Master builder · your guide
Thomas Hale
Thomas Hale walks you through every story at the drawing table. He sees the spatial promise first, the idea that makes a building worth the fight, and he never explains his own jokes.
Blueprint Legends
The cast
The legends behind the buildings. Each one was told no at least once.
Master builder · your guide
Valeria Ríos
Valeria Ríos wants to know how a design can really be built and lived in. She tests every doubt with a model, and she re-measures anything Thomas calls roughly.
Engineer · Paris
Gustave Eiffel
In February 1887 famous artists and writers signed a letter against a tower. They called it useless and monstrous, a giant black factory chimney. Gustave Eiffel's answer was to let the tower speak for itself.
Architect · Barcelona
Antoni Gaudi
Gaudi hung strings with little bags of lead shot and let gravity pull every string into the perfect curve. Then he photographed the model and turned the picture upside down: what hangs perfectly, stands perfectly.
Artist · Vienna
Friedensreich Hundertwasser
In 1958 an artist stood up in an old abbey and attacked modern architecture. Buildings, he said, were so dead that it would be better if mould grew on them. Architects were furious, and he loved every minute of it.
Master builder · Florence
Filippo Brunelleschi
Florence needed a dome larger than anything built since antiquity. Brunelleschi's answer is one of the great engineering stories of the Renaissance.
Bridge builder · New York
Emily Roebling
When her husband fell ill, Emily Roebling took on the daily running of the Brooklyn Bridge project and learned the engineering needed to finish it.
Designer
Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray designed the villa E-1027 on the French coast. Her story is one of talent that was overlooked for decades.