the process starts with photographs of the location by wolfgang volz, who has worked with him for 46 years. christo sketches the design over the photos to make a kind of blueprint. >> now it's this fantastic moment when the project is finished and realized and you look at it and you say, "well, it looks just like the drawings however a little bit better." >> reporter: christo's team identifies suitable materials, and almost everything is manufactured from scratch. on lake iseo, his team took five months to set the cubes in place, filling those near the edges with water to create the piers' sloping effect. we watched the finishing touches: 3.5 million cubic feet of made-to-order fabric being laid over the piers and the streets leading to the water's edge. the budget for all of this-- $19.5 million dollars-- is paid for entirely by christo from the sale of his art. like his previous monumental works, the floating piers are temporary. they will be open only 16 days and then dismantled-- the materials, recycled. and that's part of the point. >> people come to be present for something tha