Fun fact: the architect of the Vdara seems to have a history of "death ray" buildings. The absolute mad man.

Vdara management has considered various solutions but the challenge in overcoming the structural design problem is that the sun and its reflection are targets that constantly move during the day and as every season progresses. In the meantime, management has installed large blue umbrellas over the pool deck to protect bathers, while the hotel's glass exterior has been covered with non-reflective film.

The Oroville dam spillway did not wear thin. It was used very little in its lifetime. It was built using substandard construction methods, and did not properly deal with the weak material underlying the slope it was built on. This all caused cracks that allowed water to get under the slabs of concrete and lift them out of place, causing the spillway failure.

I was a first responder in the surfside building collapse as a deputy. Worst disaster I have ever bore witness to in my life.

Love how consistent be amazed is with its video uploads Keep it up boys Really enjoy the content 🙏🏾

The opening statement about some of America's bridges being "really old" then says "before 1970" actually made me laugh out loud. I live in the UK where we have "before 1870" suspension bridges, and I can walk to a couple of 800 year old bridges from my house.

How did the Vegas hotel solve that problem? It would've been nice to know. Personally, I think they should've fenced in that "hot spot" and make it a tourist attraction, complete with a digital thermometer to display its rising temperature when that "magic moment" takes place - I'd pay a dollar to see that!

When you started with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge I couldn't help but laugh! I grew up crossing that (rebuilt) bridge regularly to visit grandparents and most people in the area know the story. Of course it was rebuilt to be better, and now two bridges exist to handle the massive increase in traffic. There is a toll to head eastbound to pay for the massive project. I wonder if that guy's car is still at the bottom of Puget Sound...

"The Hancock" in Boston is 62, not 100, stories. As it was going up and the windows kept popping out and replaced with plywood , it was sarcastically known as Plywood Ranch after a lumber store in MA. Also, if you came down Huntington Ave towards the building at the "wrong" time of day, the glare was pretty blinding!

As I started watching this I was wondering if the Champlain Towers condo would be included. I was born and raised in Miami and I currently live just 15 mins from this site. I did not know anyone currently living in the building when it came down but I used to. I used to have an aquarium business. I installed and maintained aquariums all over SE Florida and between 2000 and 2003 I had a customer in that building. I have been in the building nearly every month for those 3 years to service a customers aquarium. I forgot the unit number but their condo had a perfect view of the ocean and beach so I believe it was in the section that collapsed. It was such a beautiful building inside, you would never know what was going to happen in 2021. I was never in the garage though, I would park on the side of the building and go through the service entrance and use the service elevator. Also, not just Champlain south had a parking garage under the units....nearly every condo building on the beach has the same exact parking type. The problem with Champlain south was poor maintenance. During the super high tides the garage would flood with seawater so there were big pumps. But the pumps were old and breaking down and in a few high tide floods the water (salt water) was so deep in the garage that the cars were floating around. That combined with the poor maintenance and water proofing of the pool deck which is directly over the garage caused massive water penetration into the structure. The first thing to go was the pool deck, the pool deck collapsed into the garage and when this happened it took a few of the main load supporting pillars which brought down the building.

16:33 Actually in this case, the disaster started three years prior to the collapse, when three giant ventilator units were dragged on the roof to a different position. One of the supporting columns was directly hit by the mass of the three machines and it started cracking up. A process sped up by the vibrations the ventillation units created each time they were turned on. On the day of the disaster crack finally revealed themselves, and only got worse until the whole construction fell apart.

Oroville Dam is not the tallest dam in the US. It is specifically the tallest earthfill dam. I got to work in Oroville during the response and recovery projects. Was an awe inspiring experience.

At the time, the temporary wood panels replacing Boston's Hancock building's windows until they could be upgraded gave the building the nickname "the Plywood Palace."

From what you have mentioned about these projects, a lot of these mistakes could have been easily avoided but greed got in the way. As well as crappy safety regulations.

I just want to add that Block A of Highland Towers in Gombak, Malaysia, collapsed. I mention it because the reason for the collapse is engineering problems and natural occurrences such as soil erosion and water clogging. But I didn't say it was too expensive compared to all of those listed in this video.

What's weird about the Tacoma Narrows bridge, is that the Columbia River Bridge, from Wenatchee to East Wenatchee, was built in 1908. And while it no longer caters to motor traffic, it does carry an irrigation pipeline, and is open to pedestrian traffic.

As an aside on the Hancock Tower had its issues… Those glass panels started to pop out (they fortunately changed colors before falling out so there was some warning) Anyways, all the glass was replaced with sheets of plywood and because of that the building got the nickname of “Plywood Ranch” which was also the name of a hardware store that was open at the time. As a kid, I remember that there were places where you could look up at the Boston skyline and see this monument to engineering incompetence…. Ah, the good old days. Eventually the bugs were ironed out and new glass was installed

Keep up the great content. You're literally the only top 10 style channel that has great info and great narration.

You also have the Harmon tower in the same place that had to be torn down due to massive construction mistakes especially the plumbing... The plumbing moved about 6'-12' from top to bottom and that made tearing down the tower and building a new one cheaper and easier then fixing then fixing the bad plumbing and other shawdy work...

Once when we were staying in Chicago, we were billeted in this awful hotel room, so small that we could barely move between the bed and tv bureau. It boasted a window looking narrowly past other tall buildings to Lake Michigan. That wasn't the worst. The building shook and swayed that high up. We agreed to find another room or find another hotel.

I see the Stata Center fairly often while bussing or being driven around Cambridge and Boston. It's...always quite a sight. I should go for a closer look someday. Also, WOW. I had no idea the Hancock was that troublesome.

Being on the bridge while it swayed horribly in strong winds is way worse than seeing some panels drop away as you are holding onto the main structure and thats all that matters , then you carefully walk back across to safety. Still having panels "pop" out is bit worrying as they should be totally secure and even have bars under them as final line to cross.

I just want to add about the Sampoong Disaster (as also seen on Seconds To Disaster), the main reason for the collapse was that on the rooftop the owner had three heavy duty commercial airconditioning unit (because their was a summer that was unbearable for the employees and the shoppers) Unfortunately, workers pushed the heavy duty commercial airconditioning units to move to the other side...instead of using a crane to move it without damaging the infrastructure. Then the manager would turn the airconditioning on and off (since the units were too noisy) until cracks slowly formed (and sunk) one of the supporting beams in a traditional Korean restaurant below where the airconditioning units were.

The same problem as the Vdara Hotel happened in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, albeit on a smaller scale. The officebuilbing I worked in was also shaped rounded, as the hotel. Also on middays it could and did destroy car interiors. In winter, during lunchbreak You could stand there and even with freezing temperatures enjoy de warmth of the sun. It is now the Hotel Park Inn Amsterdam. They added shades and prevented parking there!

You should make more of these! For the South Korea one my dad when he was young decided to go to that mall, but he went to the washroom. When he finally went there the building collapsed right in font of him.

I worked for a North American grocery chain whose head office was once based in California for all major decisions, store rebuilds and layout for example. I live in an area of Canada where the winter temps can dip to -50° for weeks on end, which should have been taken into consideration when a new store was built. Instead the Californian designers decided it wouldn't hurt to place the exit doors directly across from one checkstand and affect a couple others. Each winter we had cashiers working in 15 mins shifts on those tills, wearing parkas and boots, until the union stepped in and assisted in having them shut down. Eventually a remodel was done, and the affected checkstands were moved to the other end of the row, away from the doors.

I remember the death ray in Vegas. No one was happy when city center ( the group of buildings vdara is apart of) was halted for years but even less surprised when come to find out they screwed up in the construction that ran out of money and paused 3 times at least and even with the extra time still came out fucked up.

I live in down town oroville and we had to evacuate when the spillway collapsed. A decade prior to this in 1997 they also had a spillway gate get stuck and not want to open nearly causing a similar issue.

The Tacoma Narrow bridge was replaced with a very similar, but stable bridge that still stands. There is now a second bridge next to it to handle the increased traffic of the area.

Then there was the bank building, 10 stories, on the corner of Lake Avenue and Colorado Blvd in Pasadena California. It was about 50 years old and didn't pass updated earthquake standards and scheduled for demolition. The wrecking ball bounced off the exterior walls. Too close to other buildings to use explosives they ultimately had to tear off the roof, raise heavy equipment powering jack hammers to the top floor and slowly break it apart one floor at a time.

Jeez! Those are some extremely costly mishaps. Any mistake for an architect could result in tragedy, both costly in money and in human life. It’s important for architects to strive to be perfect as the lives of many are in their hands.

Here in New Zealand we've recently found out a architect who has designed some buildings with big faults. It's not just one or two its every building hes had something to do with, so hes no longer a architect, but he thinks hes done nothing wrong. It's scary because they dont know what would happen to buildings in a quake.

Vdara is absolutely hilarious. How could one not possibly take the hot desert sun into consideration

I saw an expensive construction mistake: Back in the late 70's, I did some programming for a huge sheet metal contractor who won a bid for a nuclear power plant. They were well into the project when they found out that their estimator had missed a floor! The estimate had been accepted and the project was underway when they found out they underestimated by about 2 1/2 million dollars, which was big money back then.

Wasn't the most expensive, but when I started at NDSU, that summer they had put in some amphitheater style seating just outside of the student union building. IT sunk into the ground, so the highest level was level with the ground. Looked neat, but when I saw it I doubled over laughing...there was no drainage in the bottom. It was basically a giant concrete bowl outside of the student union, that with North Dakota snow, would sit full of water all Spring when it melted, which it did. I learned later as well from someone who worked in the union building, that its approximate location to the union building caused the basement of that building to flood as well. As soon as it was dry enough to do so, they ripped it out. Ah...I hate that school

The Vdara itself didn't cost $8.5 billion. That was the cost of the entire city center.

Interesting information but you might expand a little more on the facts. The Vdara hotel is part of the City Center complex made up of numbers of hotels. The Vdara was around 527 million by itself in construction costs with the 8.5 Billion making up the cost of the massive city center group of properties as a whole.

I miss the Greenfell tower, London, incident - even though it was not due to structural integrity issues. The scottish example seems not a mistake, but simply an outcome of insights changing over time. Costwise it also pales in comparison to the other examples in your video.

27:02 I remember when this happened, especially since I live in Florida. It was a pretty grim day, along the 2 weeks following the day it collapsed.

Vdara isn't the only building like this, in London a few years ago they built a curving glass tower which melted the road along with the luxury cars parked on (now 'in') it...

Saw the Sampoon collapse on Brick Immortar. Just... wow. And for the Hotel of Doom, yeah. There's a SCP in there.

I live near the Oroville dam and you could see water spray caused by the crater from over a mile away.

I live in a small town in Alabama, and there is a bridge that is still in operation that is over 90 years old. It was built in 1930.

I was in Krakow 2 weeks ago and stayed in the city center and don't recall seeing any skyscrapers. It would for sure stand out, curious how far from the real center the building is.

It's crazy how much damage is done by one person not doing there job correctly in the beginning of a project.

I think the "biggest mistake" has to go to the incident with the biggest loss of life. You just can't compare a building demolition with an occupied building collapse. So I would have to say the Sampoon building in South Korea was the biggest mistake.

when you ended the sampoong disaster with the owner loosing every and that still wasnt enough. thats hits me deep. because no amount of money could ever replace all those people and the impactful lives they lived

There's been quite a few of those in toronto, canada. Queen street tram subway, eglinton subway. Both never got built (eglinton got filled in, queen remains roughed in, but that's it). Crosstown LRT had to deal with digging through all of that fill, including a large sinkhole from it. XD

How can someone make such an expensive mistake? Especially since it takes a lot of thought-out decisions (at least I thought so)

15:37 There was more wrong with it's design. As mentioned the 5th floor was not part of the original plan, but the added weight of the massive airco's on the roof was also part of the problem. Plus ... the collums were to small for its strucute. One of the worst case of money over safety situations I know of.

Actually, you could turn the death ray building into a tourist attraction like a geyser. WTC Twin Tower construction debacles are actually quite common.

I live by the Oroville Dam, that was very scary!

Great video, an eye opening for me. As I am always fascinated with great engineering, this video also made me think about the failures too. Thank you.

your videos are so entertaining with lot of variety, I love it!

$157,000,000 gone in 45sec 🤯😢 it's not even my money but I feel so bad for whoever invested in it

The fact I go over the narrows bridge when I travel it’s just crazy!

Great video to be watching when I have an interview for a construction job on Monday lol... I wish I could just be an electrician but there's just no opportunity here - beggars can't be choosers I guess. Also, I would need psychological counseling too if I had been stranded on a glass bridge that high - but I would never find myself on a bridge like that.

You should have included the Hyatt skywalk disaster in Kansas City, MO.

"That's still not enough" Well, apparently Lee Joon served seven years in prison for his negligence, and the prison life/stress served kill him shortly after release from health issues. So it seems the universe agreed with you.

5:06 a similar issue happened on 22 Fenchurch Street. They later fixed the problem by adding anti-reflective coating.

So sad about the innocent people who died because of these mistakes :(

I'm going to guess the extra half million dollars for the Glencaren (sp?) tower was for the asbestos removal before the demolition. Otherwise asbestos would be spread over the entire fallout area, then spread even further by the wind and clean up operations.

It has to be the korean mall. I think I recall the management installing huge Airconditioners on the roof to lower the temperature of the building, and it was already fielding maximum weight on the roof.

Not crazy expensive on these levels but in Pittsburgh due to poor maintenance and checks in January an entire bridge collapsed with a lot of cars and buses on it dropping something like 200 plus feet down. It'll cost 25 million to rebuild now. There are amazing videos of crane lifting a 40K lb bus out of the massive gorge.

I loved that video....of course,I also feel sorry for the small investors who put their life saved money for a quiet retirement and saw their property worthless after a short time. But there is also success stories,like the tower in taïpeh,Taïwan,wich was under construction during my first trip there,and completed at my second visit.There is a giant and heavy ball at the top inside the tower wich counterbalance the mouvement due to frequent earthquake in this country,a genial idea that show the ingenuity of the builders. A video of this success story will be welcome on your channel my friend!

❤❤ There was a 3 or 4 story building on market st. in Corning N. Y. When it was built, it was designed for the Executives of Corning Glass and included a swimming pool on the top floor. My father once told me that the architect did not take into consideration the weight of the water to fill it. Nice pool with no water. This had to of happened in the first half of the 1900's. I lived there from 1963 on and the buildings were very old then.

The Brazilian city with crooked buildings is Santos, not São Paulo.

I think the "leaning tower of Padre," which was destroyed before even being topped out, should be on the list. More recently, we have the "Global Dream." This was supposed to be the world's largest cruise ship by passenger capacity in the world. Alas, parent company Genting Group went bankrupt and the ship, nearly complete, has been sold to the scrappers.

Should be noted that the Hancock, a.k.a. The New John Hancock building, was known as the Plywood Skyscraper because of the myriad of plywood sheets covering over the popped-out glass panels...

The Stata Center wasn't Gehry's only mistake. The Disney Concert Hall in LA had a similar problem to that of the Vdara.

00:50 "most of the bridges in the us are old" Well in my city , we have a bridge called "See-o-Seh pol" ( translates to 33 bridge ) that was built back in the 17 hundreds that is still operating

In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, the architect of the Vdara Hotel and the "Walkie Talkie" in London, Viñoly said he anticipated the "death rays" from both buildings. So do his clients know this man is designing buildings that can kill people? Some sort of sick joke from the designer?

In human costs, it's difficult to say the Grenfell Tower doesn't deserve inclusion

I would probably learn to cope with the lopsided apartment. Like, putting extra hanging brackets on one side of pictures to keep them straight on the wall, and screwing a lip onto one side of my table to keep things from sliding off.

The tilting buildings are in the city of Santos, on the sea shore of the state of Sao Paulo. You showed pictures of Sao Paulo city, with its “sea” of buildings, but the famous tilting ones are in Santos 😉

The Sao Paulo buildings it is still possible to get everything inside an apartment level, You'd have to shorten the height of the rooms a bit but it's possible to level out a floor off the existing. If you didn't want to go with that much work then just focus on leveling individual items such as beds tables etc using wedges and shims to bring them level.

Hah! I've been to Poland's Skeletor! I can't believe they rebuilt it. 🤩

There was a building in Chicago that also had problems with its glass panels. One of them detached and fell to the sidewalk where a young mother was walking. The panel literally cut her in half. Yuck.

I love that bridges in America are apparently considered old if they were built before 1970, where as in Britain there are bridges older than the founding of America that aren’t old enough to be considered historic artefacts.

As someone who has lived in the North Lanarkshire Council area my entire life, I can guarantee you that wasnt a blunder. This council absolutely excels in it's ability to burn money and provide literally nothing in return. Hell, one of it's most "Iconic" heritage buildings, the Cumbernauld Town Centre Phase 2, is considered the ugliest building in scotland.

Another amazing upload. Thank you Be Amazed 💖

They did not follow the “construction design” on Galloping Gurty. They failed to put the holes designed into the support beams.

I was so happy to find this channel after finishing all of Mr. Ballens stories! Thank you for being great!!

Vdara was the first of six projects to be completed as part of the $8.5 billion CityCenter complex. Not the hotel a lone.

I really can't believe, that Engineers in any part of the world, would only have 13 to 16 feet of Foundation to keep a building of that height stable. Went back to see the number of floors, didn't see any amount. I understand, there wasn't any standards for Foundations to Height Ratios and not even a Survey done to check the Density of the ground beneath it. As the old saying goes, Live and Learn. One old saying to Cheap Skates is, "Pay me now or pay me later, but you will pay me."

The Sampoong collapse was really upsetting to me because so many people died.

So I do not believe that the guy who built the death ray building did so by mistake. This man designed and built at least two different skyscrapers that do the exact same thing, one of them produces a beam so hot that it literally melts concrete. This man is training to be a real life Bond villain and nobody is doing anything to stop him.

I’m amazed ☺️ … always great content…

You should make more of these! I personally love them!

Sampoong had heated floors under the restaurants and extra A/C units on the roof. The owners or managers moved these around without using a crane. Just didn't measure the 'dead' weight and the 'live' weight of the structure. Biggest mistake: Hyatt Hotel in Kansas City. That upper walkway giving way onto the lower one during a dance was just as bad as the Florida building. Where 114 people died, 216 injured.

26:19 That could have been prevented if the bridge would have been closed when strong winds came closer!

The Hancock in Boston and the MIT building are across the river from each other u would think with all those brilliant people from that area you would have the best architecture

Vdara: Why not put a cover over the pool area so the rays don't boil the pool water and to give the people staying shade during the hot summers, if they haven't thought of that already.

I watched Glencairn Tower come down and the site is now filled with more low-cost housing. great to see a local Scottish building featured on this channel though!

well deserved 10 million. I know i'm late but congrats!

could not stop laughing! Some of even the great Frank Lloyd Wright's leaked but San Paulo takes the cake.

I live in Florida, so I'm only familiar with the Champlain Towers story. If you haven't heard of this tragedy, most of the residents were asleep in their beds when suddenly, the face of the main tower collapsed. One man, who lived in one of the other towers, described being awakened by a roaring type of sound outside. He and his wife jumped up, thinking it was a storm, perhaps a hurricane, blowing through so he made his way to the sliding doors to bring in their outdoor furniture. What he saw from his balcony was the tower that his parents lived in, partially crumbled to the ground. Knowing that his parents lived on the front side of the building, he shouted to his wife, something like, 'They're gone! My parents are gone!' There were so many heartbreaking stories about those whose lives were lost in and even survived the Champlain Towers. But that man's recount of the horrific event, I will never forget.

I feel bad for galloping Gertie 😢😢 and those old buildings some of them were pretty old

Love the content man!

By the time Galloping Gertie was opened, engineers knew they had a bad problem. Their observations demonstrated that the oscillations were related to self reinforcing forces. Something similar to a bassist who saws gently on a low note, which gets louder and louder. The theoretical end could be the string vibrating so severely that it destroys itself and breaks. Taking the regular gentle winds blowing over the Tacoma Narrows, the engineers calculated the date and time the bridge would collapse, accurate within a few hours. "The Hancock." Get your information right. I grew up in the area. That building was erected by a John Hancock competitor, deliberately to be bigger than the Hancock tower, the Prudential corporation, and was referred to as "The Pru." As it was being constructed, the winds blew the glass out of various windows, crashing to the ground and through the roof of Trinity Church, as described. Therefore it was referred to as "the plywood skyscraper" as every glass pane was replaced with a plywood panel, temporarily, for some two years. Your big mistake is referring to it as the "Hancock." I believe that John Hancock bought it at some point, but it is still referred to as "the Pru." You need to do better research if you are going to post items like this for the public. Given this glaring error, I need to give this post a thumbs down.