Megastructures: Building Wonders of Modern Mankind, FD Engineering

The need of new territory has pushed water engineers to design new technology to create or preserve land. On the one side, cutting-edge technology has been design to dry marshes or to protect cities from flood, like Venice. But water is also behind or the object of other great technical challenges: how do we use it to create enough energy? How do we build canals and locks to make transportation more convenient, faster and safer? To gain the other side, to cross the bay, a curiosity, then an obligation which pushed the Man, from the first times of its history, to develop techniques of construction to overcome these obstacles. From the first bridges in liana, through the Roman aqueducts to the viaduct of Millau which spans the valley of the Tarn to 270 m in height, the genius of the man was expressed in the civil engineering…These technical feats, traits of union between men, are, in the broad sense, true works of art. Thus man has developed, thanks to science and its applications, a way to get closer to other men and to become master of time, and space…Which was the invention that propelled the construction of higher and higher buildings? Concrete? Iron? Not really… It was the elevator: as matter of fact nobody would have accepted to live on the 40th floor without it. From the Tower of Babel to the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, humanity has always searched to build bigger and higher. What are the scientific advance and technologies that have made it possible to « touch » the sky. Will there be any limits? From the field of physics, to chemistry, maths and all other hard sciences, scientists share the thirst of knowledge and curiosity. Combining dramatic specialist photography with innovative CGI, all set in spectacular locations across the world, this documentary is the pilot of a future series that will highlight the history of human ingenuity.