Why The Roman Pantheon Is Still An Engineering Miracle - 2,000 Years Later

The Pantheon, a temple to the mythical gods of ancient Rome, built 2,000 years ago and drawing a crowd ever since. I can't think of a place that would give a greater sense of your power. It's the ancient Romans' best preserved building, made from their favorite building material. Using concrete, Romans were able to expand into whole new geometries of construction. They began to build large domes that had never before been seen in the history of the world. As our concrete world crumbles around us, could the secret solution be hidden inside the Pantheon? The concrete we use today is different than the concrete that the Romans used. The Romans took what could have been a rather dull utilitarian material, and they turned it into what was really an art form. Can we do as the Romans and use concrete to erect an architectural icon? The same philosophy and culture and artistic flair should be reflected. Here's the plan. We're mixing up the strongest concrete on earth and getting ready for a brutal battle between classic and contemporary. If we were to rebuild the Pantheon today, we have to think in terms of millennia. We would want to go bigger and do something that is even more innovative. We're blowing the top off Rome's famous dome. We're on the job site of one of the world's greatest wonders. We're wondering, how long would it take? How much would it cost? How many workers would we need? Could we even do it if we built it today? Rome, Italy's bustling modern capital. But flashback to 2000 years ago, and Rome wasn't just a big city. It was the biggest city in the world. Most of this ancient metropolis has since fallen into ruins. But the Pantheon still stands. Pantheon is one of the great mysteries of the Roman world. We don't have that many literary references about the naming of the building. The word Pantheon means of all the gods. Its purpose, why exactly it was built the way it was. It's really wrapped in a whole series of mysteries. But one thing we can agree upon is that there are some unbelievably innovative construction methods in the Pantheon. It's 14 stories high, a relative pipsqueak next to today's most famous skyscrapers. But the Pantheon endures as a masterpiece of architectural beauty and engineering acumen. If you were a Roman coming to see this Pantheon for the first time, what you would have seen as you walked towards it was a very conventional temple. But then as you went inside, it was not a conventional temple at all. Everything about it was opulent. Today, it's adorned with Renaissance era paintings and statues. But it's marble floors and granite columns have been turning heads for 2000 years. Only once you enter the interior space, do you see that the building is not rectangular, it's circular. We can think of the Pantheon as a sphere within a cylinder. The height from the oculus to the ground is the same as the diameter, which means that if you were to continue the dome, you would have a perfect sphere. This dome is the Pantheon's crowning achievement. Built with more than 4,500 tons of Roman concrete, it's bigger than the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral and the United States Capitol Building. Today, it is still the largest unreinforced concrete building in the world. There's this interesting domed concrete dome structure above you and a hole in the roof, too, an oculus that lets in light to illuminate the interior. This opening to the heavens has been left uncovered to this day. When it rains, water drains through four tiny grates. The whole purpose of the dome and the oculus was to represent the power of the empire and the power of the single light source, the emperor. But as the sun began to set on the Roman Empire, the Pantheon's ownership flipped. In 609, it was changed into a Christian church. When the Pantheon becomes a church in the sixth century, it basically guarantees its survival for the next 15 centuries because it becomes a living house of worship. Being a Christian church means that it's been repaired. It's been structurally supported. As a Catholic church, the Pantheon's served as a final resting place of kings, queens, and this Renaissance artist. Maybe you've heard of him, Raphael. No building has played a more important role in Roman life for the past two millennia. It's this amazing feat of architecture and engineering that has lasted for so long. And you can go visit it today and it's not much different than it was when it was originally built. But could we build a Pantheon today? When we build today, we often think in terms of decades, possibly a century. Romans built for millennia. The Pantheon's concrete dome still dominates Rome's skyline. Meanwhile, our concrete buildings are being dome-molished. And in some respects, it's not really possible based simply on the material used, the concrete. Roman concrete is quite different from today's concrete. At the same time, from a perspective of engineering and architecture, we're certainly capable of reconstructing the exact same forms, making a dome the same size, putting up columns out front. All of those elements, we have the engineering skill and construction expertise to do. I guess the question is, to what end? The building itself may be less significant as an architectural or engineering achievement because it would be much easier for us to construct something that is similar to the Pantheon. We may be in Rome, but we don't have to do exactly as the Romans did. It's time to reimagine this architectural wonder. If you were to create the Pantheon today, I think you'd want to create a building that is equally as innovative in the contemporary world as the Pantheon was. We would want to go bigger than the Pantheon. We'd want something that is cutting edge, that takes that to the extreme and is different than anything that anybody has really seen or experienced to date. Can we build a modern engineering icon in worship of this ancient Roman temple? Our modern mega-developer loves the idea. Whether you're building a structure 2,000 years ago like the Pantheon or building a beautiful building today, the same philosophy and culture and artistic flair should be reflected. And that's why it's important to surround yourself and your team with such creative minds that reflect the day that you are erecting a building. Sounds like a great idea, but can we afford this architectural feat? The question of profitability, it's a question mark for me. But is that important if you're building a culture and a community? In my view, that's secondary. We're going to have to find a way to pay for this thing. But before we build our budget, we got to figure out what this building's going to look like and what we're going to build it out of. If we were to rebuild the Pantheon today, I would fight to build it out of traditional materials. We have to think in terms of millennia. The Roman builders were building for eternity. They were building for millennia. What purpose will a new Pantheon serve? How long will it take to build? And how much will it cost? It's a heavy duty operation, lining up all the pieces, parts and people we'd need if we built it today. We're imagining the Roman Pantheon if we built it today. But why would we build it today? This is a tough one. Remember, we don't exactly know why they built this Pantheon. And it wasn't even the first one. This is in fact the third Pantheon on this site. There were two other Pantheons and they both burned down. And it's thought that probably the original temple here was dedicated to the Olympian gods. There are no prohibitions against, you know, anyone in the Roman world not worshiping any specific gods, or in this case, all of the gods together at the same time. Roman temples, they're different than we would conceive of, let's say, a church or a synagogue or a mosque in which you worship in the interior of the building. You go as a community during specific religious festivals, so thousands of people go to attend these things and there's just not enough space inside the temple. All of the ceremony takes place in the exterior. Pantheon Version 3 was commissioned by Emperor Hadrian in 117 B.C., a time when the role these temples served in Roman life was evolving. We think that probably this Pantheon, the third Pantheon, functioned more as a kind of audience hall for Hadrian rather than as an actual temple as such. An ancient temple for polytheistic worship, then an emperor's private soap box, today, a Christian church. These domes sure worn a lot of hats over the years. So what exactly are we building? Today, we might build a Pantheon to honor heroes or to provide a house for books or a house for government. Take a look around the world and see the legacy of the Pantheon on full display. You see reading rooms, capital buildings, museums, influenced by Roman architecture and particularly by the Pantheon. It's a nod to the purpose a Pantheon might serve in the 21st century. But what we really want to replicate about the Pantheon is its power to draw a crowd. Seven million people a year pass through these wooden doors. Not bad for a 2,000 year old building. If you think of it, it's a place where people came together, they met, they exchanged ideas about things. They may have made business contracts, hired lawyers and worshiped the gods and maybe even witnessed or saw the emperor himself, occasionally. We have all sorts of buildings that fulfill this same function in the world today, if you think of a trade and convention center. Like a convention center today, the Pantheon was a destination building that brought the masses to the center of the city. So one presumes that on a daily basis on the inside of the building, there are going to be hundreds or even thousands of people. And our modern mega developer believes that today, if we build it, they will come. We build World Trade Convention centers and cultural centers these days. It's to bring communities and cultures together. I think by inviting people to come to your community and the core and the heart of your city, they spend time in your restaurants, in your hotels. I mean, there's a cultural exchange. If we want to use the Pantheon as inspiration to build a modern convention center, we got to build something structurally sound, architecturally renowned and strong enough to stick around for at least 2,000 years. And that mission will guide every decision we make about our modern day Pantheon. Where are we going to build it? What are we building it out of? What's it going to look like? How are we going to do it? How many people is it going to take? How long? How much is this whole thing going to cost? Before we bring in the heavy equipment, we got to figure out where we're going to build it. When this Pantheon was built, Rome was a supersized city. There were probably between one and 1.2 million people who lived in the city, which makes it larger than any city in the history of the world prior to the 18th century. So ancient historians often refer to Rome as a megalopolis. But it wasn't just its population that made ancient Rome the greatest city of its age. It's crowded, it's busy. It's always buzzing with activity. It's also a cosmopolitan center. Rome is the capital of an empire. So there are people from all over the Roman Empire that live there. There are people from North Africa, there are Jews, there are Celts from Western Europe, Italians, you name it. Every population in the Roman Empire is represented in the city of Rome. Gee, Rome 2,000 years ago sounds a lot like the biggest city of a modern superpower. New York City must be the most dynamic city or one of the most dynamic cities, certainly, in the world. And it's constantly changing and growing. And that's why it is what it is. And that shouldn't change. Not only is this the biggest city in America, it's among the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. Today, the children in our public schools come from families speaking 180 different languages. You know, the classic New Yorker was born somewhere else, got to New York, looked around and said, thank God I have found home. Those of us who were born here, like me, are descended from people like that. More than 8 million people live in New York City. And every year, almost 63 million more flock to visit its temple of tourist attractions. A place of beauty, a place of grand buildings, a place of memory. And also, I suspect that quite a few of the buildings going up right now that are so new, come back in 30 years, they'll be landmarks. So we'll build it in New York City. But what are we going to build it from? The search starts here. The Pantheon is made of a number of materials. There are building stones used, travertine and limestone. There are granite columns, there are marble decorative elements. Brick is used throughout as well. But the most important single building material used in a structure is concrete. But why doesn't the Pantheon look anything like our modern concrete buildings? The viewers at the time wouldn't see the concrete itself. The concrete always had facing material on it. So they see the facing material. They don't see the concrete. The problem with concrete is that once you take off the facing material, it becomes very susceptible to degradation. And so it erodes away. And that's why we don't have so many of the Roman structures surviving today, because once they lose their facing material, they're actually very vulnerable to just eroding away. The ruins that litter Rome to this day fell apart gradually, thanks to 1,500 years of pillaging, neglect and degradation. But today's buildings come down with a bang. The United States alone produces almost half a billion tons of construction and demolition waste a year. Most of that debris, you guessed it, concrete. In 2015 alone, enough concrete was demolished to build 60 great pyramids of Giza. So do we really want a Pantheon made from 21st century concrete? As we think about building a monument that's going to last for millennia as the Romans built, we have to consider the durability and the solidity of those materials. Can we mix up a concrete strong enough to last thousands of years if we built it today? We're imagining building a modern day Roman Pantheon in New York City. But what are we going to build it from? We're thinking about concrete and we're definitely not the first ones to use that building material. Two thousand years ago, the Pantheon was a pioneer of concrete construction. One of the great inventions of the Roman period was Roman concrete. They really made it into their own material in a way that other cultures didn't. With concrete, you can make shapes that curve and you can use it in barrel vaults and arches and domes to span huge distances. But with the fall of Rome, the recipe for concrete disappeared. We wouldn't see large scale concrete construction again until the dawn of the 20th century. The Ingalls Building in Ohio, USA, was the first concrete skyscraper. It was built in 1903. It was only 16 stories high, but it laid the ground for the modern concrete explosion. The Hoover Dam was by far the biggest concrete structure ever built when it opened in 1936. There's enough concrete here to pave a highway from San Francisco to New York or build over a thousand more domes for the Pantheon. Today, almost everything we build uses concrete. It's a 35 billion dollar industry in the USA. The Romans may have invented it, but we've taken it to new heights. A concrete Pantheon should be no problem, right? And in some respects, it's not really possible based simply on the material used, the concrete. Roman concrete is different from the concrete that we use today. Contemporary concrete is typically highly liquid. Roman concrete is less liquid. It's more like like a mortar. Whatever structure we build may have the form of the Pantheon, but it's unlikely to have its durability. Most experts attribute Roman concrete's exceptional strength to a special ingredient inside its mixture. The Romans developed concrete using volcanic ash from near Mount Vesuvius, and they discovered that a particular ash was reactive, meaning that if it were ground into dust and mixed with water, it would set hard and become essentially a liquid stone. The volcanic ash is called pozzolana, but it's in scarce supply in our modern construction world. Pozzolana isn't used so much these days because of difficulties of access, because of expense and because of limited supply compared to other materials that we might include instead. We've got to say no way to the ancient ways, but can modern concrete cut it? Let's find out. This is one of thousands of ready-mix concrete plants spread across the world. We got Kevin Nickerson here to help us mix up the strongest concrete Earth can provide. We can give you as much as you want to whatever specification you need. That specification might be color. It might be texture. So if you need it flowable, we can do that. You need it durable. We can do that. And as much as you want. We have ultimate unlimited resources. We can provide as much concrete as you need. Maximizing the strength, durability and even aesthetic of concrete is all about the ingredients you use. There's four basic components to concrete. There's water, there's aggregate, cement and there's admixtures, chemical admixtures. So as long as those materials are available, we can keep producing concrete to your heart's content. By far, the most important ingredient in concrete is cement. Cement is made by grinding and combining reactivity prone rocks like limestone and softer rocks like shale or clay. Superheat the mixture and you get a rock hard chemical compound. Grind it into a powder. That's cement. The cement is what forms the paste. That ultimately is what gets hard and makes concrete concrete. Cement is to concrete basically as flour is to bread. Cement is the second most used resource in the world. The first water, another ingredient in our recipe. Together, water and cement form the glue that holds concrete together. Now, ingredient number three, aggregate, a catch all term for the crushed stone, gravel and sand used as reinforcement. The stronger your aggregate, the stronger your concrete. So we're in the back storage area now where we store all of our coarse aggregates, fine aggregates. We can take a walk over and take a little closer look at it. So this is our main source of coarse aggregate. In general, all concrete, the majority of the concrete is going to be done with the 20 mil or the three quarter inch aggregate. It's pretty straightforward. They call this their everyday aggregate. Pass. This is what we'll call a 14 millimeter aggregate. So a little bit smaller than the general everyday stuff. But it meets the needs of a decorative concrete as well. You can see this one has some very distinct coloring properties, kind of a reddish brown. And we'll quite commonly use that in an exposed aggregate application. The difference, main difference between the two other than the visual ones is, in fact, this one is considerably more expensive than this one. We're willing to break the bank for a concrete that really shines. Quite often, I think many people think of concrete as gray, dull and boring, really not much, not much appeal to it. But with aggregates like these, what we can actually make some very appealing looking concretes. There are yellow ones, there are black and white ones. On top of this, we can actually add pigments to give you just about any color and any variety you want. So not just your regular old gray concrete anymore. With the right aggregate, we think we can build a pantheon on par with the original. But a little new age chemistry might just tip the scales our way. So what's the last ingredient in concrete? Admixtures, chemical concoctions that vary widely based on the application and location of your build. Well, in New York City, this is what the winters are like. So we might want to find a chemical admixture to protect against that. So this is where we're able to mix everything, all the dry ingredients, chemicals, waters, everything. This is where we basically mix it all together, measure it all up, dump it into the back of the truck, let the truck work its magic. So we've got our ingredients. Let's put it all together. As this truck heads to the job site, the mixing drum spins and the raw materials combine to make concrete. Meanwhile, we're ready to mix up a concrete of our own as strong or stronger than the Romans. But we still don't know what our modern pantheon is going to look like or how much it would cost if we built it today. We're imagining a 100 percent concrete pantheon, strong enough to last 2,000 years. But what's it going to look like? This pantheon's design was overseen by ancient Rome's biggest architecture aficionado, who just so happened to be the emperor himself. When Hadrian became emperor in 117, this allowed him really to indulge something that had been his great passion throughout his life, which was pretty unusual for an emperor to actually function as an architect. He has a massive palace outside the city of Rome at Tivoli, and historians believe that he had some input into its design, and many of the elements of the pantheon are echoed in some of the buildings and rooms at Tivoli. Some people used to think that perhaps Hadrian himself designed the pantheon, but it's unlikely that he would have really had the experience to build such a sophisticated building. It's extremely likely that he had a lot of input into it and that it represents his ultimate dreams of what a building should be. We're dreaming of an architectural wonder of our own. So what's it going to look like? Whatever we want it to look like. Concrete can dry into so many different forms. It has fed the creative appetites of many modern architects. There was a movement in the 60s, 50s and 60s, called Brutalism. Brutalism comes from the French word brut, which means raw, pure. Concrete is ideal for this kind of nakedness, this rawness. Even if you think this angular architecture is ugly, you've got to admit they were thinking outside of the box, or maybe they were just thinking about boxes. Brutalism fell out of style by the 21st century, but structures like this one at the University of Miami scream Brutalism is back. They wanted to expose all the structure, building systems to lay bare everything in plain sight, and concrete is ideal for this. The Thomas B. Murphy Design Studio was named 2018's Building of the Year by World Architects, international network of architects, engineers and designers. The popularity of the building testifies to the power of concrete and to the simple, minimalist design of the building. The crowning achievement of this design? Building its rolling roof. The idea was a metaphor, take a look, what you see is paper covering all the desks. This is the material of students here working in this building. This is the design inspiration we need. We're imagining an all-concrete pantheon, a 21st century match-up of classical antiquity and modern Brutalism. So let's take the form of the pantheon. And recreate it entirely from concrete. Now, how are we going to build it? Can we beat the ancient Romans record and build an even bigger, unreinforced concrete dome? Maybe we can ask whoever built this 55,000 seat domed baseball park in Toronto, Canada. So the pantheon, concrete structure, and the big interesting part about it is the dome roof itself. They had to figure out how to build a concrete dome roof, unreinforced, and then they had to figure out how to sit that roof on a series of concrete frames, just like we do here. We've got a roof sitting on concrete frames here, the pantheon's got a concrete roof sitting on concrete frames down below. The official name is the Rogers Centre. But let's rewind back three decades, when it was called the Sky Dome. Construction began in 1987, and this ballpark sprung up in just two and a half years. So the Sky Dome was basically the first of its kind in the world. We had to build a fully retractable dome stadium that could open a roof in 20 minutes. It had never been done anywhere in the world. The dome is actually four separate roof panels, three of which move along this custom track. So we're up in the rail system of Panel 1. The rail system of Panel 1, Panel 1 actually has four rails, a lower rail, an upper rail, an outer rail, and an inner rail. These are really quite heavy rails, and they're located on a very precise geometry, a circular radius geometry. This is the bogie that picks up the front arch truss itself. You know, this thing is really a derivative of pure train technology, the bogie system itself. It's based on a rail type of wheel. It's based on a rail itself that came right out of the real world. They built a dome that moves. For sure we can build a bigger, unreinforced concrete dome, right? For sure we could make it larger, but the more important answer to that is we wouldn't do it. Wait, we're going to need to rewind that back. We wouldn't do it. And we wouldn't do it because of engineering standards and technologies and building codes and things like that. Our dream of a bigger, unreinforced concrete dome is a nightmare when it comes to meeting modern safety codes. We've got some tough decisions to make, and we've still got to figure out how long it's going to take, how many people we're going to need, and how we're going to put it all together if we built it today. We're figuring out how we'd build a modern day Pantheon. So far, we've decided we'll build it in New York City. It's going to take the same form as the Pantheon in Rome, except it'll be made entirely from concrete without any steel reinforcement. But building a bigger, unreinforced concrete dome is a big risk for our builders. Our building codes are designed so that there's a life safety component to them. All right, we don't want our Pantheon to become famous for crumbling. This ancient dome has passed the ultimate safety test. It's been standing strong for 2,000 years. Construction has progressed a lot since then, but maybe not enough to match our modern day ambitions. Can it be done? Absolutely. But at what cost? We're not going to be able to build a bigger, unreinforced dome. Tough loss for us, but the Romans had to make compromises too. The Pantheon is a remarkable building. Indeed, many people think it's the most remarkable building that's ever been built, but not everything went according to plan. This facade would have been even more remarkable had it been built with the size of columns that were designed for it, because these columns here are 10 feet too short, and in fact, if we look, we can see on the rotunda the outline of where the original pediment should have met the rotunda. These columns come from Egypt, shipped down the Nile and then shipped across the Mediterranean and then shipped up here. I think we can imagine that there were many, many places where they might have broken or where the ships might have sunk or something might have happened. If this build's ever going to happen, we've got to make some concessions too. You know, for a large dome structure, we would use some modern-day technologies of reinforcing steel and that would provide an enhanced level of safety. Here's the good news. If we use reinforcing steel, we can make our concrete dome way bigger. The original one was 43 meters or so across. Let's say we build one that's, I'd say let's make it twice as big. Let's make it 86 meters across. We're going to do everything we can to keep this big domed beauty upright. I think you build up a maintenance plan with the proper budget and the proper solutions to keep that structure looking good and that's all in the planning. That was the plan for the Rogers Center. Three decades later, the same construction company is back to replace the glistening PVC shield that protects this steel dome. So the crew's actually up there removing some of the existing membrane and putting a new membrane back on top. In order for them to do that, they need to do it from a swing stage, which rides over top of the existing membrane. They go up, they cut it out and then they put the new membrane back down. Well, the building itself is actually still in great shape. So as long as they keep the maintenance up, this building will last for a long time. But before we start worrying about repairs, we've got to build this thing. So how many people do we need? And how long is it going to take? Well, here's the ancient benchmark. In order to build the Pantheon, it would have taken 1,100 laborers about 10 years to build it. This is primarily hand labor, placing bricks, concrete by the bucket load. If we were to build it today, I think there are some efficiencies we could take to try to speed up the process. Here's what the team in Toronto thinks it'll take to build today. On site, we'd need probably somewhere in the range of, depending on the phase of the construction, from 50 people to maybe 250 people. Our design team might be starting off with five, going to 20, going to 100 people itself. We'll put it at 350 people at peak production. So how long? We could probably design the thing in, I don't know, maybe it's a year and a half. From start to finish, the whole thing we could probably do in a little more than three years itself. So let's say it's three and a half years with a max capacity workforce of 350 people. Now all we need is the green light. Whether you're building a skyscraper, a pyramid, or just a simple building, I think there are some principles of studying the project, getting your right team on board, getting your budget and implementing. That's exactly what's happening here at the job site of this $200 million development. Kevin Nickerson's team is in charge of supplying all the concrete. So he's backing in, he's just getting his load set and adjusted, getting the proper consistency, the proper slump, and then dumping it into the back of the truck. Without getting too close, you can... Good morning. We can get an idea of what we're doing here. We're just dumping the concrete into the back of the truck. There are two large pumping cylinders. So the pumping cylinders, one is actually sucking to fill the cylinder, the other is pushing to empty the cylinder. So as they come out, the concrete flows down through what's called an S-pipe down here. Concrete is sucked into one of the cylinders, it switches over and pushes out, comes down through the pipeline, all the way up and through the boom, and then all the way to the end. The temporary shell where this concrete will set and harden is called a form. They've already got the formwork obviously in place, the forms are tied, the forms are in place, the steel, reinforcing steel has been tied, and we're filling the forms with concrete now. We take the heavy-duty approach these days, but it was the Romans who conquered concrete construction first. They would have used like a timber box coming up. They basically provide a void, in other words, an opening for the concrete to sit into. They would have poured concrete, they would have slid the box up, they would have poured concrete. They would have to have it done in an efficient way because there's a time from when you mix the concrete to when you get the concrete into the formworks. Timing is everything, and at this construction site, works ground to a halt. Just bear with me a sec here, we've got to... What's happened? This seems pretty bad right now. The PTO shaft is what drives the hydraulics, which drives the drum. It just didn't let go. So without that, we're not able to turn the drum, so now we're not able to unload the concrete. Yeah, not pretty right now. We're dead in the water, I'll try Hal here and get right back to you. Time's ticking for Kevin and his concrete crew. Our own problems. Just how much is this all going to cost, if we built it today? So you want to build a modern day Roman pantheon. What would it take? We're imagining a 21st century convention centre, shaped like the pantheon, but twice as big. This brutalist beauty will be made of the strongest concrete in the world. And it's going to take up to 350 workers, three and a half years to build. So let's do it. And so what we would do is we would obviously start at the lower part, we'd build a foundation. We would excavate the bedrock, install the footings, put rock anchors in so that the actual footings were secured to the rock. Once the foundation's secure, we'll erect a structural frame of our pantheon. There's six individual large frame column systems that support the roof itself. So what we would do basically is construct the forms themselves, it's a temporary structure. We'd place rebar inside that, the concrete would come in and be poured, it would sit there for a day or two, and then we'd release it and take the forms off. While we're waiting for the concrete to dry, Kevin's digging deep to get his big job back on track. We're just trying to empty this out. Just enough so we can get them back down the road. With the drum not being able to turn, the concrete, we've got about two hours, give or take, and the concrete is going to get hard, and we're not going to be able to get it out of the drum, so there's a bit of an emergency. With a mixer breaking down, the crew might have to resort to ancient back-breaking building techniques, Roman style. They would have had to make scaffold around this, which is basically a stairway. They would have to bring the concrete up in wagons or buckets or something like that. Good news. Reinforcements have arrived. We've got two more trucks just arriving to the site. They finally got through the traffic. So we're rushing to get them backed in here to keep things rolling again. So we'll get him geared up. Another one coming in right behind him. All right, we're all set to roll again. Once our structural frame is hardened, we got to construct the crowning achievement of our new Pantheon. But wait, how'd the Romans pull this off? What was really technically challenging is building a dome with that span. It's a very, very wide span to build. You have to put a wooden framework across the dome and then lay the concrete on top. While the concrete on top was setting, and until it becomes hard and can carry loads, the wooden framework has to remain in place. There was a kind of element of hope at that moment that the dome wouldn't collapse. There was a conscious effort by the builders to reduce the weight and therefore reduce the loads on the walls and on the foundations. The Romans were really smart in that they had different kinds of aggregate. They had dense, heavy aggregates and they had lighter aggregates. And on the roof of the Pantheon, they actually used different kinds of aggregates depending on where the forces were in the load conditions on that roof. It's quite interesting. Some of the concrete in the Pantheon is almost light enough to float in water. Today, it's no problem for us to pump up our concrete one story at a time. So up here at the actual structural slab now, boys are getting everything placed down. So we're doing a structural pour here today. So they've got all the formwork in place. We're using the pump to get it up here to this elevated level. We could use a similar pump to reach the heights of our new Pantheon dome. But we've got another idea. We're going to pour and set our dome off-site. And when the concrete dries, we'll fly it in with a fleet of aerial cranes, securing it on top of our concrete frame. Now for the interior work. And you better believe we ain't skimping on that. It's very important how you finish every suite from the minute detail. I think some people don't see that, but I see it. We're going to spare no expense to turn this concrete frame into the world's most state-of-the-art convention center. We'll host our first event, a symposium featuring the world's pantheon of experts on ancient Rome. We did it. We built a new Pantheon in New York City. It's made of 100% concrete. It took three and a half years and 350 people to do it. So how much did it cost? We asked the team in Toronto to crunch the numbers for us. The cost of construction, I'll call it a modern pantheon in New York City, that's about 85 meters across. Maybe in the range of something like about $170 million to around $200 million itself. Let's put it at $200 million to build the structure. But we're just getting started. On top of that, there'd be additional costs such as land, development, permit fees. The costs depend on finishes. The cost depends on the ultimate use of the building. We'll add in another $100 million to cover the cost of our luxurious interior work. So final price tag? $350 million. But can we get a 2,000-year insurance policy? If you were to put steel inside the concrete of the Pantheon, that steel or iron would corrode within a few centuries. Even if materials degrade over time, any building can last if it's taken care of. Our best chance to outlive this Pantheon is a lifetime of maintenance. A little divine intervention couldn't hurt either. We're very lucky to have the Pantheon. It survived when so many other Roman buildings have not. Being a Christian church means that it's been repaired, it's been structurally supported. Otherwise, you know, buildings don't survive. If they're not used, they don't survive. People need to love it, use it, and take care of it. That's how you become an architectural icon. The Pantheon has had enormous influence across almost every creative human endeavor, from arts to literature, but most of all to architecture. The ideals of this architecture speak to monumentality, durability, but also democracy. Many countries around the world have appropriated the architecture from Greece and Rome to declare this government building will stand for a long time and it is supported by the people. Who knows if the Pantheon we imagined could stand for 2,000 years? We don't have modern-day Pantheons to compare it to. But we'll always need a place where people can come together and share ideas. The Pantheon dream is to gather as a community under one roof, united in the belief of what great things we can accomplish if we built it today.