Abandoned Engineering

"Ambitious engineering projects that have been left in ruins."

These are some of the most spectacular examples of abandoned engineering the world has ever known. The series explores how and why they were built, consider the financial and social costs of their failure and examine the environmental and ecological impacts. The series also explores how experts came up with plans to make something beautiful or useful from the ruins.

Type: tv

Season: 1

Episode: 1

Duration: 0h 44m

Release: 2017

Rating: 7.3

Season 1 - Abandoned Engineering
2017-02-18
"Empty buildings and infrastructures are full of the echoes of real people and vanished lives, leaving many questions unanswered and mysteries unsolved. We explore the worlds strangest engineering projects that created empty silent cities. We ask why a ruined cold war air base has become a no-go area and how a tiny Japanese mining island become the most over-crowded place on the planet. We find out if the street layout of the Soviet Union's model city become a matter of life or death for its population. And how did Nazi Germany create a huge mind control facility at a holiday resort?"
2017-02-25
"We aim for the stars and find out why unwanted battleship guns allow the United States to gain vital information about the borders of space. We ask how the shattered remains of a secret Nazi base became the first on the path to a new world, with the development of the ground-breaking V2 rocket. We explore a forgotten structure deep in the Arizona desert to ask if it is the true home of America's space programme. And we reveal the bizarre link between a discarded oil drum and a Cold War struggle to survive in zero gravity."
2017-03-21
"Soaring across some of the widest rivers and deepest valleys on the planet, bridges have always been at the cutting edge of engineering. We travel high into the mountains of the Colorado desert to find out why a hidden engineering masterpiece could disappear at any time. We ask why a stretch of overgrown concrete in a Czech reservoir is known as 'Hitler's bridge'. We find out how the highest bridge in the world collapsed in less than one minute. Finally, we uncover the story behind Cape Town's invisible bridge, which never carried a single vehicle."
2017-03-28
"Exploring ship graveyards, including Scapa Flow in Orkney, where German warships were scuttled after the First World War, and Mallows Bay, home to 200 wrecks colonised by wildlife."
2017-04-04
"How Europe's most advanced power station became a film set. Plus, the structures made by scientific pioneer Nikola Tesla in his thwarted quest to prove the US with free electricity."
2017-04-06
"Hear how a crumbling hill in the Peak District and dunes in California caused the closure of two roads. Learn why a route used by the French Resistance shut in 2003."
Season 2 - Abandoned Engineering
2018-05-08
"A dark past explains why the P\u00f6litz Synthetic Fuel Plant in Northern Poland is now a derelict industrial site littered with tunnels, bunkers and huge crumbling concrete structures lost in dense forest. The site was built in 1937 as part of Nazi Germany's drive to become self-sufficient on fuel, but it was no ordinary refinery. It used the latest technology at the time, at great expense, to turn coal into oil. In 1945 an Allied air raid pulverised the plant, severely wounding the German war machine and leaving the site in ruins.\n\nOther structures examined in the first episode include the incredible vertical Phoenix Shot Tower in Baltimore, which was built to provide America's own ammunition, the former American spy instillation called Teufelsberg (or \"Devil's Mountain\") in Berlin which waged the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and the now derelict Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse which was built on Europe's second-fastest moving sand dune in Denmark."
2018-05-15
"A strange group of rusting structures off the coast of England, a dilapidated mediaeval-style castle in the heart of urban America and one of the biggest machines ever built lying forgotten in a German field. Once these extraordinary places and objects were at the cutting edge of design and construction, but now they stand disused, sometimes contaminated and sometimes dangerous. But who was it that built these mysterious structures? What incredible stories surround them? What secrets do they hold? And why were they abandoned?\n\nSeven huge steel boxes rise 80-feet out of the water off the coast of England at the mouth of the River Thames. Now rusting and derelict, The Red Sands Sea Fort was originally built as a first line of defence to deter the Nazi threat to London. Successfully helping the Allies to victory in 1945, the project is one of the most extraordinary engineering successes of World War II.\n\nAlso in this episode, a sinister-looking deserted Cold War concrete pyramid in North Dakota; a vast empty complex located in the heart of a Philadelphia; and a 4,000-tonne corroding mass of steel, left to rot in a field in Eastern Germany."
2018-05-22
"Hear the fateful story of the disused Vajont Dam in Italy, the site of a tragic disaster in 1963 which resulted in the deaths of around 2,000 people."
2018-05-29
"Learn about the strange-looking, derelict military facilities in Farnborough, which were once wind tunnels that played a vital role in WWII."
Season 3 - Abandoned Engineering
2019-04-02
"The Underwater Prison"
Season 8 - Abandoned Engineering
30 Jul 2021
"The home of an African dictator and a sporting hero, and the facility that held apartheid's greatest critic are abandoned, but still have unique stories to tell."
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13 Aug 2021
"Exploring a jungle refuge concealing a story of royal deceit, nuclear bunkers infiltrated by outsiders, and a haunted hospital marked by scandal."
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03 Sep 2021
"Exploring a bizarre block in Taiwan resembling a giant speaker, a pioneering venture in Alaska, and an alpine village that masks a military beast."
03 Sep 2021
"An ominous tower in the forests of Croatia, a New York City complex that broke the mold, and a grand facility guarding the London riverbanks."
10 Sep 2021
"Exploring a desert island with an infected past adrift from the US mainland, the brutalist palace of a mad Bulgarian dictator, and a doomed top-secret Nazi project."
17 Sep 2021
"Exploring Italian ruins immortalized by Hollywood, a crumbling Chilean city with two lives and a brutalist Scottish relic whose prayers went unanswered."
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01 Oct 2021
"A dystopian powerhouse in Pennsylvania, USA that once served in WWII; a dark past unearthed from a fairy-tale castle in Poland; Anglo-Saxon religious ruins across vast plains of Scotland; and a forgotten village that witnessed the ri"
08 Oct 2021
"Exploring a bloody battleground on the Pacific Island of Peleliu and an ominous military stronghold in Russia."
15 Oct 2021
"Abandoned Engineering travels to Chile, the Maltese capital Valleta, Havana and Germany, to reveal: honeymoon home of a young princess that offered her a glimpse of freedom; grand monuments designed by the most notorious dictator ..."
Season 9 - Abandoned Engineering
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Season 10 - Abandoned Engineering
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Season 12 - Abandoned Engineering
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