The Skyscraper That Was One Storm From Falling

In 1978, a brand-new skyscraper in Manhattan was one strong storm away from disaster – and almost nobody knew. To understand how it happened, we first need to answer a simple question: why don't skyscrapers blow over? In this video: • Why wind, not weight, is a skyscraper's real enemy • Vortex shedding, resonance and the Tacoma Narrows collapse • How cores, outriggers and clever shapes tame the wind • Taipei 101's 660-tonne tuned mass damper • The secret night-time repair of the Citicorp Center Chapters: 0:00 A tower with a secret 0:44 The tower that moves 1:03 Wind is the real enemy 2:46 Designed to bend 4:24 The 660-ton pendulum 5:56 The building that almost fell 8:09 How thin can a tower get? Next episode – the airport that is sinking into the sea:    • Why Is This $20 Billion Airport Sinking?   Sources: Taipei 101 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei_101 Citicorp Center engineering crisis – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicor... 99% Invisible, "Structural Integrity" – https://99percentinvisible.org/episod... Shanghai Tower wind design – https://trendsideas.com/article/twist... Most slender building – https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/... Footage & photo credits (photos cropped and animated): Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, 1940 – Barney Elliot (public domain) Hurricane satellite footage, Vortex street image, wind-tunnel photo – NASA (public domain) Taipei 101 damper photos – Johan Jönsson (Julle), CC BY-SA 4.0; Armand du Plessis, CC BY 3.0 Taipei skyline – xiangyang17, CC BY-SA 2.0 Citicorp Center photos – Epicgenius, CC BY-SA 4.0; Yair Haklai, CC BY-SA 4.0; Pablo Costa Tirado, CC BY-SA 3.0; Kidfly182, CC BY 4.0 111 West 57th Street – Kidfly182, CC BY 4.0; Percival Kestreltail, CC BY-SA 4.0 Burj Khalifa – Ank Kumar, CC BY-SA 4.0; Laika ac, CC BY-SA 2.0; Meandmybrix, CC0 Shanghai Tower – Stefan Fussan, CC BY-SA 3.0; Ermell, CC BY-SA 4.0 / CC0; King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0 Kansai Airport – Ankou1192, CC BY-SA 4.0; Tdk, CC BY-SA 3.0; GSI Japan All photos via Wikimedia Commons. Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Stock video: Pixabay Music: "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly" and "Event Horizon" – The Grey Room / Density & Time (YouTube Audio Library) #engineering #skyscraper #howitworks