Funny piece of trivia about the Sydney Opera House: It was built on the site of a former railway terminal that was a large long U-shaped building. When the building was set to be torn down, a local authority declared that it would make a great location for an Opera House. He was referring to the acoustic qualities that would be provided by the large U-shaped building itself. But others thought he was referring to the little peninsula upon which the building stood. So they tore down the building that would have made a great opera house in order to build an opera house. Among the other construction mistakes - they neglected to consider parking space for the thousands of people who would drive to the Opera House.
Not a railway terminal but the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot and the building itself wasn't U-shaped, just the outer walls as the south face was open so the trams could enter the building. There's a good aerial view at the front of this video: ua-cam.com/video/pviivl-BVtI/v-deo.html There's now an extensive car park under the building, accommodating 1,100 vehicles and extending 12 stories down, apparently the worlds deepest. As Circular Quay railway station is nearby so perhaps Utzon and Arup considered most visitors would arrive by train.
@@michaelmclachlan1650 The rail opened in 1880, the ferries in 1855, the busses in 1905 the trams in 1885. When the Opera House opened it was standard to drive into town and park anywhere nearby for 5 cents an hour. The car park was planned, it wasn’t needed for years.
@@seanlander9321 The rail didn't open in 1880, Circular Quay didn't open until 1956. Prior to that the closest stations to the site would have been St James(opened 1926) and Wynyard (opened 1932). I have, incidentally, already mentioned Circular Quay station. The trams were also non-existent when the Opera House opened, closure had become state government policy in the early 1950' and they were all gone by 1961. Everyone would have been aware they wouldn't be available when the opera house opened.
I happened to be in Shanghai just days after the Lotus Riverside collapse. I was a tourist so I wasn’t up to date with the local news. I still remember the surprise I had while being driven to the airport and looking over at a huge building on its side. I never knew what happened until I watched this video. Mystery solved. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
I was stationed at Fort Gordon at during the construction of Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center. There were numerous construction errors that were truly mind boggling. In the basement of the facility a therapy pool was installed. The pool was to be 4 feet deep and have a wheelchair ramp. Instead of following the plan the builder installed a standard (8 foot deep) swimming pool with the wheelchair ramp leading directly to the deep end of the pool. No one noticed until the pool was completed. The psychiatric wards occupied the top two floors. In a normal psychiatric unit, the door are hung so they open into the hallway to prevent patients from barricading themselves inside the rooms. All the doors were hung the wrong way. The isolation rooms were L shaped and small enough so that a patient could wedge the bed between the window wall and the door. The first time this happened the maintenance crew had to use power tools to cut through the door. The isolation rooms were then turned into doctors' offices.
@@jamessalomon9343 It's strange this, probably global, problem never get solved. How difficult can it be to follow drawings? Sometimes we complain that people DON'T think. In some situations it would be nice if they just followed the orders, and not tried to think by themselves. Of course that requires an architect able to think for them all. Perhaps that's the sore point? 🤔
Should also mention the Las Vegas death ray. The Vdara hotel was built with a concave shape at such an angle that during the hottest parts of the day it turns into a giant magnifying glass focusing all of the suns rays onto it's own pool deck. The resulting ray is able to give people severe sunburns in minutes. They have tried to combat this by putting up lots of umbrellas and adding a matte film to many of the hotels windows.
They have one of those in London now when it see sunny days ...... but i believe they may have added something to the windows to reduce it. All I can remember is some guys Jaguar getting melted
Freiburg in Germany has one of those as well. The university library. Very modern building build in the early 2010s. It's not quite as bad the Vdara as the glare from the windows only blinds car drivers in spring and autumn due to the position of the sun. They solved that by hanging long fabric blinds on the outside. But it didn't stop there. The facade also turned out to be leaking. And a few years later, parts of the facade started falling down.
@@starlingLee Not only do they have one in London...it's designed by the same person as the Las Vegas one! So, there's no excuse for the Walkie-Fryer, everyone should have known it would happen!
Not only do they have one in London...it's designed by the same person as the Las Vegas one! So, there's no excuse for the Walkie-Fryer, everyone should have known it would happen!
Having seen the Vassa in person, its incredible. It was so kind of those people that long ago to think of us in the future, wanting to see a well preserved war ship
The Vasa ship can be visited in a museum - it's a hangar that they've built around the recovered ship. It's beautiful - like a walk through time. You can walk through the ship on dedicated paths.
I was quite sure they had kind of a scaffolding in the ship with a walkway. Why should they build something like that in a reconstruction? But it was decades ago and I might mix up some memories.
After being raised, Wasa was put into a large military dry dock and prserved. The museum was then built around the ship. It is not possible to go aboard the ship but there are galleries at various levels going around allowing viewing from several different heights. The way I understand it, the ship was originally planned with just one gun deck but the king ordered an extra one built on top. Of course, the inquiry later could not condemn the king for his stupid judgement.
A friend of mine's father worked for many years on the Sydney Opera House. Once they noticed a film crew recording on the site for a story about the progress of the work. After the cameraman and reporter had spent hours getting the vision they wanted my friend's dad went and told them they had been recording them demolishing bits because of design changes. The crew had to come back a few days later to find new construction pieces and re-record all the vision.
A more tragic construction mistake took place in 1981 in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. Two overhead walkways collapsed killing 114 due to bad decision making. The walkways basically came under extra stress due to the hotels owners being worried about the esthetics of the supporting rods. Rather than having bare threads visible for supporting bolts, changes to the original plan were made without any real consideration to engineering principles, and this led to the fourth-floor walkway taking on extra weight, resulting in the collapse. The Hyatt Regency collapse remains the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure in American history, and it was the deadliest structural collapse in the U.S. until the collapse of the World Trade Center towers 20 years later.
@@dashvash5440 No. Instead of hanging decking from a common support they hung one deck from the other deck, then they hung a third the same way. The first deck was designed to hold a bunch of people, not 3 decks worth.
@@calpallouise I still don't know how they fucked that up. Anyone with any mechanical design sense would have balked at the implementation. "Hold the fuck up" is a valid response and stop contruction.
Was expecting the Vdara Hotel or the Walkie Talkie (both designed by the same architect, both with the same problem of focusing sunlight in a manner that has been described as a "death ray") to be on here.
Actually Melbourne recently had the same problem with the Collins Arch building. They had to spend a fortune re-glazing it and installing louvres etc…. Great looking building though lol
You could also include the first attempt to build the concrete hull structure of Sleipner A oil platform in Norway which had a catastrophic failure on 23 August 1991, due to a design flaw, that resulted from an error caused by unconservative concrete codes and inaccurate finite element analysis modelling of the tricell, which formed part of the ballasting/flotation system. As the structure sank deeper into the 210-meter (690 ft) fjord, the buoyancy chambers imploded and the rubble struck the floor of the fjord, creating a Richter magnitude scale 3 earthquake. After the accident, the project leaders from Norwegian Contractors were brought before the Statoil board, and were expecting severe repercussions. But the director instead asked the famous question "Can you make a new one before schedule?" to which the contractors replied "Yes we can". The new hull was completed before schedule.
Through the 1960s, the state university that I later on attended was in the process of expanding to another campus located outside of the town the original campus is located. One of the new buildings was dedicated to teaching the various fields of engineering. Unfortunately, the structural engineers forgot to ask the geotechnical engineers for input on the design. Had a geotechnical investigation been taken on the bedrock the building was to be founded on, they would have discovered the presence of pyrite in the shale and siltstones the building would be sitting on. Since they didn't, and no preventive remedial action was taken, the pyrites reacted with groundwater and caused the rock to swell in size. The basement floors were pushed up and doors became unusable. Fortunately, the stability of the building wasn't compromised, but a lot of money that could have been better spent, had to be spent on digging up the basement and doing whatever was necessary to clear out the pyrite.
Biggest mass construction failing that has occurred throughout history, and still continues to this day - Building houses on Floodplains then wondering why they flood.... :P
Utzon as architect and Arup as engineer fighting amongs themselves sounds like fun 😅 And the Opera House having horrible acoustics is just the cherry on top 🙈
And there's no way the one guy who left never saw the finished building. It's been shown in countless movies, television shows, and photographs. Maybe, "been to in person" is more accurate.
@@ChicagoFaucet.etc. Yeah, it was like I was having a stroke. What does Simon mean "never saw it finished?" It was finished long before 2008. So yeah, "in person" would be more accurate.
If you were to criticise Arup for anything, is that he never saw a job without seeing a way to use concrete in it. But, he stuck around and actually finished projects. The group he founded (you'd never guess the name, it's Arup Group) is pretty highly regarded worldwide. Through the company and his own designs, all the Australian capitals (not Hobart, its where dreams go to die) have had their foreshore areas in part designed by him.
@@thepax2621 lol, he didn't go around being the lead engineer just for opera houses. His group did do the Bell Tower in Perth, which is acoustically sound. And he worked on the new building of the Coventry Cathedral, which also does music. I'm pretty sure Utzon was the issue, not Arup. But Arup's philosophy after the Opera House was to include engineers from the start of the design process. So I guess we have Utzon to thank for that.
I live in the town with the deadliest construction disaster in US history. 50+ deaths when a power plant cooling tower collapsed during construction. My grandfather was scheduled to be up there, but he woke up sick and my grandmother made him stay home, it was the only day before or after that he ever missed work. Belmont WV
Simon, an additional ironic detail about the Green (Building 54) at MIT - most of its space is used by the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences department. I never had an occasion to take a course there, so I cannot comment on the difficulty of ingress/egress via the revolving doors. If I had, I probably would have used an underground route to get there should the wind get the better of the doors. Also, we always pronounced I.M. Pei to rhyme with Bey, not with bye. From what I understand, the Chinese pronunciation would be "Bey" with a "b" rather than a "p".
I've actually experienced that wind difficulty there. The revolving doors work, though it can feel like a forced inhalation on the way out if there's wind rushing in. :)
The Vasa was not recovered until 1951. It was on the bottom of the harbor for 300 years. The water was so cold it nearly preserved the wood, even some of the paint. They did recover all but 3 of the cannons shortly after it sank by using crude diving bells.
1:32 (From the "Wizard of Id" cartoon, which featured a very short king, who was sensitive about the issue): King of Id to royal sculptor: "How quickly can you make a 40 foot tall statue of me?" Royal sculptor: "Depends on how fast I can lay my hands on a 39 foot pedestal." (in the final panel theres no dialog, we just see the royal sculptor hanging on the dungeon wall by chains)...
My favorite from that cartoon was Sir Rodney running in yelling "Sire! They peasants are revolting!'" The kings reply "They certainly are!" perfectly exemplifying how almost all politicians everywhere feel about the people.
The Sydney Opera House acoustics problem is what Real Civil Engineer has in mind when he insults someone by calling them an absolute architect. I love a good looking building but failing to design function over form is never good. Same thing goes with every day objects.
There were many reasons why the Opera House has a shaky beginning. One problem was the 2 venues, Opera, and concert/theatre, were swapped mid-construction. The interiors were finished by a completely different design firm due to the constant interference by 2 state governments. Utzon left for more reasons than stated here.
They tried to use the Montreal Olympic Stadium for concerts but also ran into acoustic issue. Given that the main structure is a somewhat ovoid all-metal arena, echo and tinny effects were disastrous. The whole place is a white elephant.
The Sanfrancisco Glass Tower. It was the tallest building in the world at its completion in the 1970's. But due to poor quality electrical componentd used to cut costs, the building caught fire during its opening ceremony. As a result, a lot of rich people died and the building was condemned and demolished.
Besoba (literally five graves) housing complex was built in a mining city of Karagandy, Kazakhstan, right above a coal mine and it just fell over, the ground under it could not support that massive 9 story complex. When you look at Karagandy from a map, you will see that city sprawls very inconsistently, with an empty space in the center, and city is kinda growing around it. That is the place of former coal mines that were not recultivated properly. The city also has a lake that was a massive open coal pit that was flooded in 1940 together with equipment and workers.
Family member was in a choir and touring Australia with the Sydney Opera house on the plans. They were booked to perform the backing for artist and so they did. This was the 80's and the problems with acoustics hadn't really hit our shores, when said family member returned, their description of the disappointment of said venue cause the air to go very blue 😁
Sorry, but there's something darkly funny about the Vasa setting sail and then sinking probably without leaving the line of sight of the crowd that had flocked to see it all due to a slight breeze.
history says that the ship builders protested during the build that an extra gun deck where not possible but who would say no if the king demanded it, and it where other parts of the ship out of the spec that also got vetoed and built becaus the kings words. in the end the builders must had a "i told you so" moment when the ship sank.
@@extec101 I just picture all the ship builders turning in unison to the king, who's awkwardly looking around as he realises that he probably should've listened to the people who's job it is to build his navy ships.
@@Kaltagstar96 The king wasn't there. He was in Poland, conducting the war. This itself was the reason the ship turned out like she did. As mentioned in the video, King Gustav Adolf interfered with the planning, not one time, SEVERAL. The keel was already made, and the construction of the ship begun, when the king, by letter, ORDERED the ship to be bigger, and have more guns. And it should be ready quickly, preferably yesterday, since Sweden recently lost ten ships. Vasa was the first built in a royal order of four ships. Originally the king wanted two smaller (108 feet / 33 meters) and two larger (135 feet / 41 meters), but after a while changed his mind, but the ship being firstly built was a small one. He wanted it to be 120 feet / 37 meters, and a second gun deck. (Hence the keel on Vasa was too narrow, and to low, the hatchets for the guns on the UPPER gun deck were where the lower gun deck should have been. The weight of the ballast that was needed to make her stand up, pulled her down into the water many meters too deep.) The shipwright tried to get his voice heard, that this couldn't be done, they must start all over with a new ship, through correspondence through Vice Admiral Klas Fleming. The king refused to listen to the arguments, "you have your orders, two gun decks, make it happen, NOW, we can't wait". The whole team of experienced ship builders and carpenters immediately understood this was going to be a disaster. It couldn't possibly be achievable. That rumor was out on the streets in no time, so the whole city was basically curious about how far Vasa would come. What people didn't expect was how fast she sank. The men inside the lower decks didn't have a chance, caught like in a mouse trap. The men, and wives and children, onboard were aware of the risks, but since the weather was good, not much wind at all, the custom of letting the family come, and let them leave at a naval harbor further out in the archipelago, was followed. I guess the families wanted to stay together as long as possible, since probably everyone knew that the ship would go down. They didn't expect it to happen so soon and so fast. At this point a new keel, with the measures the king later had agreed to, as a compromise, 120 feet / 37 meters, was made for the next ship.
MIT's Strada Building is even worse. It looks like Picasso drew it and the while thing has had severe water leaks since it was built. They still do not have it fixed, 20 years after it was built.
I think the Ryugyong Hotel should count, the problem being a total failure of financial planning. Construction began in 1987, and has been interrupted repeatedly by lack of funding. The _exterior_ was finally completed in 2011 (so yes, the building was visibly an unfinished eyesore for two decades), but the interior remains unfinished to this day.
I went to Purdue University and it has its own version of a wind tunnel. The tallest building on the main campus sits at the end of and east west street with the ground floor open air. The wind is forced thru the opening so strongly you can lean 45 deg into it. Yes Purdue is an engineering school
No idea where the Sidney opera house is, but maybe you were thinking of the SYDNEY Opera House? And another thing that Factboy got wrong is the reason for the acoustics & Jørn Utzon's departure. Jørn had a plan for the acoustics & left because they weren't going to implement them to save costs. That $300 million was to add Jørn Utzon's original specs to the Opera House.
Also worth noting that the last acoustic redesign - finished just a couple of years ago - has actually delivered fantastic results. The Concert Hall now has really top-tier acoustics, far better than they ever were before, and finally on par with the level of the overall building design!
1:06 similarly, the Owen engineering building in the Engineering college of Oregon State University housed the surveying department of the university. Ironically, a GPS error during its construction resulted in the building being laid out 3 feet off from its planned location, due to the difference between NAD83 and WGS84. The mistake wasn’t found until AFTER the elevator had already begun construction. Rather than start construction over, they redesigned the whole building to accommodate the new location. 😂😂
How can you do a list like this and ignore the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? AKA Galloping Gertie. It doesn't get worse than that. You've all seen the footage of the bridge that is flapping like a rag in the wind until it falls apart.
It's funny that the opera house has such terrible acoustics. It's appearance and location have drawn tens of millions of people to Australia as tourists, paying for itself many times over. But I doubt more than 1 in a thousand have actually attended a show in it's gigantic auditoriums. Probably even less than one in a thousand. It's value as a tourist drawcard and overall symbol for the city would probably be the same if they just converted it to an office building, just leaving the exterior and restaurants etc intact.
@@pretzelhunt The Opera House "looks cool". But concrete rot is now setting in ( the concrete structure is more than 50 years old). The rot is expensive to repair, so most buildings made entirely out of concrete are usually demolished before it starts.
@@mattp7437 Roman concrete lasted for thousands of years because it was based on different compounds (lime etc). Modern concrete suffers from the gases in the atomosphere (CO2, CO, etc) and gradually eats it away. Look it up.
I've seen Opera Houses that are reputed to have 'perfect' acoustic properties...visually distracting with weirdly placed panels and grids. Sounds great, looks awful.
Builder here, the apartment building in China apparently collapsed because they excavated soil from one side of the building and stockpiled it on the other side of the building, this created subsidence in the soil and it sheared the piles off which were never design to take shear forces, and then it gently rolled over into the excavation.
Holy crap, having only thirty men nearly capsize a ship that size is insane. I have a boat that is much smaller (5 tons) and ten people, which exceeds the coast guard limit for a boat that size, hanging off one side, jumping in unison wouldn't even come close to capsizing my boat. Its absolutely bananas that a monster of a boat like that could be so poorly built. She didn't have a chance as soon as a wave came.
The standards themselves are actually not bad. It's that the right connections (the same ones that get you building permits, land allowances, cheap funding) are also responsible for enforcing the standards. This in itself wouldn't be too bad if not for the fact that these same connections also allow you and your company to avoid judicial culpability. In other words not to similar from many countries these days...
It is one thing to have standards. Quite another to adhere to them. And yet another to enforce them. Corruption is rife. As is "cost saving", where winning the contract is seen as the main battle. Using whatever material comes readily to hand, to deliver something that looks appropriate, regardless of the technical spec, is another issue altogether. This is the country that added melamine to infant milk powder, to "bulk it out", increasing production volume and profits for trivial expense. It is no surprise to have appropriate building standards, but sticking to them remains a wishful dream in an over-regulated, bureaucrat-heavy, bribery prolific autocracy that has zero accountability.
honestly i was wondering if simon was even going to give us a location on this one. he mentioned the specific locations early on for the rest, but he didn't even say the word "China" until he almost finished this one.
Whatever they did to the Opera House worked - it is a fantastic venue. Iconic location, spectacular detailing inside. Not a brutalist fan in general, but it's a stunning place.
The Sydney Opera House is not a 'mistake', it's an absolute win. Even if they'd built an Opera House with the best acoustics in the world, it still would not have contributed anywhere near as much to the city as the current one does by it's aesthetics.
Exactly. Name any other opera house. Or ask any international tourist what they’re looking forward to seeing in Sydney. I see it probably 10 times a week for over 10 years now and still stare at it every time.
I feel the Sydney Opera House is a failure in the same way the F35 program is a failure. Both final products are good, but the process to get them there and functional was a cost and time overrun cluster f"$%k
lol, I worked at another building next to the Charles River and the builders were only allowed to have 3 floors... so they built each floor 20 some odd feet tall and installed "mezzanine" above each floor, then a penthouse above the 3rd floor, then a penthouse mezzanine... The buttons on the elevator were nuts.
@@judithstrachan9399 Yeah, it made navigating the damn building a little tough because some of the mezzanines didn't go clear end-to-end so sometimes you had to take the M.C. Escher route to get where you were going.
When the "Stack" interchange in Phoenix (I17 & I10) was being constructed, one of the taller support columns had to be demolished just after completion and rebuilt when it was revealed that it had been constructed five feet out of position.
I've played at the opera house and have been to many concerts there, yes originally the acoustics were bad but since the "doughnuts" were put in at least in the eighties there is no issues with acoustics, in fact anywhere in the concert hall you have good "hearing"
The then Brighton Polytechnic had a building that extended over a valley with a gap underneath. In a strong wind, the surface of an ornamental pond below it had a distinct slope.
One could add another famous, or rather infamous Opera house. The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. The Elbe Philharmonic Hall, popularly nicknamed Elphi, started as a private imitative in In 2007. The construction was scheduled to be finished by 2010 with an estimated cost of €241 million. In November 2008, after the original contract was amended, the costs for the project were estimated at €450 million. In August 2012, the costs were re-estimated to be over €500 million, which should also cover the increased cost for a strengthened roof. Construction work officially ended on 31 October 2016 at a cost of €866 million. Well, at least acoustics of Elphi, is claimed as one of the best in the world :)
my thanks to Simon and your team! i didn't know anything about the Opera House in that city. :O i just thought for all these years, 'hey that's ugly.' and left it at that. now i know why it looks so funky and that it was a sh!tstorm of a construction project. weren't its outer shapes some idea to imitate ships' sails or something?
The Sydney Opera House is pretty much the only landmark building that Australia in known for so I wouldn't call it a mistake per se. It's iconic regardless of the fact that it's unfit for its intended purpose.
When talking about MIT, I thought you were going to talk about the Strata Center. Where MIT had to sue the architect for $350 million. It has constant roof leaks.
I've been in Building 54 many, many times - I had the chance to hear guest lecturer Robert Metcalfe explain to my class how Ethernet was going to work. (Turns out that was kind of a big thing) It was quite windy on the ground floor, though only a few times a year - and by the time I was there, they'd added the revolving doors to get around the problem. Really disappointed to hear that the Great Sail (an Alexander Calder sculpture, BTW) had nothing to do with improving the wind tunnel effect, since I was told that a number of times and told many people that's why they put such a large sculpture in that location. Live and learn, I guess, right?
MIT's green building - can't use doors. Vasa can't sail without sinking. Lotus riverside complex - falls over. Sydney opera house - over-budget (pretty much a national/international standard for government work in the 60s), now has excellent acoustics and is an icon recognised world wide......hmmm.
Agreed this was a little confusing as presented. I believe the point he was making was that since the masts protruded above the water (when the ship sank) providing a location guide, they were able to recover the brass cannons from the wreck within a year, but not the wreck itself. These were the new-fangled double-the-previous-size 24 pounders in chronic short supply, so getting them back to put on another ship was seriously important. The ship itself, less so (just build another - Sweden has plenty of wood) And that gun recovery mission, in that era, from that depth, must have been quite epic. But yes, the ship itself was only recovered in modern times, once we had the tech and the interest to lift it.
And the wreck of Vasa's sistership Äpplet, which was modified after the disaster to, well, not sink, was found a couple of years ago! Äpplet was in use between 1629 and 1658 and the wreck is in excellent condition. Tryly amazing to find such a treasure after 350+ years under water!
Did an AI make the "Sidney Opera House". I'm against using AI for that sort of work, since all of them are based upon copyright infringement, but if you're going to do so - at least give the model a chance by spelling the name right (It's "Sydney"). That way the graphics it produces might actually look like the building.
Hey Simon, If you want to do another episode about construction mistakes then look no further than the Eglinton Cross Town in Toronto Canada. It's years and billions over due and they can't even give us a rough estimate of when it will be complete...
Not making blueprints at the contruction of the Vasa wasn't because it was a routine job, it wasn't a routine job. Not being the largest in the world didn't make it a routine project, it was still extraordinarily large. The real reason why there were no plans was that it was standard practice not to make them, this might just have been old habit from times when personal expertise was the standard or a way for shipwrights to protect their intellectual property, but it was in no way unusual. Since the knowledge was all in the shipwrights head one of the main reasons for the disaster aside from the king changing the specs was that the shipwright died midway through construction.
California State University Sacramento built a library building that created a wind tunnel. People actually were lifted off the ground and injured. Problem was solved by blocking one entrance with floor to ceiling windows.
The judges didn’t immediately fall in love with the Sydney opera house design, there were 10 preferred designs by the committee , but the person with the purse strings $$ found the chosen design discarded on the floor (or sumsuch) liked the idea even though it wasn’t an architectural drawing, just some artistic visuals
I never knew the part of the story about Udsen leaving and taking his plans for the Sydney Opera House with him. I've only heard the Danish side of the story, and they're very proud of him. There's even an amber replica of the Sydney Opera House that I saw at the Tirpitz museum.
I.M. Pei was notorious for being totally clueless about practicalities, and his ego prevented him from ever becoming less clueless. When he designed the buildings for the Buck Institute in Novato California, he knew the buildings were on top of a hill with prevailing winds to the south-west. Didn't stop him from insisting a fountain should be positioned directly in front of the main entrance. Yes, you can guess the rest. Pei was furious when his fountain was removed merely because it made entering and exiting the building impossible. Architects need to have an extremely large cactus inserted anally as part of the graduation ceremony - it wouldn't make them less useless, but it would give the rest of us some small satisfaction.
I would expect to see the Berlin Brandenburg Airport in a video of worst construction mistakes. I quote from Wikipedia that it "was originally planned to open in October 2011, five years after starting construction in 2006. However, the project encountered a series of successive delays due to poor construction planning, execution, management, and corruption. The Airport finally received its operational licence in May 2020, and opened for commercial traffic on 31 October 2020". The project was planned to be completed in 5 years, but it took them 14 years instead (3 times as planned) due to major mistakes and underestimations. Furthermore, the costs rocketed during this period. Initially, "by 2009, the construction cost was budgeted at €2.83 billion. (...) During construction, it became clear that the airport's costs would significantly increase as a result of initial underestimates, construction flaws, and increased expenses for soundproofing nearby homes." [Wikipedia]. Eventually, it seems that the costs reached or slightly exceeded 10 billion but I wouldn't be surprised if other hidden costs will surface in due time.
The (at the time brand new) library built on the campus of SWTSU in San Marcos. Texas in the late 60s was not sturdy enough to hold the books. They had to be kept to the interior 40% of the floors so as to not demolish the building. That's right . . . The outer edges of the floors had no support under them. OOPS !
The Opera house is literally Sydney (and New South Wales in general) in a nutshell. Wasting money on worthless ugly garbage because the other states will pay for it when they run out as usual. They think they are the capital, and their airport closes at 9PM because they don't like the noise :D Then they get upset that nobody goes there, and all their cafes go out of business :P
Here's more: the "bent pyramid" in Egypt is basically the world's largest construction mistake, having to have its angle changed mid-way through the project in order to avoid the fundation collapsing. Other pyramids have collapsed, so this was a real danger.
5:25 “A floating object displaces a volume of water equal to its mass” this might be nitpicky, but you use the object’s weight for the displacement of water by a floating object, not its mass.
Why couldn't MIT just put a freestanding wall a few feet out in front of the building? That would divert the wind. And you could have signs on the wall instructing people to walk around either side of the wall to access the open area and enter the building.
It is possible that the new wall would funnel and concentrate the winds at the ends of the wall even more than how it affected the doors. In other words, the wind would increase as you got near to the end of the wall, possibly blowing you off your feet completely, making it even more impossible to approach the building from near that wall. It would take some very careful design to get right. But in the spirit of your suggestion, I'm sure there would be ways of introducing wind deflectors and diffusors in the open space between building and river to achieve the desired reduction in wind speed and pressure, without adding to the problem. (A forest of trees would work really well!)
I have traumatic memories from the chapter about the building that tipped over due to greed and substandard quality, as well as the opera house with its own nonsense. I managed research & development in the US Air Force. Most of our work was done by civilian contractors. I'd had formal training, and at that time I was offended at how much the instructors described contractors as evil, wicked, and generally enemies of the United States. After years of working with those vile aberrations of the devil himself, I cannot grasp why our government tolerates such extreme entities from the Dark Side. These life forms start out Planning for the effort to fail, thus they get to sue for additional money in contract modifications. Compare this to the Opera House, which cost $100 million to build but $300 million to modify. -- Notice how no politician is calling for a crackdown on corruption. The only thing that makes sense is the description that the entire Washington DC culture is "Help Your Friends" and not in any way "Do Good."
. Funny you should mention the Sydney Opera House. Much of the following will seem disjointed but, I promise, it will come together at the end. I am originally from Rochester New York. Home of The Eastman Kodak Co., of camera and film fame, for those of the younger generation out there, and for several charities that George Eastman had started and / or contributed to and made possible. One of these is The Eastman School Of Music. I am also, and always have been a DIE HARD fan of Steppenwolf ever since the first time I'd heard "Born To Be Wild". (Important later.) In 1970, I was a 15 year old boy scout. (Again, important later.) Our troop was set to go on a week long camp out this one time and, at the same time, I had developed a respiratory infection that the doctor had warned my parents to keep me away from musty, dirty air ie. boy scout campouts with campfire smoke and early morning dew. I was pissed, disappointed pissed some more until my mother told me that Steppenwolf was going to be in town that weekend. Suddenly, boy scout camp outs were boring and too much trouble. My father had miraculously come up with 2 tickets to the Steppenwolf concert being played at The Eastman School of Music concert hall and I suddenly became ready to quit boy scouts altogether if asked. (They never asked.) My mother, being raised on a Pennsylvania farm during the depression, was all about country and western music. My father had more concern for how many piles the dog dropped in the yard than he had for ANY kind of music. My father was also prone to bad headaches from an old WW II injury. (Long story for another time.) My big 3 groups were Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly and Cream. I already owned every Steppenwolf album available at the time. The E.S.M. concert hall was designed for philharmonic style music, NOT for Steppenwolf style of music loud enough that it could break glass of all shapes and sizes at the same size. My father was sitting there with his eyes shut, I'm guessing, trying to meditate his headache away because his prescription narcotics would preclude his driving us home in the only car that our family owned. I didn't have a learners permit at 15 and even if I did, in New York then, a permit holder couldn't drive after dark so that was ruled out. I literally could not recognize a single song that they played because the acoustics in that place were perfect for The London Symphony Orchestra but horrible for Steppenwolf. I was happy to be able to see them in person but, at the same time, I was disappointed in the sound of the music. Seeing the original line up of Steppenwolf live, made missing the camp out worth it.
A former co worker told me he had seen on a construction site that the reinforced concrete had no reinforcement (the iron rods weren't put into the concrete when they poured it...). Parking houses that collapse, this kinda level. It has to do with hasty jobs without propper planning check ups. Combine this with temp jobs and authoritarian leadership and you get accident that are to happen. I was to expect this in some parts in the world but this was The Netherlands and this really shocked me. The co worker told me this after some balconies and a parking house had "issues" and was in the national news.
There will always be shonky operators that install the rebar, get it inspected, then pull the rebar out and pour the concrete. The only way to prevent it is ton inspect the rebar and stay watching while the concrete is being poured. And a high standard of professionalism in your inspectors so they can't be bribed off - or at least, not for less than what the rebar is worth.
Funny piece of trivia about the Sydney Opera House: It was built on the site of a former railway terminal that was a large long U-shaped building. When the building was set to be torn down, a local authority declared that it would make a great location for an Opera House. He was referring to the acoustic qualities that would be provided by the large U-shaped building itself. But others thought he was referring to the little peninsula upon which the building stood. So they tore down the building that would have made a great opera house in order to build an opera house. Among the other construction mistakes - they neglected to consider parking space for the thousands of people who would drive to the Opera House.
Not a railway terminal but the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot and the building itself wasn't U-shaped, just the outer walls as the south face was open so the trams could enter the building. There's a good aerial view at the front of this video:
ua-cam.com/video/pviivl-BVtI/v-deo.html
There's now an extensive car park under the building, accommodating 1,100 vehicles and extending 12 stories down, apparently the worlds deepest. As Circular Quay railway station is nearby so perhaps Utzon and Arup considered most visitors would arrive by train.
Wot? The Opera House has a massive car park and is adjacent to rail, bus and ferry.
@@seanlander9321 The car park only opened in 1992.
@@michaelmclachlan1650 The rail opened in 1880, the ferries in 1855, the busses in 1905 the trams in 1885. When the Opera House opened it was standard to drive into town and park anywhere nearby for 5 cents an hour. The car park was planned, it wasn’t needed for years.
@@seanlander9321 The rail didn't open in 1880, Circular Quay didn't open until 1956. Prior to that the closest stations to the site would have been St James(opened 1926) and Wynyard (opened 1932). I have, incidentally, already mentioned Circular Quay station.
The trams were also non-existent when the Opera House opened, closure had become state government policy in the early 1950' and they were all gone by 1961. Everyone would have been aware they wouldn't be available when the opera house opened.
I happened to be in Shanghai just days after the Lotus Riverside collapse. I was a tourist so I wasn’t up to date with the local news. I still remember the surprise I had while being driven to the airport and looking over at a huge building on its side. I never knew what happened until I watched this video. Mystery solved. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
I was stationed at Fort Gordon at during the construction of Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center. There were numerous construction errors that were truly mind boggling. In the basement of the facility a therapy pool was installed. The pool was to be 4 feet deep and have a wheelchair ramp. Instead of following the plan the builder installed a standard (8 foot deep) swimming pool with the wheelchair ramp leading directly to the deep end of the pool. No one noticed until the pool was completed. The psychiatric wards occupied the top two floors. In a normal psychiatric unit, the door are hung so they open into the hallway to prevent patients from barricading themselves inside the rooms. All the doors were hung the wrong way. The isolation rooms were L shaped and small enough so that a patient could wedge the bed between the window wall and the door. The first time this happened the maintenance crew had to use power tools to cut through the door. The isolation rooms were then turned into doctors' offices.
Govt contractors are the WORST
@@jamessalomon9343 It's strange this, probably global, problem never get solved.
How difficult can it be to follow drawings?
Sometimes we complain that people DON'T think.
In some situations it would be nice if they just followed the orders, and not tried to think by themselves. Of course that requires an architect able to think for them all. Perhaps that's the sore point? 🤔
Should also mention the Las Vegas death ray. The Vdara hotel was built with a concave shape at such an angle that during the hottest parts of the day it turns into a giant magnifying glass focusing all of the suns rays onto it's own pool deck. The resulting ray is able to give people severe sunburns in minutes. They have tried to combat this by putting up lots of umbrellas and adding a matte film to many of the hotels windows.
They have one of those in London now when it see sunny days ...... but i believe they may have added something to the windows to reduce it. All I can remember is some guys Jaguar getting melted
Freiburg in Germany has one of those as well. The university library. Very modern building build in the early 2010s. It's not quite as bad the Vdara as the glare from the windows only blinds car drivers in spring and autumn due to the position of the sun. They solved that by hanging long fabric blinds on the outside. But it didn't stop there. The facade also turned out to be leaking. And a few years later, parts of the facade started falling down.
@@shadowfox009x Architecture over engineering. It will get you every time.
@@starlingLee Not only do they have one in London...it's designed by the same person as the Las Vegas one!
So, there's no excuse for the Walkie-Fryer, everyone should have known it would happen!
Not only do they have one in London...it's designed by the same person as the Las Vegas one!
So, there's no excuse for the Walkie-Fryer, everyone should have known it would happen!
Having seen the Vassa in person, its incredible. It was so kind of those people that long ago to think of us in the future, wanting to see a well preserved war ship
The Vasa ship can be visited in a museum - it's a hangar that they've built around the recovered ship. It's beautiful - like a walk through time. You can walk through the ship on dedicated paths.
It's not possible to walk through the ship, only along the side. There is a reconstruction of a part of the lower deck that you can visit though.
Yep been and seen it.
I was quite sure they had kind of a scaffolding in the ship with a walkway. Why should they build something like that in a reconstruction?
But it was decades ago and I might mix up some memories.
After being raised, Wasa was put into a large military dry dock and prserved. The museum was then built around the ship. It is not possible to go aboard the ship but there are galleries at various levels going around allowing viewing from several different heights. The way I understand it, the ship was originally planned with just one gun deck but the king ordered an extra one built on top. Of course, the inquiry later could not condemn the king for his stupid judgement.
That diorama was amazing.
A friend of mine's father worked for many years on the Sydney Opera House. Once they noticed a film crew recording on the site for a story about the progress of the work. After the cameraman and reporter had spent hours getting the vision they wanted my friend's dad went and told them they had been recording them demolishing bits because of design changes. The crew had to come back a few days later to find new construction pieces and re-record all the vision.
Was your Dad able to keep a straight face? Even I can tell demo from construction and I'm not in the industry.
@@angelachouinard4581 It was a friend's father... if you had read my comment.
@@zacandmillie Sorry! I miss typed. I did read it but the computer was acting up
Sorry, Mate - this video was about the "SIDNEY" Opera House. Someone's father likely worked on a facility that was at least properly spelled.
I have worked in SOH before and can confirm it is an absolute nightmare from a light perspective as well as audio
A more tragic construction mistake took place in 1981 in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. Two overhead walkways collapsed killing 114 due to bad decision making. The walkways basically came under extra stress due to the hotels owners being worried about the esthetics of the supporting rods. Rather than having bare threads visible for supporting bolts, changes to the original plan were made without any real consideration to engineering principles, and this led to the fourth-floor walkway taking on extra weight, resulting in the collapse.
The Hyatt Regency collapse remains the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure in American history, and it was the deadliest structural collapse in the U.S. until the collapse of the World Trade Center towers 20 years later.
The documentary, “seconds from disaster “played some of the 911 calls from that night. Haunting AF. Seriously haunting shit.
I may be remembering wrong but I think the disaster was an instance of many people causing resonance (vibration) to unscrew the terrible bolt options.
@@dashvash5440 No. Instead of hanging decking from a common support they hung one deck from the other deck, then they hung a third the same way. The first deck was designed to hold a bunch of people, not 3 decks worth.
Swindled Podcast has an excellent episode about the Hyatt Regency collapse. It's astonishing how fucked the construction process was from the start.
@@calpallouise I still don't know how they fucked that up. Anyone with any mechanical design sense would have balked at the implementation. "Hold the fuck up" is a valid response and stop contruction.
Was expecting the Vdara Hotel or the Walkie Talkie (both designed by the same architect, both with the same problem of focusing sunlight in a manner that has been described as a "death ray") to be on here.
Actually Melbourne recently had the same problem with the Collins Arch building. They had to spend a fortune re-glazing it and installing louvres etc…. Great looking building though lol
He did mention those in a different video.
You could also include the first attempt to build the concrete hull structure of Sleipner A oil platform in Norway which had a catastrophic failure on 23 August 1991, due to a design flaw, that resulted from an error caused by unconservative concrete codes and inaccurate finite element analysis modelling of the tricell, which formed part of the ballasting/flotation system. As the structure sank deeper into the 210-meter (690 ft) fjord, the buoyancy chambers imploded and the rubble struck the floor of the fjord, creating a Richter magnitude scale 3 earthquake. After the accident, the project leaders from Norwegian Contractors were brought before the Statoil board, and were expecting severe repercussions. But the director instead asked the famous question "Can you make a new one before schedule?" to which the contractors replied "Yes we can". The new hull was completed before schedule.
Through the 1960s, the state university that I later on attended was in the process of expanding to another campus located outside of the town the original campus is located. One of the new buildings was dedicated to teaching the various fields of engineering. Unfortunately, the structural engineers forgot to ask the geotechnical engineers for input on the design. Had a geotechnical investigation been taken on the bedrock the building was to be founded on, they would have discovered the presence of pyrite in the shale and siltstones the building would be sitting on. Since they didn't, and no preventive remedial action was taken, the pyrites reacted with groundwater and caused the rock to swell in size. The basement floors were pushed up and doors became unusable. Fortunately, the stability of the building wasn't compromised, but a lot of money that could have been better spent, had to be spent on digging up the basement and doing whatever was necessary to clear out the pyrite.
The SIDNEY Opera House! Oh, the humanity!
🤷🏻♂️ no one will notice..
@@frankmagnotto I did :o
Shoutout to all the guys and gals named "Sidney" - you are noticed!
Biggest mass construction failing that has occurred throughout history, and still continues to this day - Building houses on Floodplains then wondering why they flood.... :P
Waterfront Views! Easy Access to Outdoor Activities! Fishing and Kayaking off the front porch!
Utzon as architect and Arup as engineer fighting amongs themselves sounds like fun 😅
And the Opera House having horrible acoustics is just the cherry on top 🙈
And there's no way the one guy who left never saw the finished building. It's been shown in countless movies, television shows, and photographs. Maybe, "been to in person" is more accurate.
@@ChicagoFaucet.etc. Yeah, it was like I was having a stroke. What does Simon mean "never saw it finished?" It was finished long before 2008. So yeah, "in person" would be more accurate.
If you were to criticise Arup for anything, is that he never saw a job without seeing a way to use concrete in it.
But, he stuck around and actually finished projects. The group he founded (you'd never guess the name, it's Arup Group) is pretty highly regarded worldwide.
Through the company and his own designs, all the Australian capitals (not Hobart, its where dreams go to die) have had their foreshore areas in part designed by him.
@@smalltime0 Did he ever figure out, how acoustics work?
@@thepax2621 lol, he didn't go around being the lead engineer just for opera houses. His group did do the Bell Tower in Perth, which is acoustically sound. And he worked on the new building of the Coventry Cathedral, which also does music.
I'm pretty sure Utzon was the issue, not Arup. But Arup's philosophy after the Opera House was to include engineers from the start of the design process. So I guess we have Utzon to thank for that.
0:35 - Chapter 1 - MIT's green building
3:25 - Chapter 2 - Sweden's vasa warship
7:20 - Chapter 3 - Lotus riverside complex
9:30 - Chapter 4 - Sidney opera house
I live in the town with the deadliest construction disaster in US history. 50+ deaths when a power plant cooling tower collapsed during construction. My grandfather was scheduled to be up there, but he woke up sick and my grandmother made him stay home, it was the only day before or after that he ever missed work. Belmont WV
Simon, an additional ironic detail about the Green (Building 54) at MIT - most of its space is used by the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences department. I never had an occasion to take a course there, so I cannot comment on the difficulty of ingress/egress via the revolving doors. If I had, I probably would have used an underground route to get there should the wind get the better of the doors.
Also, we always pronounced I.M. Pei to rhyme with Bey, not with bye. From what I understand, the Chinese pronunciation would be "Bey" with a "b" rather than a "p".
I've actually experienced that wind difficulty there. The revolving doors work, though it can feel like a forced inhalation on the way out if there's wind rushing in. :)
The Vasa was not recovered until 1951. It was on the bottom of the harbor for 300 years. The water was so cold it nearly preserved the wood, even some of the paint. They did recover all but 3 of the cannons shortly after it sank by using crude diving bells.
Yes. I don't care how you spell 'Sydney' but confusing one year with three centuries. . .
1:32 (From the "Wizard of Id" cartoon, which featured a very short king, who was sensitive about the issue):
King of Id to royal sculptor: "How quickly can you make a 40 foot tall statue of me?"
Royal sculptor: "Depends on how fast I can lay my hands on a 39 foot pedestal."
(in the final panel theres no dialog, we just see the royal sculptor hanging on the dungeon wall by chains)...
My favorite from that cartoon was Sir Rodney running in yelling "Sire! They peasants are revolting!'" The kings reply "They certainly are!" perfectly exemplifying how almost all politicians everywhere feel about the people.
😂😂😂
Pfff, that's nothing. Everyone knows the worst construction mistake ever is building a house in the nether and placing a bed in it.
I've never done this I'm afraid to admit I don't get the joke as much as I used to play Minecraft 😢
@@texashustler9845 The bed explodes and kills you.
Alledgedly
How to say, “I’m a millennial,” without saying I’m a millennial.
@@atksenc I'm gen-z, but close enough!
SIDNEY Opera House????? 🤣🤣🤣
I heard she's lovely. The funny thing is though, the hockey player Sidney Crosby frequently gets typed "Sydney"
On the upside, no matter how much they’ve spent, at least it’s only Australian dollars 😅
Came to the comments to comment on this typo. See I've been beaten to it 😆
Your mom?
@@jonc-1989 Came here to comment that
The Sydney Opera House acoustics problem is what Real Civil Engineer has in mind when he insults someone by calling them an absolute architect. I love a good looking building but failing to design function over form is never good. Same thing goes with every day objects.
My grandfather was an engineer. He used to call anything that sounded too good to be true, “an architect’s dream.”
There were many reasons why the Opera House has a shaky beginning. One problem was the 2 venues, Opera, and concert/theatre, were swapped mid-construction. The interiors were finished by a completely different design firm due to the constant interference by 2 state governments. Utzon left for more reasons than stated here.
I could forgive the bad acoustics if it wasn't such a hideous building.
They tried to use the Montreal Olympic Stadium for concerts but also ran into acoustic issue. Given that the main structure is a somewhat ovoid all-metal arena, echo and tinny effects were disastrous. The whole place is a white elephant.
Civil engineers? They're the drain guys, yes?
The Sanfrancisco Glass Tower. It was the tallest building in the world at its completion in the 1970's. But due to poor quality electrical componentd used to cut costs, the building caught fire during its opening ceremony. As a result, a lot of rich people died and the building was condemned and demolished.
you are aware this was a movie, right?
@@zaranea7920 Shhhhhhhh.
@@zaranea7920 That's exactly what they want you to think. Over a hundred movie extras died!
Besoba (literally five graves) housing complex was built in a mining city of Karagandy, Kazakhstan, right above a coal mine and it just fell over, the ground under it could not support that massive 9 story complex. When you look at Karagandy from a map, you will see that city sprawls very inconsistently, with an empty space in the center, and city is kinda growing around it. That is the place of former coal mines that were not recultivated properly. The city also has a lake that was a massive open coal pit that was flooded in 1940 together with equipment and workers.
Family member was in a choir and touring Australia with the Sydney Opera house on the plans. They were booked to perform the backing for artist and so they did. This was the 80's and the problems with acoustics hadn't really hit our shores, when said family member returned, their description of the disappointment of said venue cause the air to go very blue 😁
Sorry, but there's something darkly funny about the Vasa setting sail and then sinking probably without leaving the line of sight of the crowd that had flocked to see it all due to a slight breeze.
history says that the ship builders protested during the build that an extra gun deck where not possible but who would say no if the king demanded it, and it where other parts of the ship out of the spec that also got vetoed and built becaus the kings words.
in the end the builders must had a "i told you so" moment when the ship sank.
@@extec101 I just picture all the ship builders turning in unison to the king, who's awkwardly looking around as he realises that he probably should've listened to the people who's job it is to build his navy ships.
@@Kaltagstar96 The king wasn't there. He was in Poland, conducting the war.
This itself was the reason the ship turned out like she did.
As mentioned in the video, King Gustav Adolf interfered with the planning, not one time, SEVERAL.
The keel was already made, and the construction of the ship begun, when the king, by letter, ORDERED the ship to be bigger, and have more guns. And it should be ready quickly, preferably yesterday, since Sweden recently lost ten ships. Vasa was the first built in a royal order of four ships.
Originally the king wanted two smaller (108 feet / 33 meters) and two larger (135 feet / 41 meters), but after a while changed his mind, but the ship being firstly built was a small one. He wanted it to be 120 feet / 37 meters, and a second gun deck.
(Hence the keel on Vasa was too narrow, and to low, the hatchets for the guns on the UPPER gun deck were where the lower gun deck should have been. The weight of the ballast that was needed to make her stand up, pulled her down into the water many meters too deep.)
The shipwright tried to get his voice heard, that this couldn't be done, they must start all over with a new ship, through correspondence through Vice Admiral Klas Fleming. The king refused to listen to the arguments, "you have your orders, two gun decks, make it happen, NOW, we can't wait".
The whole team of experienced ship builders and carpenters immediately understood this was going to be a disaster. It couldn't possibly be achievable.
That rumor was out on the streets in no time, so the whole city was basically curious about how far Vasa would come.
What people didn't expect was how fast she sank. The men inside the lower decks didn't have a chance, caught like in a mouse trap.
The men, and wives and children, onboard were aware of the risks, but since the weather was good, not much wind at all, the custom of letting the family come, and let them leave at a naval harbor further out in the archipelago, was followed. I guess the families wanted to stay together as long as possible, since probably everyone knew that the ship would go down. They didn't expect it to happen so soon and so fast.
At this point a new keel, with the measures the king later had agreed to, as a compromise, 120 feet / 37 meters, was made for the next ship.
Stockholmers are not known to be very competent by other parts of Sweden…
@@annabackman3028 almost a TLDR.
are you using AI to wright that bible long text?
MIT's Strada Building is even worse. It looks like Picasso drew it and the while thing has had severe water leaks since it was built. They still do not have it fixed, 20 years after it was built.
Oh, I would've thrown in the Montreal Olympic stadium ("The Big O") to this competition as well. That was a sh1tshow of epic proportion too!
Corruption galore
The big *Owe*
That’s part for the course for any Olympic Stadium, though…
Gustavos Adolphus: "More cannons!"
Later: "Well maybe it can be used as port defense?"
I think the Ryugyong Hotel should count, the problem being a total failure of financial planning. Construction began in 1987, and has been interrupted repeatedly by lack of funding. The _exterior_ was finally completed in 2011 (so yes, the building was visibly an unfinished eyesore for two decades), but the interior remains unfinished to this day.
That hotel is really a masterpiece
I went to Purdue University and it has its own version of a wind tunnel. The tallest building on the main campus sits at the end of and east west street with the ground floor open air. The wind is forced thru the opening so strongly you can lean 45 deg into it. Yes Purdue is an engineering school
It's SYDNEY, with a Y not an I!!
Sydni?
And the photograph at 12:02 is mirrored.
Sidanee?
Miami
Come on Symon! You employ an Ozzie to do your editing. How?
No idea where the Sidney opera house is, but maybe you were thinking of the SYDNEY Opera House?
And another thing that Factboy got wrong is the reason for the acoustics & Jørn Utzon's departure. Jørn had a plan for the acoustics & left because they weren't going to implement them to save costs. That $300 million was to add Jørn Utzon's original specs to the Opera House.
Also worth noting that the last acoustic redesign - finished just a couple of years ago - has actually delivered fantastic results. The Concert Hall now has really top-tier acoustics, far better than they ever were before, and finally on par with the level of the overall building design!
@@Beeblebrox6868good to hear.
(See what I did there?)
I know, everybody knows about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. But it still should have been on this list.
But the dog died. We can't have that
1:06 similarly, the Owen engineering building in the Engineering college of Oregon State University housed the surveying department of the university. Ironically, a GPS error during its construction resulted in the building being laid out 3 feet off from its planned location, due to the difference between NAD83 and WGS84. The mistake wasn’t found until AFTER the elevator had already begun construction. Rather than start construction over, they redesigned the whole building to accommodate the new location. 😂😂
Thanks for always keeping me entertained when I have to run to the grocery store or wash dishes or cook eggs and sausage for the kids.
If you do a second installment of this, you should include the Citigroup Center in New York City.
How can you do a list like this and ignore the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? AKA Galloping Gertie. It doesn't get worse than that. You've all seen the footage of the bridge that is flapping like a rag in the wind until it falls apart.
He has a video on that bridge
the winds were underestimated, not thebridge design. it didnt even need a load on it.
You’ve answered your own question. Everyone has seen it.
How can you not make your own videos?
Bridges just different in murica 🇺🇲
An addition for the next chapter. The Bldg in London that was melting cars like a magnifying glass on an ant.
It's funny that the opera house has such terrible acoustics. It's appearance and location have drawn tens of millions of people to Australia as tourists, paying for itself many times over. But I doubt more than 1 in a thousand have actually attended a show in it's gigantic auditoriums. Probably even less than one in a thousand. It's value as a tourist drawcard and overall symbol for the city would probably be the same if they just converted it to an office building, just leaving the exterior and restaurants etc intact.
acoustical architechture has improved a lot since SOH was designed
@@pretzelhunt The Opera House "looks cool". But concrete rot is now setting in ( the concrete structure is more than 50 years old).
The rot is expensive to repair, so most buildings made entirely out of concrete are usually demolished before it starts.
Its not the concrete that rots, its the metal reinforcements inside, non reinforced concrete can last thousands of years
@@mattp7437 Roman concrete lasted for thousands of years because it was based on different compounds (lime etc).
Modern concrete suffers from the gases in the atomosphere (CO2, CO, etc) and gradually eats it away.
Look it up.
I've seen Opera Houses that are reputed to have 'perfect' acoustic properties...visually distracting with weirdly placed panels and grids.
Sounds great, looks awful.
8:06 That's the louded S-sound I've ever heard.
I love the troll with Sidney 😂😂
Builder here, the apartment building in China apparently collapsed because they excavated soil from one side of the building and stockpiled it on the other side of the building, this created subsidence in the soil and it sheared the piles off which were never design to take shear forces, and then it gently rolled over into the excavation.
Holy crap, having only thirty men nearly capsize a ship that size is insane. I have a boat that is much smaller (5 tons) and ten people, which exceeds the coast guard limit for a boat that size, hanging off one side, jumping in unison wouldn't even come close to capsizing my boat. Its absolutely bananas that a monster of a boat like that could be so poorly built. She didn't have a chance as soon as a wave came.
What about the Bricklayer's Accident? That one is a classic!
really good to mention that Vasa was later (in modern times) lifted and made into a museum. awesome visit
Why use AI photos of the Sydney Opera House, when there are millions of actual photos available that are much better.
Copyright maybe
@@kellybrackin8379 Isn't one of their writers an Aussie? It can't be that hard to find a friend in Sydney to take a photo of the damned thing.
It's not the only one here. the boat on the beach is too
how does it matter? everyone knows it is an AI photo. Nothing is misleading anyone and it serves the purpose of this video.
8:26 China has _standards_ for construction? News to me!
Well, they invented TIkTok, so they can't be all bad.
The standards themselves are actually not bad. It's that the right connections (the same ones that get you building permits, land allowances, cheap funding) are also responsible for enforcing the standards.
This in itself wouldn't be too bad if not for the fact that these same connections also allow you and your company to avoid judicial culpability.
In other words not to similar from many countries these days...
@@ferociousgumbywhat? Bro, tiktok is brain rot
It is one thing to have standards. Quite another to adhere to them. And yet another to enforce them. Corruption is rife. As is "cost saving", where winning the contract is seen as the main battle. Using whatever material comes readily to hand, to deliver something that looks appropriate, regardless of the technical spec, is another issue altogether. This is the country that added melamine to infant milk powder, to "bulk it out", increasing production volume and profits for trivial expense. It is no surprise to have appropriate building standards, but sticking to them remains a wishful dream in an over-regulated, bureaucrat-heavy, bribery prolific autocracy that has zero accountability.
honestly i was wondering if simon was even going to give us a location on this one. he mentioned the specific locations early on for the rest, but he didn't even say the word "China" until he almost finished this one.
Whatever they did to the Opera House worked - it is a fantastic venue. Iconic location, spectacular detailing inside. Not a brutalist fan in general, but it's a stunning place.
How about a video on the cleaning of the Venice canals?
The Sydney Opera House is not a 'mistake', it's an absolute win. Even if they'd built an Opera House with the best acoustics in the world, it still would not have contributed anywhere near as much to the city as the current one does by it's aesthetics.
Exactly. Name any other opera house. Or ask any international tourist what they’re looking forward to seeing in Sydney. I see it probably 10 times a week for over 10 years now and still stare at it every time.
It's hideous.
@@RubyDoobieScoo your mum
It’s glorious!
I feel the Sydney Opera House is a failure in the same way the F35 program is a failure. Both final products are good, but the process to get them there and functional was a cost and time overrun cluster f"$%k
lol, I worked at another building next to the Charles River and the builders were only allowed to have 3 floors... so they built each floor 20 some odd feet tall and installed "mezzanine" above each floor, then a penthouse above the 3rd floor, then a penthouse mezzanine... The buttons on the elevator were nuts.
Interesting. I’ve heard of “mezzanine floors”. Not “mezzanine” not-floors. Maybe it’s different here: I’d have counted the mezzanines.
@@judithstrachan9399 Yeah, it made navigating the damn building a little tough because some of the mezzanines didn't go clear end-to-end so sometimes you had to take the M.C. Escher route to get where you were going.
When the "Stack" interchange in Phoenix (I17 & I10) was being constructed, one of the taller support columns had to be demolished just after completion and rebuilt when it was revealed that it had been constructed five feet out of position.
The Sydney Opera House's acoustics are great now! Especially for orchestral music
I've played at the opera house and have been to many concerts there, yes originally the acoustics were bad but since the "doughnuts" were put in at least in the eighties there is no issues with acoustics, in fact anywhere in the concert hall you have good "hearing"
The then Brighton Polytechnic had a building that extended over a valley with a gap underneath. In a strong wind, the surface of an ornamental pond below it had a distinct slope.
One could add another famous, or rather infamous Opera house. The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. The Elbe Philharmonic Hall, popularly nicknamed Elphi, started as a private imitative in In 2007.
The construction was scheduled to be finished by 2010 with an estimated cost of €241 million.
In November 2008, after the original contract was amended, the costs for the project were estimated at €450 million.
In August 2012, the costs were re-estimated to be over €500 million, which should also cover the increased cost for a strengthened roof.
Construction work officially ended on 31 October 2016 at a cost of €866 million.
Well, at least acoustics of Elphi, is claimed as one of the best in the world :)
When you speak in past tense about a building, that doesn't bode well for it.
The Chinese falling buildings are tiltovers. 😅
I've been in construction for 25 years, I get your humour.
my thanks to Simon and your team! i didn't know anything about the Opera House in that city. :O i just thought for all these years, 'hey that's ugly.' and left it at that. now i know why it looks so funky and that it was a sh!tstorm of a construction project. weren't its outer shapes some idea to imitate ships' sails or something?
The Sydney Opera House is pretty much the only landmark building that Australia in known for so I wouldn't call it a mistake per se. It's iconic regardless of the fact that it's unfit for its intended purpose.
When talking about MIT, I thought you were going to talk about the Strata Center. Where MIT had to sue the architect for $350 million. It has constant roof leaks.
I've been in Building 54 many, many times - I had the chance to hear guest lecturer Robert Metcalfe explain to my class how Ethernet was going to work. (Turns out that was kind of a big thing) It was quite windy on the ground floor, though only a few times a year - and by the time I was there, they'd added the revolving doors to get around the problem.
Really disappointed to hear that the Great Sail (an Alexander Calder sculpture, BTW) had nothing to do with improving the wind tunnel effect, since I was told that a number of times and told many people that's why they put such a large sculpture in that location. Live and learn, I guess, right?
Sidney? How can I take you seriously when you put that on screen?
Hey, and what about that Leaning Tower of Pisa??
MIT's green building - can't use doors.
Vasa can't sail without sinking.
Lotus riverside complex - falls over.
Sydney opera house - over-budget (pretty much a national/international standard for government work in the 60s), now has excellent acoustics and is an icon recognised world wide......hmmm.
The Sydney Opera House would never get built today. It's magnificently impractical.
My Grandmother's apartment building in the Bronx was a Venturi tube air tunnel that had the doors shut tight on bad windy days.
The acoustics in the Sydney Opera House are significantly better after the most recent renovations.
"Sir, we cant put 73 guns on it, the weight will cause it to sink!"
"Ok fine, make it 72 then"
The Vasa ship was recovered 333 years later in 1961, not one year later.
Agreed this was a little confusing as presented. I believe the point he was making was that since the masts protruded above the water (when the ship sank) providing a location guide, they were able to recover the brass cannons from the wreck within a year, but not the wreck itself. These were the new-fangled double-the-previous-size 24 pounders in chronic short supply, so getting them back to put on another ship was seriously important. The ship itself, less so (just build another - Sweden has plenty of wood) And that gun recovery mission, in that era, from that depth, must have been quite epic. But yes, the ship itself was only recovered in modern times, once we had the tech and the interest to lift it.
And the wreck of Vasa's sistership Äpplet, which was modified after the disaster to, well, not sink, was found a couple of years ago! Äpplet was in use between 1629 and 1658 and the wreck is in excellent condition. Tryly amazing to find such a treasure after 350+ years under water!
Did an AI make the "Sidney Opera House". I'm against using AI for that sort of work, since all of them are based upon copyright infringement, but if you're going to do so - at least give the model a chance by spelling the name right (It's "Sydney"). That way the graphics it produces might actually look like the building.
There are several ai videos in this. Look at the boat on a a shallow beach. The reflection is of a totally different boat. It sucks.
Hey Simon,
If you want to do another episode about construction mistakes then look no further than the Eglinton Cross Town in Toronto Canada. It's years and billions over due and they can't even give us a rough estimate of when it will be complete...
The Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse was the first thing to come to mind.
Not making blueprints at the contruction of the Vasa wasn't because it was a routine job, it wasn't a routine job. Not being the largest in the world didn't make it a routine project, it was still extraordinarily large. The real reason why there were no plans was that it was standard practice not to make them, this might just have been old habit from times when personal expertise was the standard or a way for shipwrights to protect their intellectual property, but it was in no way unusual. Since the knowledge was all in the shipwrights head one of the main reasons for the disaster aside from the king changing the specs was that the shipwright died midway through construction.
California State University Sacramento built a library building that created a wind tunnel. People actually were lifted off the ground and injured. Problem was solved by blocking one entrance with floor to ceiling windows.
The judges didn’t immediately fall in love with the Sydney opera house design, there were 10 preferred designs by the committee , but the person with the purse strings $$ found the chosen design discarded on the floor (or sumsuch) liked the idea even though it wasn’t an architectural drawing, just some artistic visuals
I never knew the part of the story about Udsen leaving and taking his plans for the Sydney Opera House with him. I've only heard the Danish side of the story, and they're very proud of him. There's even an amber replica of the Sydney Opera House that I saw at the Tirpitz museum.
It feels like there could be a part two for this topic.
Can’t believe you forgot Galloping Gertie, the bridge on Puget Sound!
I'm surprised none of these construction failures in South Korea made it to this list: Seongsu Bridge, MV Sewol, Sampoong Mall.
I.M. Pei was notorious for being totally clueless about practicalities, and his ego prevented him from ever becoming less clueless. When he designed the buildings for the Buck Institute in Novato California, he knew the buildings were on top of a hill with prevailing winds to the south-west. Didn't stop him from insisting a fountain should be positioned directly in front of the main entrance. Yes, you can guess the rest. Pei was furious when his fountain was removed merely because it made entering and exiting the building impossible. Architects need to have an extremely large cactus inserted anally as part of the graduation ceremony - it wouldn't make them less useless, but it would give the rest of us some small satisfaction.
The Sydney Opera House is an Australian masterpiece.
Another video script that you clearly haven't read, some one needs to lose their job.
I would expect to see the Berlin Brandenburg Airport in a video of worst construction mistakes. I quote from Wikipedia that it "was originally planned to open in October 2011, five years after starting construction in 2006. However, the project encountered a series of successive delays due to poor construction planning, execution, management, and corruption. The Airport finally received its operational licence in May 2020, and opened for commercial traffic on 31 October 2020".
The project was planned to be completed in 5 years, but it took them 14 years instead (3 times as planned) due to major mistakes and underestimations. Furthermore, the costs rocketed during this period. Initially, "by 2009, the construction cost was budgeted at €2.83 billion. (...) During construction, it became clear that the airport's costs would significantly increase as a result of initial underestimates, construction flaws, and increased expenses for soundproofing nearby homes." [Wikipedia].
Eventually, it seems that the costs reached or slightly exceeded 10 billion but I wouldn't be surprised if other hidden costs will surface in due time.
It took over 300 years to recover the Vasa, not one. That is a really serious mistake.
The (at the time brand new) library built on the campus of SWTSU in San Marcos. Texas in the late 60s was not sturdy enough to hold the books. They had to be kept to the interior 40% of the floors so as to not demolish the building.
That's right . . . The outer edges of the floors had no support under them.
OOPS !
The Opera house is literally Sydney (and New South Wales in general) in a nutshell. Wasting money on worthless ugly garbage because the other states will pay for it when they run out as usual. They think they are the capital, and their airport closes at 9PM because they don't like the noise :D Then they get upset that nobody goes there, and all their cafes go out of business :P
Who’s Sidney, and why does she have an Opera House? And is it as beautiful as the Sydney Opera House?
When I can't sleep I turn to the British man that knows everything about everything all the time
Here's more: the "bent pyramid" in Egypt is basically the world's largest construction mistake, having to have its angle changed mid-way through the project in order to avoid the fundation collapsing. Other pyramids have collapsed, so this was a real danger.
9:24 Sidney? did they rename Sydney?
As someone who lives in Sydney I can confirm it has not changed its name.
5:25 “A floating object displaces a volume of water equal to its mass” this might be nitpicky, but you use the object’s weight for the displacement of water by a floating object, not its mass.
Why couldn't MIT just put a freestanding wall a few feet out in front of the building? That would divert the wind. And you could have signs on the wall instructing people to walk around either side of the wall to access the open area and enter the building.
It is possible that the new wall would funnel and concentrate the winds at the ends of the wall even more than how it affected the doors. In other words, the wind would increase as you got near to the end of the wall, possibly blowing you off your feet completely, making it even more impossible to approach the building from near that wall. It would take some very careful design to get right. But in the spirit of your suggestion, I'm sure there would be ways of introducing wind deflectors and diffusors in the open space between building and river to achieve the desired reduction in wind speed and pressure, without adding to the problem. (A forest of trees would work really well!)
I have traumatic memories from the chapter about the building that tipped over due to greed and substandard quality, as well as the opera house with its own nonsense. I managed research & development in the US Air Force. Most of our work was done by civilian contractors. I'd had formal training, and at that time I was offended at how much the instructors described contractors as evil, wicked, and generally enemies of the United States. After years of working with those vile aberrations of the devil himself, I cannot grasp why our government tolerates such extreme entities from the Dark Side. These life forms start out Planning for the effort to fail, thus they get to sue for additional money in contract modifications. Compare this to the Opera House, which cost $100 million to build but $300 million to modify.
-- Notice how no politician is calling for a crackdown on corruption. The only thing that makes sense is the description that the entire Washington DC culture is "Help Your Friends" and not in any way "Do Good."
The power of the internet at your fingers and you can't spell Sydney.
At Sandia National Laboratories, one of the buildings ended up with extreme winds when the wind came out of Tijeras canyon.
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Funny you should mention the Sydney Opera House. Much of the following will seem disjointed but, I promise, it will come together at the end.
I am originally from Rochester New York. Home of The Eastman Kodak Co., of camera and film fame, for those of the younger generation out there, and for several charities that George Eastman had started and / or contributed to and made possible. One of these is The Eastman School Of Music.
I am also, and always have been a DIE HARD fan of Steppenwolf ever since the first time I'd heard "Born To Be Wild". (Important later.)
In 1970, I was a 15 year old boy scout. (Again, important later.) Our troop was set to go on a week long camp out this one time and, at the same time, I had developed a respiratory infection that the doctor had warned my parents to keep me away from musty, dirty air ie. boy scout campouts with campfire smoke and early morning dew.
I was pissed, disappointed pissed some more until my mother told me that Steppenwolf was going to be in town that weekend. Suddenly, boy scout camp outs were boring and too much trouble.
My father had miraculously come up with 2 tickets to the Steppenwolf concert being played at The Eastman School of Music concert hall and I suddenly became ready to quit boy scouts altogether if asked. (They never asked.)
My mother, being raised on a Pennsylvania farm during the depression, was all about country and western music. My father had more concern for how many piles the dog dropped in the yard than he had for ANY kind of music. My father was also prone to bad headaches from an old WW II injury. (Long story for another time.)
My big 3 groups were Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly and Cream. I already owned every Steppenwolf album available at the time. The E.S.M. concert hall was designed for philharmonic style music, NOT for Steppenwolf style of music loud enough that it could break glass of all shapes and sizes at the same size.
My father was sitting there with his eyes shut, I'm guessing, trying to meditate his headache away because his prescription narcotics would preclude his driving us home in the only car that our family owned. I didn't have a learners permit at 15 and even if I did, in New York then, a permit holder couldn't drive after dark so that was ruled out.
I literally could not recognize a single song that they played because the acoustics in that place were perfect for The London Symphony Orchestra but horrible for Steppenwolf. I was happy to be able to see them in person but, at the same time, I was disappointed in the sound of the music.
Seeing the original line up of Steppenwolf live, made missing the camp out worth it.
A former co worker told me he had seen on a construction site that the reinforced concrete had no reinforcement (the iron rods weren't put into the concrete when they poured it...).
Parking houses that collapse, this kinda level.
It has to do with hasty jobs without propper planning check ups. Combine this with temp jobs and authoritarian leadership and you get accident that are to happen.
I was to expect this in some parts in the world but this was The Netherlands and this really shocked me. The co worker told me this after some balconies and a parking house had "issues" and was in the national news.
There will always be shonky operators that install the rebar, get it inspected, then pull the rebar out and pour the concrete. The only way to prevent it is ton inspect the rebar and stay watching while the concrete is being poured. And a high standard of professionalism in your inspectors so they can't be bribed off - or at least, not for less than what the rebar is worth.
Imagine paying mortgage on your new apartment and a building in the compound collapses. Do you sell? To whom?