Super Structures of America
Reach for the sky
S1 • E2 Oct 7, 2002 50m
Superstructures of America continues to deconstruct and reconstruct the most impressive man-made structures in the USA. Behind each of them lies the story of an engineer's vision, a daring plan, problems overcome and disasters encountered. Eye-popping aerial photography is combined with state-of-the art computer graphics to show these icons of architecture rise up girder by girder, block by block. Programme two investigates the fledgling United States' need for buildings that announced their dominance and power to the world. While rare archive footage tells the stories of human endeavour that lie behind some of these famous structures, computer graphics illustrate how the Kennedy Space Center rose up from an alligator-infested swamp, and how the giant presidential faces were carved into the bare mountain at Mt Rushmore.