Skywalkers

Hundreds of metres above the earth, explore one of the most dangerous jobs ever – skyscraper construction in Manhattan and Hong Kong.

Hundreds of metres above the earth some of the most dangerous jobs ever imagined are being performed. A new generation of super-skyscrapers is reaching higher than ever before and steel workers are pushing the limits of engineering and safety to construct them. Parallax Film Productions takes to the skyline to profile two projects where crews undertake potentially deadly work to rig tons of steel and build these unprecedented urban megastructures.

Chad Snow is a Mohawk who fearlessly follows the same career path as his forefathers. His grandfather helped build New York landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building. Chad stacks steel for the state-of-the-art AOL Time Warner Center, modern Manhattan architecture at its best. Halfway around the world in Asia, architects and engineers challenge America’s long-standing supremacy by designing a bigger and taller Hong Kong skyscraper than ever before. Chau Wa Fuk works 12 hours a day, seven days a week to build this International Finance Center in China. The skyline is a tangle of bamboo scaffolds – thousand-year-old technology that is still used by steel workers today. “Spidermen” work on these creaky wooden platforms. Every month or so one of them falls. But there’s always someone to take their place.

Using POV mounted cameras, this Discovery documentary takes you high above the city to see what steel workers see every heart-stopping step of the way.