If We Built It Today (2019–…): Season 2, Episode 9 - Empire State Building - full transcript
[narrator]
The Empire State Building
defines the New York City skyline with
its soaring height and signature design.
[Richard] If you think about
it, it's still one of the most
recognized buildings
in the world.
[narrator] Standing at 1,454 feet
high, the Empire State Building
was the tallest in the world for
nearly 40 years after its completion,
and it was constructed faster
than any skyscraper in history
in an astounding 410 days.
[Bill]
The Empire State Building
was built amazingly quickly.
[Kevin] Well beyond the speed
at which we build today.
[narrator]
So now we're curious.
With today's technology, could we
build a reimagined Empire State Building
and reclaim the world's
tallest title for New York City?
Why would you want ever to be second
best when you can be number one?
[narrator] Here's the plan.
We're rounding up the heaviest
equipment and materials...
[Richard] Robots don't take lunch
breaks, they don't need to sleep.
[Wil] We have created a
hybrid living building material.
[narrator] ...enlisting
the world's top architect...
[Chris] We believe we could
build a tower that is 3,000 feet tall.
[narrator] ...and all the money it
would take to create New York's
most beloved landmark
built for a new generation.
[Chris] This isn't built
for the hubris of man.
This is built for
all of our benefit.
[narrator] Imagine the world's
greatest wonders...
reimagined.
How long would it take?
How much would it cost?
How many workers would we need?
Could we even do it
If We Built It Today?
[theme music playing]
[narrator] New York, New York,
where the most ambitious come
to make their dreams come true.
And back in 1930,
The Big Apple's skyline
got a little bigger.
And somebody told me, "I never
heard of the Empire State Building,"
I said, "What cave
have you been living in?"
[narrator] By the numbers, the
Empire State Building astonishes.
It contains over three million
light bulbs, 70 miles of water pipe,
1,060 miles of telephone
cable, 35,000 pieces of mail a day
are delivered to its tenants.
So many, the building
has its own zip code.
There are 1,576 steps from
the lobby to the 86th floor.
Construction
of the Empire State started on
St. Patrick's Day in 1930.
[Jean-Yves] At the height
of the construction,
more than 3,400 workers worked
at the Empire State Building.
[narrator] The building
was finished by April 1931,
after 410 days of construction,
and was 12 days ahead of schedule.
The Empire State Building was
built ridiculously, incredibly fast.
[Chris] Unimaginable, really.
Anybody who's done a home
renovation can feel the shock of building
a full tower in one year.
[narrator] From its inception,
the Empire State Building
was America's modern marvel.
The sheer volume of
materials was unmatched.
It was built with
60,000 tons of steel,
ten million bricks and
200,000 cubic feet of granite
and limestone cladding.
Even its elevators were
a marvel of engineering.
They were the world's first to carry
15,000 people 102 storeys into the sky.
[Kevin] It was an amazing piece of
technology, amazing piece of design,
and an... an incredible piece
of workmanship.
The Empire State Building went
up at a time in America's history
where it became an iconic
symbol of American power,
American accomplishments.
[narrator] By the 1990s,
the Empire State Building
was a fading legend, and
year-by-year other buildings
around the world reached higher.
Now, New York's skyline
has six towers taller
than the Empire State Building
and counting.
Today, the Empire State
Building has undergone
a $165 million makeover.
Energy efficient windows,
upgraded elevators
and dazzling LED lights have assured
the Empire State Building's place
as the most photographed
skyscraper in the world.
But what if we built it today?
We're recruiting
two skyscraper experts
to dream of an Empire
State Building of the future.
In New York, you have
a history, you have a...
an excitement about
tall buildings.
And so, with the right material
and the right structural system,
I think it would be
a good candidate for the...
the next world's
tallest building.
[narrator] Bill Baker isn't
just any structural engineer.
He engineered
the tallest building on Earth.
The Burj Khalifa in Dubai
stands an astounding
2,717 feet tall.
That's almost twice the height
of the Empire State Building,
and it took four times
as long to build it.
[Bill] On the Burj Khalifa,
we started on the construction
of the superstructure
in the spring of 2005,
and the structure had topped
out at the very beginning of 2009.
So, you know, a little less
than four years, uh, to...
to get...
get the structure up.
[narrator] Bill has laid down
the groundwork
for our new megatall
Empire State Building.
And to design it, he'll enlist his
architect colleague, Chris Cooper.
[Chris] The wonderful thing
about being an architect
is having the opportunity
to imagine a new idea.
[narrator] Chris dreams big.
He's optimistic,
and he knows what he wants.
[Chris] Could we build a tall
building that should be an appropriate,
um, icon for the future of New
York and for the future of cities?
Uh, absolutely.
[narrator] Our goal is to build
the tallest building in the world,
constructed with
sustainable materials,
a building that's beautiful on the
outside and functional on the inside.
Fortunately,
Chris shares our aspirations.
[Chris] Building for the sake of
height was a worthwhile ambition.
And I think that we're in
a very different context now.
We're in a very
different place now.
We should be building buildings
that are doing more good than harm.
[narrator]
Chris' megatall tower design
is unlike any other
skyscraper on the planet.
[Chris] We'd like to think about
this icon like a great tree in the city.
[narrator] But before
we can break ground,
we still have a ton of
elements to consider.
First, we need to decide what our Empire
State Building is going to look like?
[Kevin] Increasingly New York,
like so many cities now,
becomes a city of mirrors, a
city of glass just reflecting itself.
And this is something I think
that we need to rein in.
[narrator]
Once we have a design,
we need to choose a material
that inspires the imagination.
You have to think
about what is the
structural system and
what is the materials.
And those conversations kind of go
together because different materials
do what better with
different systems.
[narrator] Next,
we've got to figure out
just how high we can build
in Midtown Manhattan.
And it may take an engineering
miracle to go higher
than the great Burj Khalifa.
[Bill] Over time
the technology has changed
and particular use of
high-strength concrete
has enabled buildings
to be more slender.
So for the same footprint,
you can go higher.
[narrator]
The Empire State Building
took just over a year to build.
Could we even dare to dream of
building a megatower just as fast?
[Chris] The opportunity
to think ambitiously
about a project like this for
the future would be amazing.
[narrator] Time is money when
you're building a skyscraper.
So, we need to decide just
how many people it will take.
[Don] The building was
one of the first big buildings
in New York to be fast-tracked.
And that was not done
by taking unsafe shortcuts.
[narrator] Bill and Chris
are going to need help.
How can they erect a megatall
tower on New York's tiny footprint?
What design could ever win the
hearts of millions of New Yorkers
as the Empire State Building
has done for 90 years?
And there's another more
dangerous challenge ahead.
[Don] Wind blow, there's a
problem for these buildings.
And if you make them
too tall and slender,
they're going to blow over.
[narrator] Is this the Empire
State Building of the future?
If we built it today.
[narrator] We're imagining a
cloud-piercing 21st-century version
of a New York icon,
the Empire State Building.
But before we can break ground, first,
we need to figure out why we build it.
[Don] Nobody builds
a 1,000-foot height building
just to say they built
a 1,000-foot high building.
They build it to make money.
You can make more money
if your building is famous.
[narrator] Its famous views allow
visitors to see six states on a clear day.
The building has been featured
in 250 TV shows and movies.
Its most famous role is a crowd-pleaser
in the building's new museum.
[Jean-Yves] We invite all of our
visitors to fall in the grasp of Kong.
We're in hundreds of movies,
numbers of comic books
all around the world
in all languages.
[narrator] Standing
at 1,454 feet high,
the Empire State Building has 2.8
million square feet of office space.
At an average of
$70 per square foot,
the building rakes in
about $200 million a year.
So if our goal is to build a new tower
twice that size, well, you do the math.
New York City is the world's
largest financial center
with an economy worth
$1.5 trillion a year,
nowhere else on Earth
can compete.
There are 400 million
square feet of office space
and nowhere to go but up.
So a megatall tower makes sense.
Then there's the other reason
to build big, the competition.
[Bill] You know,
the world's tallest buildings
are now being built in
the Middle East and in China.
[narrator] The Makkah Royal
Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia
is the third tallest building
on the planet.
It stands at 1,972 feet.
In second place is the
Shanghai Tower at 2,073 feet.
And the king of megatowers
is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai,
at 2,717 feet high.
Bill Baker is the structural
engineer behind the Burj Khalifa.
He says it's high time
for New York to step up.
[Bill] Just like the Empire State
Building captured the record
for New York
for approximately 40 years
as the world's tallest
building, I'm sure the...
the civic pride
of New York would like to
reclaim that title for a while.
[narrator] The race
for the sky is relentless.
The Empire State Building is currently
the 43rd tallest tower in the world.
And if we're going to bring the
world's tallest title back to New York,
our choice of design
needs to be one of a kind,
and it's something
architect Chris Cooper
has been thinking
about for a long time.
We'd like to think about this...
this icon like a great sequoia,
like a great tree in the city.
We know now that buildings are
actually one of the greatest contributors
to the carbon emissions,
uh, globally.
So, you know,
can we really think
differently about how
to solve this problem?
And could we imagine
building a tall icon
that uses its height
to benefit its context?
Could we build a building that
absorbs more carbon than it produces?
[narrator] Just like...
the sequoia,
the tallest tree in the world,
it's nature's skyscraper,
soaring nearly 330 feet.
So Chris is calling his
tower the Urban Sequoia.
It's America's great tree.
And so I think the name
is wonderful
and that it sits as an icon for the
nation and for an optimistic future.
[narrator] The building will
be a sleek, tapered tower.
[Chris] On this 200-foot wide
New York City block, we're able to...
to reach up 3,000 feet.
And we do that in a way by,
um, thinking very organically
or naturally about the forces.
And so the shape of the
building is really derived
from the flow of gravity
and of force down.
And so we think of this
building rising in this...
as this tapered form from
the footprint of the block
up to a small point at its very
top, that at the lower floors
the building that are much
wider, we build as office.
And as it continues to rise, then
we change the use to residential.
[narrator] So it's a living
community that's as steady as a tree
that functions like one, too.
And there's another
point to rising high,
tall buildings have what's
known as the stack effect.
The air tends to move from
high pressure to low pressure,
and areas of high temperature
to low temperature.
Well, the air is both thinner
and colder at 3,000 feet.
So in a high rise, air constantly
rushes from the lower floors
and heads straight up.
We pull air in and then use
a carbon sink to filter the air
as we pull it in and then release
it back out in a cleaner state.
And so the... the building
itself can act as a carbon filter.
[narrator] Another plus, as the
air rises in the urban sequoia,
it'll spin a giant fan, generating
electricity for the entire building.
[Chris] And so this will be
a real machine,
not just a simple building,
not just an object,
but it's really a machine that is
performing with certain expectations.
[narrator] Now that we have a
design, we need building materials.
In the 1930s, steel was the most
commonly used construction material.
Today's tall buildings rely on
reinforced high-performance concrete
to bear the load.
The Burj Khalifa
contains a record-breaking
11.6 million cubic feet
of concrete.
That's enough to build a
sidewalk from New York to Miami.
[Bill] As concrete has become more
and more sophisticated and amazing,
the vocabulary becomes
richer and richer,
and there's more and more
things that are possible.
[narrator] The problem with our
plan is that as carbon footprints go,
concrete is
a brontosaurus-sized offender.
So how will we solve this concrete
conundrum, if we built it today?
[narrator] We're imagining building
a 21st-century Empire State Building
that will not only break
records but it'll also set the tone
for the next generation,
yet achieving a design
that will use its height
to benefit the context
is just part of the process.
We'll also need to decide what
materials we'll use to build it.
These days, concrete is the
structural material of choice,
but concrete
might not fit the bill,
if our goal is to reduce
our carbon footprint.
Oh, this is like one of my
favorite subjects. Okay.
[narrator] Wil Srubar knows all about
construction's concrete conundrum.
So concrete is the second most
consumed material on Earth
after water, and cement,
the powder
we use to make concrete, is responsible
for 8% of global CO2 emissions.
So the problem
is really massive.
[narrator]
At the University of Colorado,
Wil's team is developing a
game-changing building material.
[Wil] Our team here at the
university are trying to utilize
the capability of organisms
to architect,
uh, these wonderfully strong building
materials, um, all from a genetic code.
We have created a hybrid
living building material
that exhibits both biological
and structural function.
[narrator] In traditional concrete, cement
is used to bond rock and sand together,
but this hybrid material
is made from cyanobacteria,
a type of bacteria
that lives in water.
[Wil] And what those cyanobacteria
do is they take carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere that has
dissolved into the seawater,
with calcium that is
present in the seawater,
and it reacts with the CO2
and forms calcium carbonate.
[narrator] Calcium carbonate
makes up some of nature's
more complex substances, like
eggshells, seashells and pearls.
In Wil's bricks,
calcium carbonate grows
and acts as a strong binder.
[Wil] It's really a process of
forming a natural bio-cement
that we have brought
into the laboratory.
[narrator] The living brick is the
perfect material for our exterior siding.
They're sturdy
enough to stand on,
and they can take up
many different shapes.
They could also yield another
benefit, reducing carbon from the air.
Manufacturers of both steel and
cement emit a ton of carbon dioxide
when they produce the materials.
But under the right conditions,
the living brick can absorb CO2.
The problem is it's
not strong enough
to build our entire
superstructure.
Luckily, we know of another
team of ecological experts,
who are taking
concrete to new heights.
While Wil grows
his concrete binder,
this company repurposes
one of construction's
most wasteful by-product,
steel slag.
Slag is one of the leftovers
in steel manufacturing.
Nearly 19 million tons of it
are discarded every year.
[Chris Stern]
We select the correct...
steel slag, we grind it
to the size that we need.
We mix it with sand or rock,
basically aggregates,
as well as water,
and we make it into forms.
[narrator] The mixture goes into a
chamber to be cured with carbon dioxide.
Typical concrete takes around
28 days to reach full strength.
But this concrete
can be cured in 24 hours.
[Chris Stern] So the
chemical process is the CO2,
uh, reacts with the steel slag and it
creates the binder, a really strong binder.
Right here, you can see, these
cinder blocks were made from steel slag,
and they're basically
suitable for construction.
[narrator] Now, it's time to put
this super concrete to the test.
[Chris Stern] So we do
some destructive testing.
So this is a load cell and it
actually will apply pressure to a point.
[narrator] Modern concrete breaks
at about 1,000 pounds of pressure.
This carbon neutral cinder
block holds up past 1,400 pounds.
So we'll pour this carbon-free
concrete into massive precast concrete
forms to build our tower
one module at a time.
The pieces are
falling into place.
First, our spire-shaped design,
then a mind-blowing concept
of the world's first
carbon filter megatower.
Finally, we build
the whole thing with concrete
that produces no carbon
and an exterior
that actually scrubs
carbon from the atmosphere.
But how on earth are we
going to build our tower
on a standard 200x500
foot Midtown Manhattan lot?
If we built it today.
[narrator] We're reimagining
a 21st-century version
of New York City's favorite
skyscraper, the Empire State Building.
[Chris] Building a building of
the ambition of Empire State,
we're going tall.
We're trying to build tall.
[narrator]
The building will be green,
but it will also have to be
pretty lean,
because the average lot size in
Midtown Manhattan is just 200x500 feet.
So the question is,
how high can we go?
[Bill] An interesting thing
about New York is that the blocks
north to south
are almost all the same.
They're roughly 200 feet from...
from property line to
property line, very narrow.
And so starting with that 200-foot
width, how high can you go?
[narrator] The world's tallest
building, the Burj Khalifa,
has a three-winged foundation
that's double that size,
and it was built in the desert,
not in the middle of the
busiest city on the planet.
[Bill] We would have to
decommission 34th Street
so that we'd have
room for the structure,
which I don't think would make too
many people of Manhattan very happy.
[narrator] But the Urban Sequoia
takes a page from its namesake,
the world's tallest tree.
The sequoia has a shallow,
but wide root system,
supporting two million pounds
of load.
But here's the part
that inspires Bill.
The tree itself is like a cantilever,
with the roots acting as a rigid base.
Bill's foundation
will do the same.
One of the issues with a
cantilever is that it has to...
as the loads accumulates, you
also have to accumulate strength.
We need to be sure that it's
healthy and strong and stiff
all the way down
to the bottom, including,
just like in a tree, the roots.
[narrator] And while the Burj
Khalifa was built on shifting sands,
all of New York is solid
as a rock, bedrock that is,
Earth's tough outer crust lies just
beneath its legendary concrete canyons.
The rock is not that deep
in that part of Manhattan.
So you can get down
to it pretty easily and...
and get a good, solid foundation
to start building
your 3,000-foot tower.
[narrator] So, now that
we know how high we can build,
will our tower be tough enough
to stand up to Mother Nature?
New York is in a hurricane zone,
and changing weather patterns
point to a stormy future.
Could a 3,000-foot tall
building even survive over
100-mile-per-hour winds?
[Bill] If you're not careful,
you're going to have
some very large forces
you have to deal with.
And a lot of times, buildings
are designed for wind storms
that happen once
every 1,700 years.
[narrator] The tower may
sit on a rock solid base,
but its outer surface design
needs to combat the full fury
of the next powerful hurricane.
[Chris] Skyscraper design
is largely wind engineering.
And so we design the
skyscraper to confuse the wind,
to not fall into a resonance with
the wind coming around the building.
[narrator] As the wind blows around
a building, it forms swirls or vortices.
That effect is called
vortex shedding.
[Bill] Well, if you ever
go out in a canoe
and you pull your paddles
through the water,
you'll see a little swirl
at the edge of your paddle.
That's a vortex.
[narrator] That's the reason behind the
seemingly random shape of the Burj Khalifa.
Creating those asymmetric
protrusions on the side of the building
will prevent those vortices
from teaming up along
the entire length of the tower.
Bill calls it
"confusing the wind."
He believes the curved shape of our sleek
new building will have the same effect.
[Bill] When the wind blows
this way,
the vortex will occur and it'll
bump into the side of the building
before it can completely form,
which is an advantage.
And when the wind
comes this way,
uh you know the vortex
will form,
but it'll form way downstream
and won't hit the building.
[narrator] It's time to put
our tower design to the test.
[Bill] We will design the building
like you design a musical instrument,
and for the harmonics of the
wind that we cannot get away from,
we will change the harmonics
of the structure so that they don't,
sort of say, dance together.
[narrator] As air travels
around our model,
sensors gather data on the
aerodynamics of the shape.
The wind data is visualized on a
graph, and Bill gives us the verdict.
[Bill] It's a very, very
flat curve,
which means that there's
no part of this building
which is getting
a great deal of force on it.
There may be forces
on small segments of it,
but in total, there is no,
like, bad spot.
So it's behaving
very, very well.
The shape, it's a good shape.
[narrator] Our tower
will have the strength to roll
with nature's most brutal
punches, but what about the inside.
If people are going
to pay the big bucks,
they're going to expect
to live in the lap of luxury.
[Bill] It needs to be
a pleasant experience.
And so a lot of this has to do with
the views, to see out of the building.
[narrator] Megatall condos
in New York are all the rage,
with some apartments going
for as much as $98 million.
The Empire State Building
has no residential units,
but the Urban Sequoia would,
putting the building in a special class.
People understand that you're
buying in a once-in-a-lifetime building.
And so certainly to be in
the tallest residential building
in the world
is a unique experience.
Views of the park, views of the
south of New York, river views.
But at the same time,
when you have these views,
you're also getting
a lot of privacy.
[narrator] Compared to the views from
the roof of the Empire State Building,
the views from Urban Sequoia,
would topped them all.
So now that we
figured out our design,
we still need to figure out how
to surpass the original crew's
lightning fast building record.
[Bill] The Empire State Building
was built amazingly quickly.
[narrator] From start to
finish, it took 410 days
to complete
the Empire State Building.
Contractors used an assembly line
process to erect the new skyscraper,
then employing as many
as 3,500 workers each day,
they assembled its skeleton at a
record pace of 4.5 storeys per week.
It may have been
used in other buildings,
but this is the only building
I've ever heard of it,
was they ran a miniature
railroad around each floor
to take materials from the hoist
around the perimeter of the building.
And they had little hopper
cars, full of sand and full of bricks
and whatever, just
running around these tracks.
It's a lot of effort
to do something like that,
but it also really
speeds up the work.
[narrator]
So now we're curious.
Could we outpace the Empire State
Building's original construction crew?
Some skeptics don't think
it can be done.
[Jean-Yves] It would be absolutely
impossible to replicate the construction
of the Empire State Building
in the speed at the time today.
Absolutely impossible.
[narrator] Maybe we can
use 21st-century technology
to outperform their
teamwork and ingenuity.
Our search for speed starts
with developer Richard Kerris.
Richard works for a company
that brings new technologies to life.
[Richard] Robots don't take lunch
breaks, they don't need to sleep.
So you would be building
morning, noon and night.
So the efficiency factor
of those types of things
are incredibly wonderful
for saving money.
[narrator] Richard's team builds
autonomous vehicles and robots
that tackle the factory
floor like a hive of
bees, learning from
each other on the job.
The result is a self-taught,
more intelligent robotic workforce.
So how can AI,
or artificial intelligence,
help us build a skyscraper,
if we built it today?
[narrator] We're imagining a modern
day reboot of the Empire State Building.
Our new tower,
the Urban Sequoia,
will be the tallest
building on Earth.
But if we want to
surpass the competition
and outpace the original crew's
410-day construction record,
we need to build smart.
Artificial intelligence developer
Richard Kerris may have the solution.
[Richard] So if we were going to
look at using the technology of today
to do something like
that from the '30s and...
and using machines
and AI, et cetera, you know,
you'd first be able to simulate
everything in a computer environment
and then you could
start to train the robots
that you want to have
in that building.
By simulating it
in the computer,
the computer will look at the
hundreds of thousands of situations
and maximize
everything for that.
So now when you're putting that
information into a robot, for example,
and the robot's going to be trained
to bring the materials to each floor,
help lay it out
or whatever else,
it's already done that hundreds of
thousands of times in the simulated world.
[Bill] You know, I mean, we're in a
new world now as far as technology.
In the 1920s and '30s, steel
construction ruled the day.
Today, we have both steel
and reinforced concrete,
and both of them have become
industrialized processes
where they're basically
vertical factories.
[narrator] So if our building is a vertical
factory, why not automate it like one?
This AI hive mind
tech could be a
game-changer for
building the Urban Sequoia.
The Empire State Building may
have had railway tracks on every floor,
but our building would be crawling
with independent robot helpers.
But even with modern technology,
we could still learn a thing or
two from the original architects.
[Don] The building was one of
the first big buildings in New York
to be fast-tracked, which is where
you're still designing the building
as its being constructed.
[narrator] Since then, designing
and building at the same time
have become the norm
in construction.
But Richard's team is about to
blast that concept into the future
with an AI technology
they call Omniverse.
[Richard] We believe that we are
getting closer to the actual Holodeck
that we may know from Star
Trek and things like that every day,
and we believe that
Omniverse is going to be
that platform that
enables that to happen.
[narrator] Omniverse
will immerse architects
and engineers in their creations
before they even break ground.
[Richard] So what does
that mean for us?
We could have built the Empire State
Building in the Omniverse platform.
And you and I could have
walked around on every single floor,
interactively, making
decisions, looking at things,
as if we were
actually in the building.
[narrator] With Omniverse
and the AI-driven factory floor,
we are one step closer to
matching the Empire State Building's
warp speed construction record.
Another innovation seeks to
outperform the workforce of 1931,
move over, Terminator,
here it is for real,
the rise of the machines.
[Gaurav]
In the last four years,
what we have been
developing is technology that
you can use to upgrade
existing heavy equipment
and turn it into a fully
autonomous piece of equipment.
You tell it the parameters of exactly
what you want it to build and you press go.
You can have an operator sort
of remote or somewhere on site,
who can manage a fleet
of autonomous equipment.
You can do three times the work
with the same amount of equipment.
[narrator] This crew eats diesel for
lunch and only breaks for breakdowns.
With this fully automated
equipment at our disposal,
we'll have an army of autonomous
machines that can tackle the job 24/7.
And this is where
Richard's team steps back in
and raises fast-tracking
to a whole new level,
because Omniverse isn't
just a 3D design environment,
it's an AI think tank that wouldn't
simply design while building,
it could build before building,
running countless simulations
of our entire construction
before we even break ground.
So with all this tech, surely
we'll be able to get our building up
faster than the Empire
State Building, right?
[Bill] Five, five and a
half years, hopefully we...
we would all be having a party
somewhere high up in the building.
[narrator]
Five and a half years.
Even with
the technological advantage,
we're no match for the speed it
took to erect this Fifth Avenue marvel.
So we'll predict
it'll take 12,000 workers,
plus a fleet of high-tech
help, about as long as it took
to build the Burj Khalifa.
But the Urban Sequoia
imagines us reaching twice as high
to the New York skyline.
We can do it, but all this muscle
and machinery comes at a cost.
Just how much
if we built it today?
[narrator] We've radically
reimagined the Empire State Building,
twice as high, yet just
as inspiring as the original,
and with all sorts of modern
technologies at our disposal,
reaching for the sky
is possible.
[Chris] The opportunity to
think ambitiously about a project
like this for the future
would be amazing.
[narrator] So what would
our build look like?
Step one, like the crew
on the original Empire State,
we've got to dig nearly
55 feet down to hit bedrock.
To tackle that task, we'll network
our autonomous excavators together,
so they work as one.
And once you do that,
you can tell the robot,
give it the instructions what
you need it to do that day.
[narrator] Step two, we begin
building the concrete superstructure.
It'll be dramatically
different from the
Empire State Building's
steel frame.
[Chris] We're talking about a
building that is 3,000 feet tall.
So we are more than twice the
height of the Empire State Building.
[narrator] For our new tower, we'll
use prefabricated carbon-free concrete.
[Bill] One of the
holy grails of architecture
and engineering
is prefabrication,
and we do that as much as
we can, as often as we can,
and that technology is coming
together, you know, faster and faster.
[narrator] Once we get
too high for precast,
we'll switch to pouring
concrete on site.
[Bill] And so, in a reinforced
concrete building,
the former can be almost a
vertical factor where it jacks itself up.
It... it hoists itself
up the building.
[narrator] Back in 1930, workers
carried concrete up by hand, not today.
[Bill] You no longer have
to bring it up in buckets,
but is in fact... it's pumped from
these very amazing piston pumps
that are able to push concrete over
2,000 feet in the air with a single lift.
[narrator] Once our
concrete superstructure is up,
we'll install our carbon
scrubbers on the top floors,
and then it's time
for the grand finale.
We're covering our
building in bio-brick,
the first building in Manhattan
made from living materials
that'll actually help the
environment rather than hurt it.
That's the outside.
But what about the inside?
Andy Berube works for a company
that makes complete rooms
for big buildings.
[Andy] Modular
construction is really
changing the face of
construction as a whole,
but I think this disruptive technology is
the way of the future, and we can do it.
[narrator] Andy's prefab rooms
come complete
with luxury fixtures
and furniture.
[Andy] You're putting these
on a truck
or on a vessel
and transporting to the docks
or to a particular staging area.
And then from that, you're...
you're scheduling your units
coming into the construction site
and assembling them
essentially like LEGO blocks.
[narrator] Imagine that,
the Urban Sequoia,
as the new star of the
world's most famous skyline.
It would be an
astonishing 3,000 feet tall,
made with state-of-the-art
eco-friendly materials
and engineered to stand up
to hurricane winds.
New York City would once again be
home to the tallest building in the world
with this spectacular new icon.
[Bill] There's lots of room
for the new icon.
You know, there are...
ideas yet to be realized that
will be memorable forever.
[narrator] But you can't think
this big without a big, big price tag.
In today's dollars, the Empire
State Building cost $500 million,
the Burj Khalifa
cost $1.5 billion.
Our building is
taller than the Burj,
and we have to factor in
more than a decade of inflation.
So Chris has a pretty good
ballpark for our dream building.
[Chris] This is not $10 billion
project, but it's not a $1 billion project.
It's a $3 billion
to $5 billion project.
[narrator] Going down
the middle, 4 billion bucks.
The Empire State Building just
celebrated its 100th anniversary,
and it shows all the signs of
being around a whole lot longer.
[Chris] They got so much right when
they built the Empire State Building.
They got so much right.
[Bill] That building's
going to be there forever.
And actually, one of the most sustainable
things you can do is to keep reusing it.
[narrator] But as the world changes,
so do the ways we live, work and build.
The Urban Sequoia isn't just
about how tall we can go
and what records we could break.
This isn't built
for the hubris of man.
This is built for
all of our benefit.
That's what we would have
to achieve by rebuilding
the Empire State Building today.
[narrator] It's a towering
example of how architecture,
engineering and high-tech
can positively impact the planet,
if we built it today.
The Empire State Building
defines the New York City skyline with
its soaring height and signature design.
[Richard] If you think about
it, it's still one of the most
recognized buildings
in the world.
[narrator] Standing at 1,454 feet
high, the Empire State Building
was the tallest in the world for
nearly 40 years after its completion,
and it was constructed faster
than any skyscraper in history
in an astounding 410 days.
[Bill]
The Empire State Building
was built amazingly quickly.
[Kevin] Well beyond the speed
at which we build today.
[narrator]
So now we're curious.
With today's technology, could we
build a reimagined Empire State Building
and reclaim the world's
tallest title for New York City?
Why would you want ever to be second
best when you can be number one?
[narrator] Here's the plan.
We're rounding up the heaviest
equipment and materials...
[Richard] Robots don't take lunch
breaks, they don't need to sleep.
[Wil] We have created a
hybrid living building material.
[narrator] ...enlisting
the world's top architect...
[Chris] We believe we could
build a tower that is 3,000 feet tall.
[narrator] ...and all the money it
would take to create New York's
most beloved landmark
built for a new generation.
[Chris] This isn't built
for the hubris of man.
This is built for
all of our benefit.
[narrator] Imagine the world's
greatest wonders...
reimagined.
How long would it take?
How much would it cost?
How many workers would we need?
Could we even do it
If We Built It Today?
[theme music playing]
[narrator] New York, New York,
where the most ambitious come
to make their dreams come true.
And back in 1930,
The Big Apple's skyline
got a little bigger.
And somebody told me, "I never
heard of the Empire State Building,"
I said, "What cave
have you been living in?"
[narrator] By the numbers, the
Empire State Building astonishes.
It contains over three million
light bulbs, 70 miles of water pipe,
1,060 miles of telephone
cable, 35,000 pieces of mail a day
are delivered to its tenants.
So many, the building
has its own zip code.
There are 1,576 steps from
the lobby to the 86th floor.
Construction
of the Empire State started on
St. Patrick's Day in 1930.
[Jean-Yves] At the height
of the construction,
more than 3,400 workers worked
at the Empire State Building.
[narrator] The building
was finished by April 1931,
after 410 days of construction,
and was 12 days ahead of schedule.
The Empire State Building was
built ridiculously, incredibly fast.
[Chris] Unimaginable, really.
Anybody who's done a home
renovation can feel the shock of building
a full tower in one year.
[narrator] From its inception,
the Empire State Building
was America's modern marvel.
The sheer volume of
materials was unmatched.
It was built with
60,000 tons of steel,
ten million bricks and
200,000 cubic feet of granite
and limestone cladding.
Even its elevators were
a marvel of engineering.
They were the world's first to carry
15,000 people 102 storeys into the sky.
[Kevin] It was an amazing piece of
technology, amazing piece of design,
and an... an incredible piece
of workmanship.
The Empire State Building went
up at a time in America's history
where it became an iconic
symbol of American power,
American accomplishments.
[narrator] By the 1990s,
the Empire State Building
was a fading legend, and
year-by-year other buildings
around the world reached higher.
Now, New York's skyline
has six towers taller
than the Empire State Building
and counting.
Today, the Empire State
Building has undergone
a $165 million makeover.
Energy efficient windows,
upgraded elevators
and dazzling LED lights have assured
the Empire State Building's place
as the most photographed
skyscraper in the world.
But what if we built it today?
We're recruiting
two skyscraper experts
to dream of an Empire
State Building of the future.
In New York, you have
a history, you have a...
an excitement about
tall buildings.
And so, with the right material
and the right structural system,
I think it would be
a good candidate for the...
the next world's
tallest building.
[narrator] Bill Baker isn't
just any structural engineer.
He engineered
the tallest building on Earth.
The Burj Khalifa in Dubai
stands an astounding
2,717 feet tall.
That's almost twice the height
of the Empire State Building,
and it took four times
as long to build it.
[Bill] On the Burj Khalifa,
we started on the construction
of the superstructure
in the spring of 2005,
and the structure had topped
out at the very beginning of 2009.
So, you know, a little less
than four years, uh, to...
to get...
get the structure up.
[narrator] Bill has laid down
the groundwork
for our new megatall
Empire State Building.
And to design it, he'll enlist his
architect colleague, Chris Cooper.
[Chris] The wonderful thing
about being an architect
is having the opportunity
to imagine a new idea.
[narrator] Chris dreams big.
He's optimistic,
and he knows what he wants.
[Chris] Could we build a tall
building that should be an appropriate,
um, icon for the future of New
York and for the future of cities?
Uh, absolutely.
[narrator] Our goal is to build
the tallest building in the world,
constructed with
sustainable materials,
a building that's beautiful on the
outside and functional on the inside.
Fortunately,
Chris shares our aspirations.
[Chris] Building for the sake of
height was a worthwhile ambition.
And I think that we're in
a very different context now.
We're in a very
different place now.
We should be building buildings
that are doing more good than harm.
[narrator]
Chris' megatall tower design
is unlike any other
skyscraper on the planet.
[Chris] We'd like to think about
this icon like a great tree in the city.
[narrator] But before
we can break ground,
we still have a ton of
elements to consider.
First, we need to decide what our Empire
State Building is going to look like?
[Kevin] Increasingly New York,
like so many cities now,
becomes a city of mirrors, a
city of glass just reflecting itself.
And this is something I think
that we need to rein in.
[narrator]
Once we have a design,
we need to choose a material
that inspires the imagination.
You have to think
about what is the
structural system and
what is the materials.
And those conversations kind of go
together because different materials
do what better with
different systems.
[narrator] Next,
we've got to figure out
just how high we can build
in Midtown Manhattan.
And it may take an engineering
miracle to go higher
than the great Burj Khalifa.
[Bill] Over time
the technology has changed
and particular use of
high-strength concrete
has enabled buildings
to be more slender.
So for the same footprint,
you can go higher.
[narrator]
The Empire State Building
took just over a year to build.
Could we even dare to dream of
building a megatower just as fast?
[Chris] The opportunity
to think ambitiously
about a project like this for
the future would be amazing.
[narrator] Time is money when
you're building a skyscraper.
So, we need to decide just
how many people it will take.
[Don] The building was
one of the first big buildings
in New York to be fast-tracked.
And that was not done
by taking unsafe shortcuts.
[narrator] Bill and Chris
are going to need help.
How can they erect a megatall
tower on New York's tiny footprint?
What design could ever win the
hearts of millions of New Yorkers
as the Empire State Building
has done for 90 years?
And there's another more
dangerous challenge ahead.
[Don] Wind blow, there's a
problem for these buildings.
And if you make them
too tall and slender,
they're going to blow over.
[narrator] Is this the Empire
State Building of the future?
If we built it today.
[narrator] We're imagining a
cloud-piercing 21st-century version
of a New York icon,
the Empire State Building.
But before we can break ground, first,
we need to figure out why we build it.
[Don] Nobody builds
a 1,000-foot height building
just to say they built
a 1,000-foot high building.
They build it to make money.
You can make more money
if your building is famous.
[narrator] Its famous views allow
visitors to see six states on a clear day.
The building has been featured
in 250 TV shows and movies.
Its most famous role is a crowd-pleaser
in the building's new museum.
[Jean-Yves] We invite all of our
visitors to fall in the grasp of Kong.
We're in hundreds of movies,
numbers of comic books
all around the world
in all languages.
[narrator] Standing
at 1,454 feet high,
the Empire State Building has 2.8
million square feet of office space.
At an average of
$70 per square foot,
the building rakes in
about $200 million a year.
So if our goal is to build a new tower
twice that size, well, you do the math.
New York City is the world's
largest financial center
with an economy worth
$1.5 trillion a year,
nowhere else on Earth
can compete.
There are 400 million
square feet of office space
and nowhere to go but up.
So a megatall tower makes sense.
Then there's the other reason
to build big, the competition.
[Bill] You know,
the world's tallest buildings
are now being built in
the Middle East and in China.
[narrator] The Makkah Royal
Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia
is the third tallest building
on the planet.
It stands at 1,972 feet.
In second place is the
Shanghai Tower at 2,073 feet.
And the king of megatowers
is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai,
at 2,717 feet high.
Bill Baker is the structural
engineer behind the Burj Khalifa.
He says it's high time
for New York to step up.
[Bill] Just like the Empire State
Building captured the record
for New York
for approximately 40 years
as the world's tallest
building, I'm sure the...
the civic pride
of New York would like to
reclaim that title for a while.
[narrator] The race
for the sky is relentless.
The Empire State Building is currently
the 43rd tallest tower in the world.
And if we're going to bring the
world's tallest title back to New York,
our choice of design
needs to be one of a kind,
and it's something
architect Chris Cooper
has been thinking
about for a long time.
We'd like to think about this...
this icon like a great sequoia,
like a great tree in the city.
We know now that buildings are
actually one of the greatest contributors
to the carbon emissions,
uh, globally.
So, you know,
can we really think
differently about how
to solve this problem?
And could we imagine
building a tall icon
that uses its height
to benefit its context?
Could we build a building that
absorbs more carbon than it produces?
[narrator] Just like...
the sequoia,
the tallest tree in the world,
it's nature's skyscraper,
soaring nearly 330 feet.
So Chris is calling his
tower the Urban Sequoia.
It's America's great tree.
And so I think the name
is wonderful
and that it sits as an icon for the
nation and for an optimistic future.
[narrator] The building will
be a sleek, tapered tower.
[Chris] On this 200-foot wide
New York City block, we're able to...
to reach up 3,000 feet.
And we do that in a way by,
um, thinking very organically
or naturally about the forces.
And so the shape of the
building is really derived
from the flow of gravity
and of force down.
And so we think of this
building rising in this...
as this tapered form from
the footprint of the block
up to a small point at its very
top, that at the lower floors
the building that are much
wider, we build as office.
And as it continues to rise, then
we change the use to residential.
[narrator] So it's a living
community that's as steady as a tree
that functions like one, too.
And there's another
point to rising high,
tall buildings have what's
known as the stack effect.
The air tends to move from
high pressure to low pressure,
and areas of high temperature
to low temperature.
Well, the air is both thinner
and colder at 3,000 feet.
So in a high rise, air constantly
rushes from the lower floors
and heads straight up.
We pull air in and then use
a carbon sink to filter the air
as we pull it in and then release
it back out in a cleaner state.
And so the... the building
itself can act as a carbon filter.
[narrator] Another plus, as the
air rises in the urban sequoia,
it'll spin a giant fan, generating
electricity for the entire building.
[Chris] And so this will be
a real machine,
not just a simple building,
not just an object,
but it's really a machine that is
performing with certain expectations.
[narrator] Now that we have a
design, we need building materials.
In the 1930s, steel was the most
commonly used construction material.
Today's tall buildings rely on
reinforced high-performance concrete
to bear the load.
The Burj Khalifa
contains a record-breaking
11.6 million cubic feet
of concrete.
That's enough to build a
sidewalk from New York to Miami.
[Bill] As concrete has become more
and more sophisticated and amazing,
the vocabulary becomes
richer and richer,
and there's more and more
things that are possible.
[narrator] The problem with our
plan is that as carbon footprints go,
concrete is
a brontosaurus-sized offender.
So how will we solve this concrete
conundrum, if we built it today?
[narrator] We're imagining building
a 21st-century Empire State Building
that will not only break
records but it'll also set the tone
for the next generation,
yet achieving a design
that will use its height
to benefit the context
is just part of the process.
We'll also need to decide what
materials we'll use to build it.
These days, concrete is the
structural material of choice,
but concrete
might not fit the bill,
if our goal is to reduce
our carbon footprint.
Oh, this is like one of my
favorite subjects. Okay.
[narrator] Wil Srubar knows all about
construction's concrete conundrum.
So concrete is the second most
consumed material on Earth
after water, and cement,
the powder
we use to make concrete, is responsible
for 8% of global CO2 emissions.
So the problem
is really massive.
[narrator]
At the University of Colorado,
Wil's team is developing a
game-changing building material.
[Wil] Our team here at the
university are trying to utilize
the capability of organisms
to architect,
uh, these wonderfully strong building
materials, um, all from a genetic code.
We have created a hybrid
living building material
that exhibits both biological
and structural function.
[narrator] In traditional concrete, cement
is used to bond rock and sand together,
but this hybrid material
is made from cyanobacteria,
a type of bacteria
that lives in water.
[Wil] And what those cyanobacteria
do is they take carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere that has
dissolved into the seawater,
with calcium that is
present in the seawater,
and it reacts with the CO2
and forms calcium carbonate.
[narrator] Calcium carbonate
makes up some of nature's
more complex substances, like
eggshells, seashells and pearls.
In Wil's bricks,
calcium carbonate grows
and acts as a strong binder.
[Wil] It's really a process of
forming a natural bio-cement
that we have brought
into the laboratory.
[narrator] The living brick is the
perfect material for our exterior siding.
They're sturdy
enough to stand on,
and they can take up
many different shapes.
They could also yield another
benefit, reducing carbon from the air.
Manufacturers of both steel and
cement emit a ton of carbon dioxide
when they produce the materials.
But under the right conditions,
the living brick can absorb CO2.
The problem is it's
not strong enough
to build our entire
superstructure.
Luckily, we know of another
team of ecological experts,
who are taking
concrete to new heights.
While Wil grows
his concrete binder,
this company repurposes
one of construction's
most wasteful by-product,
steel slag.
Slag is one of the leftovers
in steel manufacturing.
Nearly 19 million tons of it
are discarded every year.
[Chris Stern]
We select the correct...
steel slag, we grind it
to the size that we need.
We mix it with sand or rock,
basically aggregates,
as well as water,
and we make it into forms.
[narrator] The mixture goes into a
chamber to be cured with carbon dioxide.
Typical concrete takes around
28 days to reach full strength.
But this concrete
can be cured in 24 hours.
[Chris Stern] So the
chemical process is the CO2,
uh, reacts with the steel slag and it
creates the binder, a really strong binder.
Right here, you can see, these
cinder blocks were made from steel slag,
and they're basically
suitable for construction.
[narrator] Now, it's time to put
this super concrete to the test.
[Chris Stern] So we do
some destructive testing.
So this is a load cell and it
actually will apply pressure to a point.
[narrator] Modern concrete breaks
at about 1,000 pounds of pressure.
This carbon neutral cinder
block holds up past 1,400 pounds.
So we'll pour this carbon-free
concrete into massive precast concrete
forms to build our tower
one module at a time.
The pieces are
falling into place.
First, our spire-shaped design,
then a mind-blowing concept
of the world's first
carbon filter megatower.
Finally, we build
the whole thing with concrete
that produces no carbon
and an exterior
that actually scrubs
carbon from the atmosphere.
But how on earth are we
going to build our tower
on a standard 200x500
foot Midtown Manhattan lot?
If we built it today.
[narrator] We're reimagining
a 21st-century version
of New York City's favorite
skyscraper, the Empire State Building.
[Chris] Building a building of
the ambition of Empire State,
we're going tall.
We're trying to build tall.
[narrator]
The building will be green,
but it will also have to be
pretty lean,
because the average lot size in
Midtown Manhattan is just 200x500 feet.
So the question is,
how high can we go?
[Bill] An interesting thing
about New York is that the blocks
north to south
are almost all the same.
They're roughly 200 feet from...
from property line to
property line, very narrow.
And so starting with that 200-foot
width, how high can you go?
[narrator] The world's tallest
building, the Burj Khalifa,
has a three-winged foundation
that's double that size,
and it was built in the desert,
not in the middle of the
busiest city on the planet.
[Bill] We would have to
decommission 34th Street
so that we'd have
room for the structure,
which I don't think would make too
many people of Manhattan very happy.
[narrator] But the Urban Sequoia
takes a page from its namesake,
the world's tallest tree.
The sequoia has a shallow,
but wide root system,
supporting two million pounds
of load.
But here's the part
that inspires Bill.
The tree itself is like a cantilever,
with the roots acting as a rigid base.
Bill's foundation
will do the same.
One of the issues with a
cantilever is that it has to...
as the loads accumulates, you
also have to accumulate strength.
We need to be sure that it's
healthy and strong and stiff
all the way down
to the bottom, including,
just like in a tree, the roots.
[narrator] And while the Burj
Khalifa was built on shifting sands,
all of New York is solid
as a rock, bedrock that is,
Earth's tough outer crust lies just
beneath its legendary concrete canyons.
The rock is not that deep
in that part of Manhattan.
So you can get down
to it pretty easily and...
and get a good, solid foundation
to start building
your 3,000-foot tower.
[narrator] So, now that
we know how high we can build,
will our tower be tough enough
to stand up to Mother Nature?
New York is in a hurricane zone,
and changing weather patterns
point to a stormy future.
Could a 3,000-foot tall
building even survive over
100-mile-per-hour winds?
[Bill] If you're not careful,
you're going to have
some very large forces
you have to deal with.
And a lot of times, buildings
are designed for wind storms
that happen once
every 1,700 years.
[narrator] The tower may
sit on a rock solid base,
but its outer surface design
needs to combat the full fury
of the next powerful hurricane.
[Chris] Skyscraper design
is largely wind engineering.
And so we design the
skyscraper to confuse the wind,
to not fall into a resonance with
the wind coming around the building.
[narrator] As the wind blows around
a building, it forms swirls or vortices.
That effect is called
vortex shedding.
[Bill] Well, if you ever
go out in a canoe
and you pull your paddles
through the water,
you'll see a little swirl
at the edge of your paddle.
That's a vortex.
[narrator] That's the reason behind the
seemingly random shape of the Burj Khalifa.
Creating those asymmetric
protrusions on the side of the building
will prevent those vortices
from teaming up along
the entire length of the tower.
Bill calls it
"confusing the wind."
He believes the curved shape of our sleek
new building will have the same effect.
[Bill] When the wind blows
this way,
the vortex will occur and it'll
bump into the side of the building
before it can completely form,
which is an advantage.
And when the wind
comes this way,
uh you know the vortex
will form,
but it'll form way downstream
and won't hit the building.
[narrator] It's time to put
our tower design to the test.
[Bill] We will design the building
like you design a musical instrument,
and for the harmonics of the
wind that we cannot get away from,
we will change the harmonics
of the structure so that they don't,
sort of say, dance together.
[narrator] As air travels
around our model,
sensors gather data on the
aerodynamics of the shape.
The wind data is visualized on a
graph, and Bill gives us the verdict.
[Bill] It's a very, very
flat curve,
which means that there's
no part of this building
which is getting
a great deal of force on it.
There may be forces
on small segments of it,
but in total, there is no,
like, bad spot.
So it's behaving
very, very well.
The shape, it's a good shape.
[narrator] Our tower
will have the strength to roll
with nature's most brutal
punches, but what about the inside.
If people are going
to pay the big bucks,
they're going to expect
to live in the lap of luxury.
[Bill] It needs to be
a pleasant experience.
And so a lot of this has to do with
the views, to see out of the building.
[narrator] Megatall condos
in New York are all the rage,
with some apartments going
for as much as $98 million.
The Empire State Building
has no residential units,
but the Urban Sequoia would,
putting the building in a special class.
People understand that you're
buying in a once-in-a-lifetime building.
And so certainly to be in
the tallest residential building
in the world
is a unique experience.
Views of the park, views of the
south of New York, river views.
But at the same time,
when you have these views,
you're also getting
a lot of privacy.
[narrator] Compared to the views from
the roof of the Empire State Building,
the views from Urban Sequoia,
would topped them all.
So now that we
figured out our design,
we still need to figure out how
to surpass the original crew's
lightning fast building record.
[Bill] The Empire State Building
was built amazingly quickly.
[narrator] From start to
finish, it took 410 days
to complete
the Empire State Building.
Contractors used an assembly line
process to erect the new skyscraper,
then employing as many
as 3,500 workers each day,
they assembled its skeleton at a
record pace of 4.5 storeys per week.
It may have been
used in other buildings,
but this is the only building
I've ever heard of it,
was they ran a miniature
railroad around each floor
to take materials from the hoist
around the perimeter of the building.
And they had little hopper
cars, full of sand and full of bricks
and whatever, just
running around these tracks.
It's a lot of effort
to do something like that,
but it also really
speeds up the work.
[narrator]
So now we're curious.
Could we outpace the Empire State
Building's original construction crew?
Some skeptics don't think
it can be done.
[Jean-Yves] It would be absolutely
impossible to replicate the construction
of the Empire State Building
in the speed at the time today.
Absolutely impossible.
[narrator] Maybe we can
use 21st-century technology
to outperform their
teamwork and ingenuity.
Our search for speed starts
with developer Richard Kerris.
Richard works for a company
that brings new technologies to life.
[Richard] Robots don't take lunch
breaks, they don't need to sleep.
So you would be building
morning, noon and night.
So the efficiency factor
of those types of things
are incredibly wonderful
for saving money.
[narrator] Richard's team builds
autonomous vehicles and robots
that tackle the factory
floor like a hive of
bees, learning from
each other on the job.
The result is a self-taught,
more intelligent robotic workforce.
So how can AI,
or artificial intelligence,
help us build a skyscraper,
if we built it today?
[narrator] We're imagining a modern
day reboot of the Empire State Building.
Our new tower,
the Urban Sequoia,
will be the tallest
building on Earth.
But if we want to
surpass the competition
and outpace the original crew's
410-day construction record,
we need to build smart.
Artificial intelligence developer
Richard Kerris may have the solution.
[Richard] So if we were going to
look at using the technology of today
to do something like
that from the '30s and...
and using machines
and AI, et cetera, you know,
you'd first be able to simulate
everything in a computer environment
and then you could
start to train the robots
that you want to have
in that building.
By simulating it
in the computer,
the computer will look at the
hundreds of thousands of situations
and maximize
everything for that.
So now when you're putting that
information into a robot, for example,
and the robot's going to be trained
to bring the materials to each floor,
help lay it out
or whatever else,
it's already done that hundreds of
thousands of times in the simulated world.
[Bill] You know, I mean, we're in a
new world now as far as technology.
In the 1920s and '30s, steel
construction ruled the day.
Today, we have both steel
and reinforced concrete,
and both of them have become
industrialized processes
where they're basically
vertical factories.
[narrator] So if our building is a vertical
factory, why not automate it like one?
This AI hive mind
tech could be a
game-changer for
building the Urban Sequoia.
The Empire State Building may
have had railway tracks on every floor,
but our building would be crawling
with independent robot helpers.
But even with modern technology,
we could still learn a thing or
two from the original architects.
[Don] The building was one of
the first big buildings in New York
to be fast-tracked, which is where
you're still designing the building
as its being constructed.
[narrator] Since then, designing
and building at the same time
have become the norm
in construction.
But Richard's team is about to
blast that concept into the future
with an AI technology
they call Omniverse.
[Richard] We believe that we are
getting closer to the actual Holodeck
that we may know from Star
Trek and things like that every day,
and we believe that
Omniverse is going to be
that platform that
enables that to happen.
[narrator] Omniverse
will immerse architects
and engineers in their creations
before they even break ground.
[Richard] So what does
that mean for us?
We could have built the Empire State
Building in the Omniverse platform.
And you and I could have
walked around on every single floor,
interactively, making
decisions, looking at things,
as if we were
actually in the building.
[narrator] With Omniverse
and the AI-driven factory floor,
we are one step closer to
matching the Empire State Building's
warp speed construction record.
Another innovation seeks to
outperform the workforce of 1931,
move over, Terminator,
here it is for real,
the rise of the machines.
[Gaurav]
In the last four years,
what we have been
developing is technology that
you can use to upgrade
existing heavy equipment
and turn it into a fully
autonomous piece of equipment.
You tell it the parameters of exactly
what you want it to build and you press go.
You can have an operator sort
of remote or somewhere on site,
who can manage a fleet
of autonomous equipment.
You can do three times the work
with the same amount of equipment.
[narrator] This crew eats diesel for
lunch and only breaks for breakdowns.
With this fully automated
equipment at our disposal,
we'll have an army of autonomous
machines that can tackle the job 24/7.
And this is where
Richard's team steps back in
and raises fast-tracking
to a whole new level,
because Omniverse isn't
just a 3D design environment,
it's an AI think tank that wouldn't
simply design while building,
it could build before building,
running countless simulations
of our entire construction
before we even break ground.
So with all this tech, surely
we'll be able to get our building up
faster than the Empire
State Building, right?
[Bill] Five, five and a
half years, hopefully we...
we would all be having a party
somewhere high up in the building.
[narrator]
Five and a half years.
Even with
the technological advantage,
we're no match for the speed it
took to erect this Fifth Avenue marvel.
So we'll predict
it'll take 12,000 workers,
plus a fleet of high-tech
help, about as long as it took
to build the Burj Khalifa.
But the Urban Sequoia
imagines us reaching twice as high
to the New York skyline.
We can do it, but all this muscle
and machinery comes at a cost.
Just how much
if we built it today?
[narrator] We've radically
reimagined the Empire State Building,
twice as high, yet just
as inspiring as the original,
and with all sorts of modern
technologies at our disposal,
reaching for the sky
is possible.
[Chris] The opportunity to
think ambitiously about a project
like this for the future
would be amazing.
[narrator] So what would
our build look like?
Step one, like the crew
on the original Empire State,
we've got to dig nearly
55 feet down to hit bedrock.
To tackle that task, we'll network
our autonomous excavators together,
so they work as one.
And once you do that,
you can tell the robot,
give it the instructions what
you need it to do that day.
[narrator] Step two, we begin
building the concrete superstructure.
It'll be dramatically
different from the
Empire State Building's
steel frame.
[Chris] We're talking about a
building that is 3,000 feet tall.
So we are more than twice the
height of the Empire State Building.
[narrator] For our new tower, we'll
use prefabricated carbon-free concrete.
[Bill] One of the
holy grails of architecture
and engineering
is prefabrication,
and we do that as much as
we can, as often as we can,
and that technology is coming
together, you know, faster and faster.
[narrator] Once we get
too high for precast,
we'll switch to pouring
concrete on site.
[Bill] And so, in a reinforced
concrete building,
the former can be almost a
vertical factor where it jacks itself up.
It... it hoists itself
up the building.
[narrator] Back in 1930, workers
carried concrete up by hand, not today.
[Bill] You no longer have
to bring it up in buckets,
but is in fact... it's pumped from
these very amazing piston pumps
that are able to push concrete over
2,000 feet in the air with a single lift.
[narrator] Once our
concrete superstructure is up,
we'll install our carbon
scrubbers on the top floors,
and then it's time
for the grand finale.
We're covering our
building in bio-brick,
the first building in Manhattan
made from living materials
that'll actually help the
environment rather than hurt it.
That's the outside.
But what about the inside?
Andy Berube works for a company
that makes complete rooms
for big buildings.
[Andy] Modular
construction is really
changing the face of
construction as a whole,
but I think this disruptive technology is
the way of the future, and we can do it.
[narrator] Andy's prefab rooms
come complete
with luxury fixtures
and furniture.
[Andy] You're putting these
on a truck
or on a vessel
and transporting to the docks
or to a particular staging area.
And then from that, you're...
you're scheduling your units
coming into the construction site
and assembling them
essentially like LEGO blocks.
[narrator] Imagine that,
the Urban Sequoia,
as the new star of the
world's most famous skyline.
It would be an
astonishing 3,000 feet tall,
made with state-of-the-art
eco-friendly materials
and engineered to stand up
to hurricane winds.
New York City would once again be
home to the tallest building in the world
with this spectacular new icon.
[Bill] There's lots of room
for the new icon.
You know, there are...
ideas yet to be realized that
will be memorable forever.
[narrator] But you can't think
this big without a big, big price tag.
In today's dollars, the Empire
State Building cost $500 million,
the Burj Khalifa
cost $1.5 billion.
Our building is
taller than the Burj,
and we have to factor in
more than a decade of inflation.
So Chris has a pretty good
ballpark for our dream building.
[Chris] This is not $10 billion
project, but it's not a $1 billion project.
It's a $3 billion
to $5 billion project.
[narrator] Going down
the middle, 4 billion bucks.
The Empire State Building just
celebrated its 100th anniversary,
and it shows all the signs of
being around a whole lot longer.
[Chris] They got so much right when
they built the Empire State Building.
They got so much right.
[Bill] That building's
going to be there forever.
And actually, one of the most sustainable
things you can do is to keep reusing it.
[narrator] But as the world changes,
so do the ways we live, work and build.
The Urban Sequoia isn't just
about how tall we can go
and what records we could break.
This isn't built
for the hubris of man.
This is built for
all of our benefit.
That's what we would have
to achieve by rebuilding
the Empire State Building today.
[narrator] It's a towering
example of how architecture,
engineering and high-tech
can positively impact the planet,
if we built it today.