Build It Bigger

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.

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.

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.