How Singapore Built the World's Greatest Airport

This steel and glass structure weighs 3,500  tonnes and rises 10 stories above the ground. it's the equivalent to a third of the Eiffel  Tower suspended 40m in the air. The fact that it doesn't collapse under its own weight is  quite frankly an engineering miracle.

And if all of that wasn't enough, pouring through the  center is the tallest indoor waterfall in the world. 37,000L of water come through this Oculus  every single minute. That's an entire Olympic pool every hour.

Inside there are more than 3,000  trees and 60,000 plants from all over the world. But perhaps the most amazing thing about all  of this is that it isn't a greenhouse or an oasis or some futuristic Eden Project. This is  an airport.

But since you're a fan of The B1M you probably already knew that. This is Changi in  Singapore ,one of the most famous and beautiful airports on the planet. This structure alone  known as the jewel cost 1.

3 billion nearly as much as the world's tallest building. And  we haven't even got to the runways yet. Tt's fulfilling a vision that dates all the way back  to the 1960s and the story of its construction defies ambition, cost, and gravity.

This is how  one of the world's greatest airports was built. In 1967 the first prime minister of Singapore  announced his vision for the country. He called it the Garden City.

He believed he could make  Singapore one of the greatest cities in the world and that demand for excellence extended to  the city's airport. To talk about Changi airport as we know it today we have to talk about another  visionary: Moshe Safdie. He's the architect behind the jewel.

This is a guy who sees the fundamentals  of gravity and says "thanks but that's not for me". You can see this from his early work in  Montreal that made him a Starchitect, to the Altair building in Sri Lanka and over at Raffles City in Chongqing, China. But perhaps his most famous and impactful work can be found on the  skyline of Singapore.

This is Marina Bay Sands. In 2010 the complex opened to the public as  the most expensive skyscraper ever built. The towers quickly became critical darlings in the  architectural worlds.

And Singapore got an icon and a focal point for the city. This was their Opera  House ,their St Paul's Cathedral, their Empire State Building. And like Safdie's best work these towers  too defied gravity.

Each of the towers were made of two smaller towers that were essentially leaning  against each other like a pair of playing cards. Then on top they held up an enormous 1. 2 hectare  Sky Park, the world's longest public cantilever.

This balancing act had to accommodate for each of the  towers moving slightly in the wind and settling over time, something that all buildings do.  It was and continues to be an engineering marvel. Even if you're not running international  airport managing any business is hard.

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Try Oodo for free, click the link in the description and get started today. Now let's  get back to Changi Airport. In many ways these buildings set up Singapore as a city that takes  architectural risks a city that's Innovative and daring Singapore now had a Skyline that matched  its status as a global City the country's economy was growing to and its airport needed to keep  Pace Terminal 1 the original terminal needed to be expanded to meet record passenger numbers and  Changi approached safy to create a new Gateway for the city that would match the towers he just  built safy had a radical thought what if the airport itself could be a destination so often an  airport is thought of as a non place a transitory area that you used to get from point A to point B  but not really a place in its own right he wanted to combine two environments an intense Marketplace  and a Paradise Garden he wanted to create an oasis a Garden City the officials at Changi loved this  idea at this point the airport was welcoming more than 40 million annual passengers but most of  those were Transit passengers and only a third of them would actually leave the airport and go  and visit the city Changi wanted to encourage more people to choose Singapore not only to  Transit through but to stop and visit as well and to do that they needed a new attraction and  so saf's Jewel was born this is where it was to be constructed and you might notice a problem  there's something already here well two things actually safy wanted the jewel to be constructed  where the sky Train and control tower were already sitting the train would have gone directly through  where the waterfall was supposed to be and that obviously couldn't happen Singapore was daring  but not that daring the solution was to push the waterfall slightly off center so that it wouldn't  be directly in the middle helping the train but creating a geometric and Engineering nightmare  placing the hole off center like this creates all sorts of engineering problems on top of the  logistical challenge of the entire structure being toid shaped you see safy didn't want the jewel to  be just another Dome that had already been done he wanted it to be the inverse of a Dome like  a toid or a donut something that would be special his design would accumulate with the structure  pucking inwards not outwards to pull this off and ensure the structure wouldn't collapse under  its own weight his team of Architects had to work very closely with Engineers from Bureau  hault and this is how they kept the building upright first off the structure has two phases  a shell phase the part of the building that is a dome and then the tension face the part that  comes inward to form a waterfall the shell has a perimeter support that goes all the way along  the edge of the building at level five then you have 14 sets of columns that are inset from that  perimeter the area from the perimeter to the columns is supported in the same way that a dome  would be but from the columns to the waterfall there's nothing this part of the structure is  held up by tension it's called a tension cone and it's being supported by a compression ring  that's created by the 14 columns once the models and the engineering was all worked out it was  of course then very important to choose the right materials to make the Dome and the tension  cone high strength steel and tempered glass were chosen for their durability and resistance  to environmental stress the steel could bear significant loads while the glass panels were  designed to withstand wind forces and other external pressures this special laminated glass  was used for the roof to prevent shattering even in extreme weather it was within the framework of  these glass panels that pipes were hidden to carry water up to the Oculus water would then pour  out into the Vortex and into the basement five stories under the airport you see if the water  stopped on the main floor of the jewel it would Splash up and flood the area instead water falls  down into the basement and is then pumped around the building and back up to the roof the jewel is  even equipped with sensors so that when it rains which it does quite a lot in tropical Singapore  the pipes shut off and moderate how much water flows into the Vortex this structure took 5 years  to build and it was done right in the heart of the Changi Airport Aerodrome all without disrupting  vital operations once it was completed they began filling the interior with that Greenery  a whopping 3,000 trees and 60,000 shrubs now creating an environment where both people  and plants can Thrive at the same time is a whole other challenge they'd essentially  built a gigantic Greenhouse here which is great for plants but can be uncomfortable  for visitors to combat this pipes filled with chilled water were built into the floor and  air conditioning vents were hidden under benches when the jeel first opened in 2019 it was  expected that the airport would see 40 to 50 million visitors in its first year but  it got more than 50 million in its first 6 months this Oasis cemented Changi Airport as  a destination in its own right and fulfilled Leong Yu's vision of a Garden City today this  airport is only expanding as it looks to the Future this is Changi right now and this is  where the new Terminal 5 will be it'll add an incredible 1,080 hectares of reclaimed land  and have space for an additional 50 million passengers each year it'll be larger than all of  the airport's previous terminals combined it's a vast new project that will cost $10 billion  and begin Construction in the second half of 2025 for Singapore the sky really is the limit  this video was sponsored by UD do you can learn more about that at the link below don't forget  that we're raising awareness of construction's Mental Health crisis and supporting charities  in this space through our get construction talking initiative there's a video series on  our Channel and you can find support or donate over at get Construction talk.

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