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Arquitetura do ImpossívelImpossible Architecture
the impossible, measured

How was this built?

Every week, the story of a great construction that seemed impossible, and of who solved the problem. The design, the calculations, the building site. How many workers, how long, how much it cost, who was injured and who died.

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Drawing board 33 structures

The structures

Structures from Brazil and the rest of the world, one a week. Each page has the full fact sheet and the story of how the structure came to stand.

  • Aerial view of Christ the Redeemer on top of Corcovado, with the city and the mountains of Rio's South Zone in the background 01 Premieres Oct 08, 2026

    Christ the Redeemer

    Corcovado, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil · 1922–1931

    A 38 m figure with outstretched arms, on the summit of a granite needle some 700 m above the sea, with wind, lightning and almost no room for a building site.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • The Empire State Building seen from above, with the antenna on top, among the buildings of Manhattan on a hazy morning 02 Premieres Oct 15, 2026

    Empire State Building

    Manhattan, New York, United States · 1930–1931

    Putting up 86 floors of steel and stone in 410 days, in the middle of Manhattan, with work starting just months after the stock market crash of 1929.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Aerial view of the Rio–Niterói Bridge crossing Guanabara Bay, with Mocanguê Island and ships in the foreground 03 Premieres Oct 22, 2026

    Rio–Niterói Bridge

    Guanabara Bay, between Rio de Janeiro and Niterói, Brazil · 1969–1974

    Crossing the bay with more than 13 km of bridge, almost 9 of them over water, with solid rock 50 meters below the sea, a span high enough for oil tankers and low enough for airplanes, on a political deadline at the height of the dictatorship.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • Aerial view of the East River with the Brooklyn Bridge running diagonally in the foreground and the Manhattan Bridge just behind it 04 Premieres Oct 29, 2026

    Brooklyn Bridge

    East River, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York, United States · 1870–1883

    Setting two stone towers on the bottom of a tidal river, with men digging underneath boxes of compressed air, at a time when nobody knew why they fell ill when they came back up.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Aerial view of the Itaipu Dam: the spillway on the left, the curving dam and the reservoir behind, with the Paraná River in the foreground 05 Premieres Nov 05, 2026

    Itaipu Dam

    Paraná River, between Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, and Hernandarias, Paraguay · 1975–1984

    Taking the Paraná River out of its own bed to raise, on dry ground, a 196 m high dam owned in equal shares by two countries.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • Hoover Dam seen from above, with the curved concrete wall between the rocks of Black Canyon, the power plant at its foot and Lake Mead in the background 06 Premieres Nov 12, 2026

    Hoover Dam

    Black Canyon, Colorado River, on the Nevada–Arizona line, United States · 1931–1936

    Raising the world's tallest dam at the bottom of a desert canyon, with the Colorado River diverted through the mountain and a mass of concrete that, poured all at once, would have taken 125 years to cool.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Straight track across a flooded swamp, with palm trunks under the line, men and horses in the background and low forest on both sides 07 Premieres Nov 19, 2026

    Madeira-Mamoré Railroad

    From Porto Velho to Guajará-Mirim, Rondônia, Brazil · 1907–1912

    Laying track across more than 360 km of forest, swamp and rapids in the Amazon, where two companies had already given up and where almost every worker came down with malaria.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • Deep, dry valley cut between two rock slopes, with several railroad tracks along the bottom, a steam shovel on the right and cranes on the left 08 Premieres Nov 26, 2026

    Panama Canal

    Isthmus of Panama, between Colón and Panama City, Panama · 1904–1914

    Cutting through a mountain range that kept sliding back into the cut, on an isthmus where yellow fever and malaria had already defeated the French, and lifting ships 26 meters up to a lake made of rain.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Gray steel suspension bridge over calm water, with a tall lattice tower on the right, the chain curving down to the truss of the main span and a rocky beach in the foreground 09 Premieres Dec 03, 2026

    Hercílio Luz Bridge

    Strait between Santa Catarina Island and the mainland, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil · 1922–1926

    Hanging over the sea, with steel shipped from the United States and money the state did not have, a bridge with a 339.5-meter span held up by chains of steel bars that, if one of them broke, might give no warning.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • Old black-and-white photograph: the four sloping legs of the tower, already joined by the first-floor structure, resting on a forest of wooden scaffolding, behind the Seine quay wall and leafless trees 10 Premieres Dec 10, 2026

    Eiffel Tower

    Champ-de-Mars, Paris, Île-de-France, France · 1887–1889

    Raising 300 meters of iron, nearly twice the height of the tallest structure in the world, in just over two years, with its shape dictated by the wind calculations, and opening it in time for the Universal Exposition of 1889.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Old black-and-white photograph: the concave dome of the Chamber covered in tubular scaffolding, on the platform slab supported by pilotis with a glass facade; behind it, the skeleton of one of the towers under construction 11 Premieres Dec 17, 2026

    National Congress of Brazil

    Three Powers Plaza, Brasília, Federal District, Brazil · 1957–1960

    Raising, in just over two years of work and against a fixed date, a 62-meter concrete dome that seems to rest lightly on the slab, another one turned upside down and two 28-story towers, in a city that did not yet exist.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • Orange suspension bridge under a blue sky, with a tall tower on a concrete base in the sea, the cables curving down to the second tower in the background, green and brown hills behind and a brick fort in the foreground 12 Premieres Dec 24, 2026

    Golden Gate Bridge

    Golden Gate strait, between San Francisco and Marin County, California, United States · 1933–1937

    Planting a steel tower in the open sea, at the mouth of a bay swept by tidal currents and fog, and hanging from it the longest suspension span in the world, with cables spun wire by wire on site.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Old sepia photograph: a double-track railway curves along a steep slope, with a stone wall on the left, a tunnel in the background, telegraph poles and the mist-covered valley on the right 13 Premieres Dec 31, 2026

    Santos–Jundiaí Railway

    Serra do Mar, between Santos and Jundiaí, by way of the city of São Paulo, São Paulo State, Brazil · 1860–1867

    Getting a train up some 800 meters of escarpment in 8 kilometers of dense forest, with a fixed capital that could not pay for any locomotive railway all the way to the top of the range.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • White cylindrical tunnel boring machine displayed in a roundabout garden, with the red wheel-shaped cutting head on the left and the French inscription Hommage aux bâtisseurs du tunnel on its body 14 Premieres Jan 07, 2027

    Channel Tunnel

    Under the Strait of Dover, between Folkestone, Kent, England, and Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais, France · 1987–1994

    Bore three tunnels 50 kilometers long, almost 40 of them under the sea, from two coasts and two countries with different maps, following a single layer of soft rock, so that the machines would meet in the middle without any government money.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Box of dark glass and concrete suspended over the sidewalk, held between two large red portal frames, with pedestrians walking underneath and tall buildings in the background 15 Premieres Jan 14, 2027

    São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)

    Avenida Paulista, Bela Vista, São Paulo, Brazil · 1960–1968

    Hold an entire museum eight meters above Avenida Paulista, on four pillars and a span of more than 70 meters with no column in the middle, using a prestressed-concrete technique the engineer himself had to invent.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • Aerial view of a very tall tower under construction, still without cladding at the top, casting a long shadow over a district of new buildings, building sites and the desert beyond 16 Premieres Jan 21, 2027

    Burj Khalifa

    Downtown Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates · 2004–2010

    Raise 828 meters of concrete and steel on weak rock and groundwater saltier than the sea, in a 50 °C desert, against a wind that, at that height, would set swaying any shape that repeated itself floor after floor.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Color aerial view of an oval concrete stadium with the green field at the center, packed stands and a continuous canopy divided into pale segments all the way around; in the background, a round-domed arena and city buildings 17 Premieres Jan 28, 2027

    Maracanã Stadium

    Maracanã neighborhood, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil · 1948–1950

    Raise in less than two years, for a World Cup with a fixed date, a concrete ring for more than 150,000 people, covered by a cantilevered canopy without a single pillar beneath it.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • White stone lighthouse with a dark lantern at the top and a wide, dark base, on a low reef almost level with calm water, under a grey-blue sky 18 Premieres Feb 04, 2027

    Bell Rock Lighthouse

    Bell Rock (Inchcape) reef, North Sea, off Arbroath, Angus, Scotland, United Kingdom · 1807–1811

    Raising a stone tower some 35 meters tall on a reef the sea covers twice a day, about 18 kilometers from the coast, working only in summer and, at first, only about two hours at each low tide.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Tall, wide building with a pinkish facade, four stepped blocks and a pale crown with pinnacles, seen from below on a pedestrian street with palm trees and a street clock 19 Premieres Feb 11, 2027

    Martinelli Building

    Rua São Bento, Avenida São João and Rua Líbero Badaró, downtown São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil · 1924–1934

    Raising 30 stories of reinforced concrete in a city where almost no building went above five, while City Hall halted the work, the press spoke of collapse and the public crossed the street so as not to walk underneath.

    BrazilRead the story →
  • Old black-and-white engraving: an arched brick gallery receding into the distance, with side archways lit by lamps, pedestrians in top hats and two men pulling a cart on the stone floor 20 Premieres Feb 18, 2027

    Thames Tunnel

    Under the River Thames, between Rotherhithe and Wapping, London, England, United Kingdom · 1825–1843

    Driving a brick passage under a river crowded with ships, through a bed of mud and sand soaked in sewage, when the only earlier attempt at the same spot had been swallowed by the water.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Bridge of three dark steel arches over a wide river, with stone piers, a blue train crossing on the lower deck, a clear sky and a snow-covered bank in the foreground 21 Premieres Feb 25, 2027

    Eads Bridge

    Mississippi River, between St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, United States · 1867–1874

    Resting on bedrock, beneath some 25 meters of sand that the Mississippi kept shifting, three arches of more than 150 meters each made of a metal that had never been the main one in a large structure, with no falsework in the river and without stopping the steamboats.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Red steel bridge with three large diamond-shaped structures over calm water that reflects them, a stone pier on the right and a train crossing the viaduct under a blue sky 22 Premieres Mar 04, 2027

    Forth Bridge

    Firth of Forth, between South Queensferry (Edinburgh) and North Queensferry (Fife), Scotland, United Kingdom · 1882–1890

    Carrying trains across a Scottish estuary more than 1.5 km wide, with channels over 60 meters deep, right after another Scottish bridge had fallen in a storm taking a whole train with it, and convincing the public that the new one would not fall.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Tall, narrow building with a light-colored facade, seen from below at the corner, with a stone base, regular rows of windows and a projecting cornice at the top, against a blue sky 23 Premieres Mar 11, 2027

    Ingalls Building

    Corner of Fourth and Vine streets, downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, United States · 1902–1904

    Raising 64 meters of offices without a single steel beam, only concrete with twisted bars inside, when, according to the sources, no concrete building stood more than six stories tall and respected engineers swore it would never reach the roof.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Old black-and-white film frame: the bridge roadway tilted and twisted, with a car stopped and tilted in the middle, bent lampposts and the vertical suspenders on both sides 24 Premieres Mar 18, 2027

    Tacoma Narrows Bridge

    The Tacoma Narrows strait, between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula, Washington, United States · 1938–1940

    Hanging 853 meters of roadway over a windy strait on a girder only 2.4 meters deep, at a time when engineering could calculate the push of the wind, but did not know how to calculate the wind twisting a bridge until it broke.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Gray diagram on a white background: eight spheres at the corners of a cube and a ninth at the center, joined by bars, the four diagonals crossing in the middle 25 Premieres Mar 25, 2027

    Atomium

    Heysel Plateau, Laeken, Brussels, Belgium · 1956–1958

    Standing up, in two years, an iron crystal 102 meters tall: nine steel spheres of 18 meters linked by tubes, in a cube set upright on one corner, a shape nobody knew how the wind would treat.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Aerial view of a round stadium with a low, light-colored dome in the middle of a huge empty parking lot, with Houston neighborhoods and highways in the background under a blue sky 26 Premieres Apr 01, 2027

    Astrodome

    NRG Park, Houston, Texas, United States · 1962–1965

    To roof an entire baseball stadium with a steel dome spanning almost 196 meters, with no column in the middle, and to keep air-conditioned, free of fog and smoke, a volume of air that held tens of thousands of people smoking in the Houston heat.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Color photograph from 1972: the stadium's transparent roof of cables and panels, hung from tall leaning masts, over a concrete grandstand; in the foreground, a red running track and a street with buses 27 Premieres Apr 08, 2027

    Munich Olympic Stadium

    Olympic Park, Munich, Bavaria, Germany · 1969–1972

    To hang more than 70,000 square meters of acrylic over a stadium, an arena and a swimming pool, on a cable net nobody knew how to calculate, with a fixed deadline and without knowing whether the shape could even be built.

    WorldRead the story →
  • The Sydney Opera House seen from above by day: white shells on a sand-colored podium at the water's edge, blue water all around, a red boat leaving a trail of foam and the city in the background 28 Premieres Apr 15, 2027

    Sydney Opera House

    Bennelong Point, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia · 1959–1973

    To turn into concrete a sketch of shells drawn freehand, which matched no known geometric form and which, for years, nobody managed to describe in numbers, calculate or fabricate.

    WorldRead the story →
  • A gas platform on a calm sea at dusk, with four light-colored concrete columns rising from the water and a deck crowded with modules, a crane and a tower, to the right of a wide sky 29 Premieres Apr 22, 2027

    Troll A platform

    Troll gas field, North Sea, northwest of Bergen, Vestland, Norway · 1991–1996

    To begin, months after another base by the same builder sank because of a calculation error, a 472-meter concrete tower, raise it in a fjord, float it upright out to the open sea and set it down in 303 meters of water.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Large light-gray steel structure with two curved arms turning beside a concrete aqueduct carried on ring-shaped piers; a gondola with a boat is halfway up, with a sloping-roofed building on the right and people watching from a lawn 30 Premieres Apr 29, 2027

    Falkirk Wheel

    Tamfourhill, Falkirk, Scotland, United Kingdom · 2000–2002

    Linking two canals separated by a 35-meter drop, where eleven locks once stood, with a machine weighing more than a thousand tonnes that turns as a whole, carrying boats and water in two gondolas that always stay level.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Inside a rock tunnel coated in shotcrete, the huge rust-colored circular cutterhead of a tunnel boring machine, full of openings; a worker in a helmet and coveralls stands beside it, reaching about a quarter of the way up the disc 31 Premieres May 06, 2027

    Gotthard Base Tunnel

    Beneath the Gotthard massif, between Erstfeld (canton of Uri) and Bodio (canton of Ticino), Alps, Switzerland · 1999–2016

    Crossing the Alps almost in a straight line from underneath, with up to 2,300 meters of mountain overhead, rock close to 50 °C and a stretch where the rock itself closed the hole as it was being dug.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Aerial view of a cable-stayed bridge with a red truss girder between two white towers, passing far above a green gorge, with a narrow river at the bottom 32 Premieres May 13, 2027

    Duge Bridge

    Border between Duge, in Shuicheng District, Liupanshui, Guizhou Province, and Puli, in Xuanwei, Yunnan Province, China · 2013–2016

    Stretching a road across a 720-meter clear span, 565 meters above a river, between two cave-riddled limestone walls where there was no way to raise a pier from the bottom nor, according to the Economic Daily, a safe place to anchor the cables of a suspension bridge.

    WorldRead the story →
  • Very thin, tall tower with glass faces that narrow in steps up to the tip, rising above the trees of Central Park under a cloudy sky, with the Essex House hotel sign on a building to the right 33 Premieres May 20, 2027

    111 West 57th Street

    West 57th Street, Midtown, Manhattan, New York, United States · 2014–2021

    Raising 435 meters of apartments on a footprint some 18 meters wide, on a lot squeezed between neighbors and attached to a landmarked 1925 building, without the tower swaying enough for the people living at the top to feel it.

    WorldRead the story →
By subject

Topics

The structures grouped by the problem they solved: bridges, skyscrapers, tunnels, stadiums, water.

Method

Here, every number has a source

Every great structure comes with a legend: the worker buried in the concrete, the structure “built in X days”, the death toll nobody checked. Every figure on this site carries a seal saying how far it can be trusted.

When the sources disagree, we show the versions and do not pick one. When nobody recorded it, we say so instead of making it up.

  • 2+ sources

    ConfirmedConfirmed in two or more independent sources.

  • 1 source

    Single sourceA single source; the text says which.

  • disputed

    DisagreementThe sources disagree; we show the versions and do not pick one.

  • no record

    No recordNobody recorded it. We say so instead of making it up.