Five Storied Pagoda - Kofukuji Temple

This guide to the Five Storied Pagoda at Kofukuji Temple in Nara asks how a five-story tower of unnailed wood, standing since it last rose from ashes nearly six hundred years ago, has never once been recorded falling in an earthquake. It leads you up the center of the building to a single hidden cypress pillar called the shinbashira, and to the strange fact that none of the five floors are actually attached to it. It follows engineers who have studied the design since the 1980s and later borrowed its logic for Tokyo's Skytree tower.