HOW WAS THAT BUILT?

A trained structural engineer offers an insider’s view on how renowned skyscrapers and other large constructions on seven continents were designed and built.

In the wake of 2018’s Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures, Agrawal, whose background includes work on London’s Shard, presents younger audiences with specific and clearly explained issues and techniques associated with more than a dozen projects—from preserving Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral, which was built over a former lake and is sinking both unevenly and at the rate of 2-to-3 inches a year, to the challenges of creating a sewer system for London, a movable natural grass soccer pitch for the Sapporo Dome, and foundations in deep salt water for Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli Sea Link bridge. The author also offers a look at Antarctica’s Halley VI research station, which is jointed and built on skis, and explains how New Zealand’s Te Matau ­­ā Pohe bridge was inspired by Maori legends. Along with galleries of modern skyscrapers and types of bridges, Agrawal pays tribute to traditional materials like bricks and reinforced concrete as well as more modern ones such as aluminum foam and carbon nanotubes, adds side features on elevators and cranes, and, with a particular focus on women and people of color, directs appreciative nods to select colleagues of past and present. Hickey mixes informally drawn portraits and occasional fanciful images with aerial and underwater views, simplified but revealing cutaway diagrams, and small illustrations for the occasional hands-on demonstrations the author suggests.

A particularly engaging survey, both for its variety and its unusually expert perspectives.