World's Most Unique Garden: Gardens by the Bay | Megastructures | Free Documentary

Singapore's Gardens by the Bay are unlike any other

garden

in the

world

. Engineers have to build two glass megahouses and control the interior climate while protecting against heat radiation and tropical monsoons. If the system fails, it would be a disaster they have to get plants from. In places as far away as Mexico, even

unique

super trees are built that fuse concrete and steel with lush greenery. If the engineers are successful, they will create New York City's central park of the 21st century and raise the bar for future green spaces. Singapore is one of the

most

densely populated countries in the

world

.

Five million people live in an area smaller than New York City to make such a small, highly urbanized place livable. Singapore has green lungs. Incredibly, the plants cover al

most

50 percent of the country. Now the nation is embarking on one of its most ambitious green projects for Date Gardens by the Bay, boasting not one but three huge

garden

s the size of 177 football fields and, like the famous Eden project in Cornwall , United Kingdom, the

gardens

will contain a variety of plants from around the world to create an international display of the project's flora. However, the most daunting challenges are made of concrete, steel and glass.

Two huge greenhouses have to showcase hundreds of plants and flowers from much colder climates, but how do you cool giant glass houses in one of the world's hottest regions or design them to protect against Singapore's climate? The tropical monsoons at the heart of the complex form gigantic supertrees forming

unique

vertical

gardens

. 18 towering structures up to 50 meters high will not only support plant life but also an aerial walkway and a restaurant. The challenge is that no one has attempted similar designs before the team behind it. Gardens by the Bay are well aware that they face an uphill battle and the stakes are high.

The Singapore government is paying $800 million to make the project a reality. The former Minister of National Development has been a driving force behind the gardens in this particular. The garden is one of those things that we hope you know can cement our status as a model of sustainability for the future. Engineers plan to build gardens by the bay on nearly 11 million square feet of prime real estate here in Marina Bay. The freshwater reservoir is also a multimillion-dollar entertainment center that will feature the world's largest Ferris wheel, a state-of-the-art dam, and the gardens of the bayside Marina Bay Sands complex will be another jewel in the crown.

Landscape architect Andrew Grant is leading the master planning. the southern part of the project, his specialty in creating futuristic and sustainable buildings and environments over the last 20 years, Grant has spearheaded some innovative spaces in the UK for clients including Rolls Royce and the British government. The Gardens by the Bay will be his biggest project yet. We spent a lot of time thinking about what the central idea is that will hold this all together. We thought you know the orchid is a really interesting starting point because it's the national style of Singapore, it's the most cosmopolitan plant species, there are over 25,000 species of orchids around the world and it seemed to me that Singapore was all of that. , so let's get this kind of melting point of the different things happening and start thinking about how we can structure the garden around the idea of ​​an orchid the paths became informed by the stem system the gardens were the flowers and suddenly everything starts to make sense on site the engineers are more concerned with securing the footprint where Grant will execute his vision what looks like solid earth is actually reclaimed earth beneath this The Marina Bay section is a layer of extra marine clay 30 meters deep, often called black toothpaste.

Marine clay is dangerously soft and very unstable without proper precautions. It can be fatal. It started with an underground explosion. The body of a confirmed dead worker was recovered in 2004. Excavation on an underground line for the mass rapid transit system causes a catastrophic collapse that kills four workers and damages the nearby nickel highway. The danger of sea clay is felt most in the southern part of the gardens. Marine clay could destabilize buildings and cause serious damage. Geotechnical engineers. He studied all the options before him, only one indicated the best result: in-situ casting. cast-in-situ piles. First a well is drilled passing marine clay until a stronger layer is formed, in this case alluvial soil up to 60 meters deep, then a prefabricated steel casing is hammered. at the same level after a steel reinforced cage is lowered into the casing high strength concrete is poured to solidify the pile when the concrete sets the permanent structure supports the soil around it by constructing over a thousand cast piles On-site engineers can overcome marina clay and secure foundations Another challenge remains how to prevent muddy construction from polluting the marina bay that supplies 10 percent of the country's drinking water.

The quick answer: Use of the coastal defense wall that protects the 200-meter coastline of the site, made of cast-in-place concrete. The wall prevents soil or construction material from being discharged into the bay and polluting it to ensure the wall is impenetrable even to muddy water. It is covered with a silt fence. The fence is made of a white polyester felt material that is woven tightly enough to filter out soil. Particles in the water To make matters worse, the engineers order a 24-hour surveillance on the wall to detect any movement or leak. There are no simple solutions in the gardens by the bay.

Part of what will make it a unique attraction is that 60 of its plants are not found in Singapore, many of them come from drier and colder regions around the world, such as Australia and Europe, to house them, engineers will have to build two huge greenhouses, but how can they create and control the low temperatures needed in the interior of an island just north of the equator and how do they protect what are essentially fragile glass houses? The only challenge facing Singapore Gardens by the Bay ironically arises from its prime waterfront location. There are no surrounding buildings to protect some of nature's finest specimens from the intense tropical monsoon rains.

It's just one of the threats facing the garden. The larger structures, the glass-covered greenhouses, when it's not pouring rain, Singapore's sweltering tropical sun will scorch them, killing expensive indoor plants to avoid nightmarish scenarios. Engineers work feverishly to come up with unique solutions. Architect Paul Baker oversees the team. We did a lot of brainstorming and group discussions. and as a team we sat down and thought as

free

ly and clearly as possible about the objectives and problems we had to solve, first and foremost the need for Baker and his team to protect the glass domes of the greenhouse against high winds and heavy rain is the answer.

Mimics the natural defenses of the human body An intricate system of 28 steel ribs called arches will reinforce the exterior of the greenhouses like the human ribcage protecting our vital organs The arches keep the glass dome secure by absorbing and deflecting strong winds another layer of ribs strengthen the Glass domes are a network of hundreds of steel frames called louvers that hold the pieces of glass together. In theory, the covers help the glass resist wind pressure and prevent leaks due to rain. We observed and studied the shape of the grid for a long time. We have ended up with a triangular section to allow for minimal shadowing and increase the perception of luminosity, not in terms of brightness but in terms of lightness of the structure.

We always strive for elegant shapes that bring us simplicity and love. Effortlessly the solution sounds like a winner, but the question on everyone's mind is whether it will actually work. The only way to know for sure is to subject the design to some serious punishment over the next 48 hours. Engineers will place a mockup of the greenhouse facade in this large pressurized chamber and then hit it with the elements. Simulated storms will test the waterproofing of the facades and computer-assisted wind pressure will push it to the limit. Harold Pates is the veteran engineer in charge with 43 years of experience if the system fails it would be a disaster but we are definitely sure it will not fail we are very confident in our design work during the pressure test harold constantly monitors the façade as the air around the chamber reaches levels of over 200 kilograms of force per square meter immense pressure can bend glass and harold has to make sure the bending is no more than 20 millimeters when you see here something will happen to the pressure itself it will stop.

We know there's some problem, something happened, it gets to 300 now, we'll stay for a minute and then release the pressure again as the pressure increases so does Harold's blood pressure the readings have to be accurate or the whole plan could fall apart. we have an emergency stop we will immediately release the pressure completely and then we will check on the model itself what can happen. In the end, the model passes the rain and pressure tests, but Harold leaves nothing to chance. There is a more extreme scenario for the facade to survive. These men are simulating hail when viewed from the glass specification.

Some impact is already in the included design, so if you put a stone on this or something, it may break, it won't break. The secret behind glass's strength can be found in one of the most common objects on car windshields. Windshields are made from laminated glass, the type of safety glass that holds together when broken, and like the windshield, the façade glass passes the test with flying colors. With the experiment successful, engineers can now contemplate the construction of the greenhouses that will form the structure of each building. They contain more than 200 steel grid structures, but their installation is not an easy task.

Assembling the massive steel arches presents an entirely different challenge. 28 of them span the greenhouses and weigh a staggering 1,000 tonnes, equivalent to 500 cars. Trying to lift one of these arches into place will be a difficult task. Almost impossible task because each one measures 150 meters. Furthermore, the delicate curves of the arches require highly precise manufacturing techniques to find solutions. Engineers contract Yongnam Steelworks, one of the largest steel prefabrication facilities in Singapore. Four thousand steel elements for the greenhouses. Can be measured, cut and welded to exact specifications. Here Yongnam uses advanced 3D modeling programs to create a detailed map of every curvature and twist in an arch.

Diagrams with step-by-step instructions are then printed for supervisors and welders on site, allowing them to Engineers also devise an ingenious and practical solution for installing the 150 meter long arches, dividing each into eight further segments. small, the segments are easier to transport and take up less space on site as each piece is Once completed, it is carefully followed to its destination with a police escort. Once on site, the arch is hoisted and prepared for final installation. Today's mission is to bolt the longest bow into place, a 70-foot behemoth that weighs 20 tons for the men who lift it.

It's a stressful business, they could knock something out of place or, worse yet, damage the expensive segment beyond repair. The key part of the process is balancing the arch on temporary steel struts that will support the arch so workers can bolt it into place. Attaching the arch to the next has to have millimeter precision, it's like gluing a model, but on a large scale, after 48 grueling hours, the segment is finally fixed in place, but the engineers still can't breathe easy to complete the rest of the arches quickly and safely they realize that they have to set up a lot more support scaffolding than is normally used and that is a problem guna sakaran is the construction director, you can see the size of the dome and everything , but we can't just build the domain it just builds itself by building so many scaffolding starting from the base to go and hold things up, so it's going to be a very big challenge.

A large amount of scaffolding is not only impractical but also creates a cramped and unsafe work environment to make matters worse. The tight schedule means engineers have to build the greenhouse arches, slats and foundations all at the same time, this will inadvertently lead to massive congestion above and below ground. theEngineers look for solutions in the end, only one fits expectations. The protective covers are essentially interconnected. giant towers of steel columns and beams that form spacious working platforms above while creating enough space below to allow other construction to continue without congestion. The protective platforms erected in the Gardens by the Bay will be one of the largest gunas in the world.

Sakharan couldn't be happier with the decision. The name came up. It's going to keep things from falling. It's a support element. In fact, it's a great safety platform. The plan is to simultaneously build protection platforms while installing the greenhouse arches and the gratings on protective platforms Engineers use a team of cranes capable of lifting 300 tonnes to hoist the beams and columns into position. The most amazing part of the process is that no welding is used to join the sections, they are screwed together securely by hand and platforms are installed at this height. The terrain is extremely dangerous so good safety procedures can make the difference between life and death, Supervisor Suresh makes sure the rules are sacred, then I go to work in that area, I use rogue football, okay , dishonest football, this lifesaver, okay, this lifesaver, this one, I hook it, okay.

Close it and then I'll go to work. The harness ensures that workers will only fall two or three meters if an accident occurs while hanging in the air. A rescue team will be sent to save them. This work is tangible and very dangerous. Also is okay. I follow Oklahoma safety rules, no problem, so now I have a small 46 worker injury. There is no accident yet. Coming this way, please, there is more work now. I have more attention to finish. Very happy lady as engineers race against time to install the rest of the arches and grilles. Landscape architect Andrew Grant is concentrating on making the other giant structures in the gardens by the Bahia a reality. 18 super trees will be incredibly tall up to 50 meters tall.

Real trees will carry life within them during the day. Their canopies will provide shade to the trees. Visitors at night the canopy will magically come to life with colorful and specially sequenced lights, but making this wild concept a reality is easier said than done when landscape architect Andrew Grant first proposed super trees. He was born from the desire to create large vertical gardens to showcase tropical plants. It will be like having an ancient rainforest in the gardens by the bay. but a key inspiration for his design came from a much drier climate. The Valley of the Giants in Western Australia, located in Walpole Nornalup National Park, is home to a variety of enormous eucalyptus trees that are over 400 years old. from a type of eucalyptus forest that is between 15 and 20 meters high and you reach this small core of the most amazing forest, where the trees are between 60 and 70 meters high and you can reach the canopy in this area only 40 meters away. in the air and it is such a spectacular experience that they thought: do you know how we can do something like that?

At the heart of this project, the vision of the grant is to recreate the ancient eucalyptus trees in the gardens as if they were real and will support plant life. an aerial walkway and environmentally sustainable features will even work for a restaurant but mother nature has had millions of years to perfect her design today's engineers have only three years to finish the job engineers' main concern is finding an ultra-fast building and strong The solution for the trunks of the 18 supertrees will be concrete, a strong core material, but the conventional cast-in-place method is prone to constant weather delays.

In the end, they follow the example of housing projects built by the Singapore government. More than eighty percent of the country's citizens live. In these residential flats, to meet the high demand over the years, the government relied on precast concrete construction. Precast concrete blocks are produced quickly and without delays by being molded and cured inside a factory before being transported to site and installed, engineers intend to replicate. the same process to build the super trees on time edwin soh is the senior manager I've been in needs the precast business for 20 years here so it's exciting to see a different kind of brick class when I'm doing now the part more similar is different, the super tree is the base, so the base will be able to support the structures that go upwards, which is the trunk we are talking about and the trunk is made up of panels that will be stacked on top of others, the supers prefabricated trees.

This crawler crane will lift concrete panels weighing up to nine tons each, stacking 28 of these panels to form the trunk of this 42-meter-high super tree. The biggest challenge of the lifting procedure is aligning the panels with the steel. Continuity bars placed within the walls help reinforce the trunk and form the backbone of the structure. We don't have the luxury of having a single plane out of the torrent so we have to align it carefully if we don't do it correctly like breaking the panel and once this panel is cracked we can use them because the integrity of the structure would be compromised. negatively affected.

Lifting a single panel to the top of the trunk and installing it will be a two-hour mission suspended like a pendulum 40 meters in the air on the 9th. The one-ton concrete panel is difficult to control even though we have been through it small thing several times, so every time I see the lifting I still get nervous, so the wind will have some effect on the panel when installing, swinging it here from left to right, so I may need to be careful now , slowly lower the rope, so be careful, then it is a delicate process to align the panel with the continuity bars slowly, like passing a thread through the eye of a needle after a tense hour of negotiating the final part of lifting the panel . is safely lowered into place a super tree is now fully grown another 17 to build when you see it placed in the finder position you know it is done it is a big job to install it in the final position creating giant concrete trees and Steel making gardens by the bay is truly unique, but the project must also support real trees if it is to qualify as a garden, that's easier said than done, no matter how smart engineers are they can't grow trees overnight. tomorrow, plus the place is literally a construction site, it would be impossible.

To grow anything here, the solution is to buy millions of dollars worth of trees, flowers and other plants, not only from Asia but also from around the world. It's a radical idea but a logistical challenge; whether arriving by ship or truck, the plants have to be stored by the thousands in temporary nurseries near the construction site, giving them time to grow and acclimatize before being permanently displayed among the megas. plants transported to the gardens by the bay there are four 500-year-old olive trees from Spain at night, allowing the ample loads plenty of space. On the streets, although sometimes there is still little space, within an hour of abandoning ship, these old and resistant trees arrive at the nursery, but the huge exotic trees are not the only targets of the horticulture team.

Local melaleuca or tea trees more than four stories tall are being transplanted from a road works site in eastern Singapore boone gee is the national parks officer in charge basically what you are trying to do is recycle this tree and then rescue the industry that would otherwise be affected by development projects and these three are special in the sense that they are huge, they have been there for almost 20 years and they will be used for our garland data, so These are actually very valuable things to us in what will be a three-month green engineering feat. Boone Gee and his team face the challenge of moving 16 tea trees.

Each tree first has to dig a huge trench around it that separates its roots from the surrounding soil, then carefully wraps a waterproof tarp around the root ball to protect it during the process. transport, these three alone this afternoon we have taken one All day to remove this street, so it is actually a lot of work, a lot of planning, a lot of resources involved when arriving at the site, the workers fix a steel cage around it, this will reinforce a new root cover that will contain a soil mixture that is specially formulated for boone gee trees, getting this final mixture right is always a gamble, we cannot prescribe a standard formula for all the trees we transplant, the worst case scenario is after After putting so much effort into bringing this tree, whether from abroad or from the place, another tree has died so far, the mortality rate is quite low, we are actually quite happy, we are talking about 10 of the total number of trees in the We have recovered water and plenty of sunlight, hopefully we will rehabilitate this tree in time, but the same sunlight that helps keep it alive is proving to be a serious hindrance in the larger structures of the garden, the greenhouses.

It took hundreds of workers in less than a year to complete the frame of the greenhouses at Gardens by the Bay, a miraculous finish for something so enormous. Structural engineers will need another miracle if they are to prevent Singapore's tropical sun from causing a meltdown inside. The problem begins with a greenhouse's designated function to display cold-season plants. The problem is that they are essentially glass houses typically built in cold climate locations. Glass houses trap sunlight. and heat to stimulate plant growth, in this case engineers have to modify the process somehow, but how do you repel heat to cool a place and at the same time trap the right amount of sunlight to grow plants?

I think this particular project is all about plants, it's about creating an environment that is good for both plants and people. We start from absolute basic principles. We have the problem of balancing the light that is required for plants to grow and flower with the heat that will potentially enter. the building, so our whole discussion is really balancing light and heat. The baker and his team analyze idea after idea. They test their concepts by building prototypes. They have to find answers that help maintain an interior temperature as low as 16 degrees Celsius while trapping 45,000 units of light or lux in the greenhouses.

In the end they decide that the best solution is to cover the greenhouse with customized state-of-the-art double-glazed glass. . Engineers make about 3,000 pieces of glass that each weigh up to 350 kilograms. to fill a greenhouse, okay, each piece is shipped from China and has a high price. Nobody wants to get rid of expensive accessories. The magic of glass is invisible to the naked eye, but can be found on its surface and within it one of its main components are metal oxides. Engineers discovered that by adjusting the metal oxide content to just a few microns thick, they can achieve the right amount of light transmission in the building and then finish the inner surface of the glass with a low-E or low-E coating. refers to the ability of glass to reflect or absorb heat, so they have effectively turned each piece of glass into a mirror that controls the light that passes through it, but high-tech glass alone won't give them engineers the control they seek over the elements.

Singapore has a constantly changing climate, so having a static envelope would not be logical. The logic we pursue and the most sustainable story is to allow for a constantly changing envelope. So what can engineers add to the greenhouse that will give it power? To respond to climate changes, computerized sunshades placed on the glass function like the sails of a ship when the sun passes over the greenhouse, especially at midday, when it is hottest. Temperature sensitive cells under the glass cause it to unfold on a cloudy or rainy day. day the curtains will sense the change and automatically retract maintaining cool temperatures in the greenhouse 24/7.

Although engineers have armed the greenhouses with advanced glass and shading technology, their mission to cool them is not yet complete, the buildings will need mega refrigerators to be able to lower temperatures to 16 degrees Celsius and the Singapore government is not satisfied Using conventional refrigeration technology, they want an energy efficient solution to set a new benchmark in sustainability from the start. Our assignment to theengineers was that you must energy consumption in this place cannot be greater than what an ordinary office building would support a simple problem has quickly become an ambitious goal that engineers have no choice but to meet engineers in the gardens bayside are on a tight schedule to cool the greenhouses in an eco-friendly way there is no simple story it is incredibly complex we have done greenhouses in other parts of the world here to do it sustainably was the biggest challenge the team quickly reassessed their problem the temperatures Outdoor air in Singapore often rises above 30 degrees Celsius.

Conditioning in greenhouses must somehow reduce temperatures inside to as low as 16 degrees Celsius. Additionally, they must also ensure that they do not use more energy than a standard office block. It is an unconventional order. It has been a key part of the climate story. Engineer Patrick Bellew has an unconventional idea, you know what you're looking at when you have a climate like Singapore, it's how to make buildings more energy efficient and what you have here is a lot of heat, how do you generate heat? converts heat into cooling solution liquid desiccant cooling system essentially a dehumidifier system contains a concentrated solution of lithium bromide dissolved in water this is sprayed on hot, moist air drawn in from outside to absorb its moisture the dry air then passes to through a coil cooling system before being pumped to the greenhouses as cold air when you buy an electronic device in a store or a bag or a pair of shoes you always find a sachet of desiccant at the bottom which is a solid desiccant which is a moisture absorbing material that removes humidity from the air and reduces it from 90 to 30 humidity, then we can cool it using much less energy, which solves the cooling problem, but engineers want to make it even more energy efficient and discover that The answer lies within Singapore already has an abundance of trees the country's national parks board is responsible for three million of them generating thousands of tonnes of garden pruning per month what would happen if this enormous amount of garden pruning is not disposed of as waste but is it recycled to produce fuel to generate electricity? this is the biomass generator a smaller version will be built in the gardens by the bay what they do here every month is take those thousands of tons of pruning and chip them into manageable sizes these wood chips become fuel to burn the huge boilers that produce steam the steam drives a turbine which then generates electricity to power the greenhouse chillers even the waste heat from the turbine is recycled the generator directs it to a heat exchanger which transfers more steam and ultimately more electricity .

The whole process is called cogeneration system that we have. devise an energy strategy for the entire project that is based on waste materials, so in fact the energy that is generated on site, cooling and hot water is done using waste wood, but the job of the engineer It doesn't stop here. The cogeneration system creates other types of waste in addition to heat that must be treated. Wood ash is recycled into fertilizer. The smoke is also treated to barely visible gas. Standard factory chimneys exhaling gas in gardens by the bay will be unacceptable. Only a structure on the site can adequately disguise a chimney.

A super tree. Engineers have chosen this 37-meter giant to contain a chimney made of carbon steel. It sounds like a relatively simple plan, but 35 men and three cranes will be needed to complete the team. The team has to lift the 18-tonne pile vertically 80 meters into the air before slowly lowering it into the tree. The project manager is lifting and inserting this chimney into the super tree. probably one of the hardest jobs for this empire project here for such a dangerous operation it will not take long the engineers estimate that if all goes well everything will be over in just two hours during the procedure the changes in wind speed are constantly monitored, even A small gust of wind requires quick action by ground personnel.

Two men with good vision for heights are lifted 37 meters to the canopy. Your job will be to gently guide the pile into the chimney. The men keep a careful watch as do the ground crew below. There are only millimeters of space around the opening in just under two hours an elegantly hidden chimney is now in its final position with the last obstacle overcome engineers are concentrating on putting the finishing touches to the super tree plants that have taken up residence in The nursery for months finds its final resting place attached to the trunks of the super trees and workers hanging 13 stories in the air thoroughly clean the greenhouses.

The team behind one of the world's most remarkable gardens has truly defied engineering logic. They have created exciting sustainable projects. Technologies have mastered the unstable terrain and are on their way to building a unique mega structure. The man who helped launch the project is happy to say thank you and lend a hand with the last bit of glass from the greenhouses. It really is something. which I think everyone is responsible for, that is, from the moment we raised the idea of ​​bringing together the different planners as well as the different experts and then now seeing it really start to take shape.

I think it's tremendously satisfying. Those involved can't believe it. Almost everything is over now, this is a really exciting stage for me, to come and see the site that you know from the drawings in which you have done 3D flights through computer models and then suddenly to come and see that always we're looking for new things to but this is as good as it gets in so many ways, the buzz, the excitement that you get when you look at this incredible creation and to have been a part of it has been a real honor and it's also been a lot of fun.

Gardens by the bay. A megastructure like no other where cutting-edge engineering meets the eco-friendly designs of tomorrow.