Designer and architectural journalist Kevin McCloud (Grand Designs) kicks off this new series by tackling the Forth Bridge as only the famed painters have done before. Painting the Forth Bridge may be the stuff of modern legend but what’s it really like to get to grips with the nuts and bolts of this engineering miracle? Designed by John Fowler and Benjamin Baker at the end of the 19th century, the bridge has become a much-loved symbol of Scotland, even though the building of it claimed 60 lives. And it continues to dominate the lives of people who live nearby and work on its steel frame. Kevin braves the raw Scottish winds to climb from sea level to summit. Along the way, he meets some of the characters associated with it, including George, who used to paint the bridge the old-fashioned way; Ralph who keeps it spick and span using new methods; and Betty, whose life was changed by the bridge when both her husband and son died working on it.
Logic says the spire of Salisbury Cathedral should have fallen down before it was even completed but it’s still there and, 700 years later, Kevin McCloud is going to climb - through 14th century scaffolding and over crumbling, eroded stone - to the very tip. A waterlogged site and just four feet of foundations don’t seem the ideal conditions for building a 404-foot spire - the tallest ever constructed at the time. Today, the enormous structure still stands on gravel and water; shored up by metalwork added as early as the 14th century. Kevin’s climb - the highest in the series - is made more difficult by crumbling stonework, eroded by acid rain.
Kevin travels to Cheshire to climb to the very top of the massive Jodrell Bank radio telescope. In this programme, he finds out how the 250-foot futuristic structure, which played a crucial role in the 1960s space race, came to be built in the middle of the English countryside
The Lloyds building has become one of the ultimate icons of the 80s. But the highly traditional institution of Lloyds took a big gamble when it commissioned avant-guarde architect Richard Rogers to build its new headquarters
Kevin McCloud travels to Liverpool to climb to the top of the city’s monumental Anglican cathedral. The gothic tour de force was not completed until 1978 - 75 years after it was begun and 17 years after the death of Giles Gilbert Scott, the man who made the building his life’s work.
How does a vertical slum become an icon of urban cool? Kevin McCloud finds out as he climbs Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower, in London.
