth-cooled, off-grid 640 sq ft home in Northern California for about $30,000, solar included.

A Berkeley Lab Distinguished Lecturer talk on building science, with an expert covering control layers, insulation and vapour barrier placement, and how buildings fail. The delivery is humorous.

Practical Engineering explains Mechanically Stabilized Earth, where layers of reinforcement make soil strong enough to hold heavy loads, shown with a sand structure supporting a car. It notes that MSE walls are everywhere in infrastructure.

Footage of British steeplejack Fred Dibnah climbing a chimney overhang at over fifty years old, without a harness. It is a short clip from his steeplejack work.

Builders Matt Risinger and Jordan Smith visit a Swiss cross-laminated timber factory that makes thick all-wood walls with no traditional insulation and wooden nails instead of glue or chemicals. The video is sponsored by Siga.

Matt Parker's Royal Institution talk based on his book Humble Pi, covering everyday mathematical mistakes and spurious patterns that went wrong in engineering and software. It mixes stand-up comedy with stories of coincidence and error.

A short video of a Boeing 777 wing being tested to destruction, finally breaking at 154 percent of its designed limit load. The wing is flexed upward until it fails.

Practical Engineering explains what a 100-year flood actually means, combining statistics, hydrology and how society treats risk. Grady walks through local drainage infrastructure and the caveats in estimating flood probability.

Fred Dibnah, the English steeplejack, shows how ladders are fixed up the outside of a tall brick mill chimney. The footage was filmed in the mid-1990s and is part one of two.

Kirsten Dirksen tours the underground ferro-cement dome home of Paula and Bill Lishman, the family behind the geese-led flight story. The skylit earth-sheltered house stays warm below the frost line.

A Vox explainer on why California's high-speed rail project is years late and far over budget, with only a few concrete structures built by 2022. It covers the political, legal and routing challenges behind the delays.

Practical Engineering explains how canal locks work, including the water-saving basins of the new Panama Canal locks.

Wendover Productions explains why American towns, retail and buildings increasingly look alike, covering zoning pressures, corporate standardization and cheap construction types like 5-over-1 buildings.

A John Oliver Last Week Tonight segment on America's crumbling infrastructure and why maintenance is neglected and underfunded. It mixes comedy with real examples such as aging bridges and dams.

The ADVChina hosts tour a villa neighborhood in southern China that was built only three years earlier and is already empty and deteriorating. They use it to discuss ghost cities, building quality and the real estate bubble.

About Here explains how North American building codes requiring two staircases make small multi-story apartment buildings hard to build, and contrasts this with places that allow single-stair designs.