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Build It Bigger

Seasons5
Episodes45
Years2006 - 2011
NetworkDiscovery Channel
Danny Forster & Architecture
Danny Forster & Architecture

Exploring the Built World

How can we bring architecture to life for the general public without oversimplifying the ideas behind it? In 45 episodes across 5 seasons, “Build It Bigger” took the typical amazement-TV format and turned it into an engaging and rich investigation into the role that pioneering building projects play in the lives of citizens, cities, and countries. Audiences traveled with host and producer Danny Forster around the world to explore groundbreaking architectural and engineering projects—which Danny put not just on screen but in context. “Build It Bigger” ultimately became the highest rated show on the Science Channel (where it moved after its first season) and won a 2010 Directors Guild of America award.

Danny Forster & Architecture

5 Seasons, 45 Episodes, 21 Countries

Five seasons, 45 episodes. Impressive numbers for a series that delves so deep and explains so much. Even more impressive? Six continents, 21 countries. Build It Bigger truly explored the globe, and took the audience along for the ride.

STARCHITECTS

 Zaha Hadid. Peter Eisenman. Norman Foster. Moshe Safdie. Pei Cobb Freed. Despite its title, “Build It Bigger” examines not just the world’s biggest projects, but also the world’s greatest architects.

The genre of construction documentary series leans heavily on projects of numerically impressive size and scope. (Modern Marvels! Megastructures! Impossible Engineering!) Build It Bigger sounds like that kind of show. While it did show impressive structures by world-famous architects, it also showed the more unseen side of architecture: tunnels for transit, bridges between countries, and risky construction sites at the tops of skyscrapers.

Season 3 Episode 7

Architects: Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture

Project: Yas Hotel

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Skyscrapers

Danny goes to great heights to help us understand these gravity-defying, wind-battling, skyline-defining feats of science and art.

Season 2 Episode 12

Typology: Skyscraper

Project: Trump Tower Chicago

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Tunnels

The underground masterpieces are easy to overlook, but they are some of the riskiest projects to undertake, and the most transformative.

Danny was interested not just in popularizing architects who were already celebrated, but in celebrating workers who rarely get their due. Every episode features the people painstakingly transforming an architectural vision into reality, and most episodes show Danny, the viewers’s stand-in, trying to help.

Season 2 Episode 11

Typology: Tunnel

Project: Marmaray Tunnel

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Bridges

For most people, they just link point A to point B. But even the simplest bridge links art, architecture, engineering, transportation design, civil engineering, and even climate science. Needless to say, Build It Bigger did not visit the simplest bridges.

For most people, they just link point A to point B. But even the simplest bridge links art, architecture, engineering, transportation design, civil engineering, and even climate science. Needless to say, Build It Bigger did not visit the simplest bridges.

Season 4 Episode 6

Typology: Bridge

Project: Oakland Bay Bridge

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Behind the Scenes

TEDx Talk

Danny explains to the audience in Traverse City, Michigan, how Mrs. Devito’s high school art history class led him to study architecture at Harvard, host the Discovery Channel’s Build It Bigger, found his own firm, make a documentary with Steven Spielberg, and understand that buildings are made of not just physical materials, but also culture, history, and climate.

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Danny Forster & Architecture
Danny Forster & Architecture
Danny Forster & Architecture
Danny Forster & Architecture
Danny Forster & Architecture
Danny Forster & Architecture
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