How They Built the Airport on The Ocean

To solve a decades-long land shortage, engineers made an extraordinary decision — build an entire international airport on an artificial island in the middle of Osaka Bay. What followed was one of the most ambitious land reclamation projects ever attempted, and a problem engineers are still solving decades later: the island has been sinking since the day it opened. This is the story of Kansai International Airport — the scale of its construction, the engineering solutions that made it possible, and the ongoing battle to keep it above water. Iron Archive documents the engineering that shapes the modern world. New deep dives on the machines and structures history nearly forgot.