#12 Show-notes – Roma Agrawal: how to build a skyscraper

In this episode I bring you a step-by-step guide on how to build a skyscraper with structural engineer Roma Agrawal (@RomaTheEngineer), author of ‘Built, the Hidden Stories Behind our Structures’. We get into the engineering, creativity and philosophy of sky scrapers and their designers. Don’t try to build a skyscraper yourself without listening to this first.
And since engineering education is something I do for my day job, I thought I’d accompany this episode with some additional resources related to the topics of this podcast. I’ll be adding to these over the next few days so stay tuned.
  • Listen to it on iTunes
  • Listen on Stitcher
  • Stream by clicking here
  • Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”

Related resouces

Ground conditions

Roma talks about the importance of understanding the ground conditions when building a tall building (or any building for that matter). A few years ago at Think Up I was involved in the creation of a set of videos that help students understand how soil behaves.
This video below hear shows a really neat experiment showing how foundations sink into the ground, and how the ground eventually supports the weight of the foundations.

This next video is a really clear explanation of how water affects soil strength – the demo is really effective.

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1 Comment

  1. tristharris

    First this podcast, then a write up in The Structural Engineer. Good to see these important publications getting some well deserved press!

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