How-Things-Work Series Is Meant to Be Something to Build On

You take it all on faith.

The skyscraper where you work will refuse to fall over. Tunnels will let you pass through with no threat of collapse. A bridge will carry you from here to there and never let you down.

As for dams--well, obviously, experts build them to defy the crushing pressure of the water that wants to burst through.

But, come to think of it, how does all this happen?

David Macaulay tackles such big questions in “Building Big,” a PBS miniseries on colossal construction.

Airing every Tuesday, tonight through Oct. 31, “Building Big” will build your understanding of (in chronological order) bridges, domes, skyscrapers, dams and tunnels.

“I think we should be able to count on things,” said Macaulay, the series’ host, on a visit to Manhattan last week. “But I don’t think it’s wise to take them for granted. I personally like that feeling of being connected to the things around me we have built.”

No surprise. Based in Rhode Island, Macaulay is a best-selling author-illustrator best known for “The Way Things Work,” his words-and-pictures compendium that makes engineering comprehensible.

Such accessibility pervades “Building Big.”

In “Bridges,” for instance, Macaulay illustrates the principles behind all five major bridge types with a few strokes of his pen, sketching how tension (a stretching force that pulls on a material) and compression (a pressing force that squeezes a material together) must coexist in harmony--or look out below!

Now, that’s not so hard to understand, is it?

Though the series tackles major engineering concepts, it leaves the nuts and bolts to Macaulay’s companion book (published by Houghton Mifflin). As he states in the preface, his book addresses issues like, “Why this shape and not that? Why steel instead of concrete or stone? Why put it here and not over there?”

Meanwhile, the “Building Big” films prefer a humanist approach, a social history of building big.

For “Bridges,” Macaulay begins with Italy’s Ponte Fabricio, which after 2,000 years still spans the Tiber River. He examines not only the bridge’s state-of-the-art (at least for 62 BC) design, but also its impact on the people it originally served.

He retells the saga of the Brooklyn Bridge, whose creation more than a century ago was a triumph of courage and tenacity as much as stone and mortar.

He visits the Golden Gate Bridge, perching himself more than 700 feet high atop one of its towers. And he introduces you to the latest thing: Japan’s ingenious new Akashi-Kaikyo suspension bridge, which, with a central span of 1 1/4 miles, stands as the world’s longest.

Macaulay is as awe-struck as anyone on seeing Massachusetts’ Hoosac Tunnel, the 19th century railroad passageway whose five-mile length took 20 years to carve through solid rock. Or on beholding the 13th century Reims Cathedral, a pioneering “skyscraper” made possible by its newfangled flying buttresses.

And don’t forget the Houston Astrodome, which opened in 1965.

“The challenge to the builders was clear,” you see Macaulay explain in his “Domes” episode: “Build a roof big enough to cover an entire baseball field and grandstand for 50,000 [people], without obstructing the players or the views of the spectators.

“The dome’s curve was the key,” he notes in the film. “The result was an unprecedented expanse.”

Clearly, the Astrodome proved to be an engineering home run.

“But none of this stuff is magic,” Macaulay says now. “It’s all really logical. It’s all common sense.

“These structures do get sophisticated as they get bigger,” he allows, “and common sense on a grand scale becomes an amazing thing. But the underlying principles still apply, and they can still be accessible to people.”

The 53-year-old Macaulay started small. Born with a fascination for technology, he loved constructing models of things from early childhood. “I liked reducing the scale to make something that I could hold and really control.”

He studied architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. But after flirting with an architectural career, he found the pursuit that would win him worldwide acceptance: explaining in books (some 18 so far) the designs that intrigue him.

“I don’t think I have a particularly critical eye,” he says when asked his engineering likes and dislikes. “I’m just fascinated by the building process.”

For him, it’s all about solving a problem with grace or boldness or simplicity. Or even reticence: Don’t expect a tunnel, no matter how successful, to call much attention to itself.

That’s fine. In “Building Big,” rallying attention is Macaulay’s big idea.

* “Building Big” can be seen Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV.