10 ms·
19 days to build a 57-storey tower
- sneak 11y agoNow solve the REAL challenge: how to get one built at 16th and Mission.
- abakker 11y agoNow that is some wishful thinking. Honestly though, I would love to see more towers in SF. As someone who rents a house build in the 50s, it would be worth it for the seismic safety alone. I'm pretty sure the house I live in has NO insulation, single pane glass, and is framed with 2x4s... SF needs some bigger, better housing and office buildings.
- drinchev 11y agoSometimes I think IT industry is moving slow, because it's so much harder to multiply the efforts with more human power. IT is so much quality over quantity that effects like this would not happen easily. Although there is no mention of the planning involved in the construction of the building, I think the result is astonishing.
- _pmf_ 11y ago> IT is so much quality over quantity that effects like this would not happen easily. I hope you are joking.
- drinchev 11y agoI'm so not joking. 100 developers might equal = 10 experienced developers these days. You can't just "put more force into the project and make it for 10 days", because actually the people that you want to hire might be not that easy to find.
- _pmf_ 11y ago> because it's so much harder to multiply the efforts with more human power I missed this part of your comment; you're right in this regard, of course.
- aries1980 11y agoAgreed, but I feel the renaissance of the 'Learn xyz in 24hrs' books in the form of 'Check how Joe Bloggs made xyz in 3 weeks' articles.
- warcode 11y agoConsidering this is prefabricated module assembly it is exactly like today's development work. Even more so as people have created frameworks and libraries that you can use freely to compose your application in much less time than if you had to do it all over again. Some of these frameworks and libraries simplify the process so much that you CAN throw more human power at it and still get good results.
- amelius 11y agoWith these prefab buildings, if you have built one, you have built them all. With software that works quite differently. Unless of course you consider "copying" to be equal to "building", in which case, software is moving even faster!
- brudgers 11y agoA building is == at least in some dimensions == much simpler than contemporary IT. Guilding systems are much more amenable to static analysis than a flight of networked computers and the rate of dynamic change is on the order of tens of seconds even in the worst cases [barring explosion or brittle failure].
- skatenerd 11y agoit takes 19 days to build, and the next 100 years to fill it with occupants.
- mmrasheed 11y agoI am fascinated by their construction technique, which is nothing but perfection of management. I was eagerly waiting to see the proposed 220 story, 850 m tall building construction in seven months since 2012, but that plan was halted due to continuous rejection by the authorities and the engineering communities. I am not a civil engineer, so I can't criticize their construction method. But I wonder if it is traditional civil engineering community's prejudice, or fear of being swept away by any revolutionary technology that keeps them opposing this sort of construction technique?
- jychang 11y agoIt's a mix of both. A 220 story building would be an engineering marvel, and at the same time not a threat to civil engineers. The bread and butter for engineers are much smaller buildings, which are less technically challenging and acceptable for new construction techniques to be tested out on. You would expect to see a lot more civil engineering resistance on the smaller targets, not the biggest ones. The biggest issue facing such a monster building is the safety of even going that high, considering wind shear, earthquake risks, etc.
- brudgers 11y agoDevelopment projects stall for many reasons among them are modifications of the developer's pro forma that reduce the viability of a project - interest rates go up, the cost of construction goes up, rents go down, local occupancy rates dip, etc. etc. The technology has the potential for some small incremental change to the real-estate development process, but it doesn't alter the underlying market forces where a housing shortage of 3000 dwellings is identified and twelve developers each throw up a "coming in 2017" signboard on some piece of land for an 1800 dwelling project. It's not enough to be out front of the pack with construction, what really matters is business intelligence. Which is a round about way of suggesting that despite bureaucracy and resistance from entrenched traditions, that real-estate development ideas are much like startups: most run out of money and are worth zero. Unlike startups, the upper bound on profit is low, but their potential persists owing to the real nature of real property - land doesn't go anywhere.
- 11y ago
- gonzo41 11y agoOne quote comes to mind -I'm from the future, learn Chinese.
- CrLf 11y agoFor some reason I don't feel compelled to spend time in such a building...
- puranjay 11y agoI live in India and had a maid who was incredibly quick to clean the house. She would come in, do her thing and be out in 15 minutes. For other maids, the same cleaning up would take at least an hour. I was convinced she wasn't doing a good job. All past experience with other maids had shown me that it takes at least one hour to clean the house. One day, I decided to follow up after she'd done her cleaning. I went over every thing she'd cleaned and checked them for any dirt or grime. Nothing. So I decided to follow her as she cleaned. I trailed her like a ghost, carefully noting her every move. She was cleaning everything very thoroughly. She did not leave a single stone unturned. My suspicions were only because everyone else was being inefficient. Lesson learned: don't mistake inefficiency for quality.
- known 11y agoWhat is her Caste? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_politics_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_politics_in_India
- donkeyd 11y ago> “The biggest problem we face in the world right now isn't terrorism or world war. It's climate change,” he says. I really like seeing this quote from a Chinese business man.
- zhte415 11y agoThere's more, but a small personal anecdote: I have a boss with similar, if somewhat more relaxed, thinking. "Why stay in the Shangri-La when a [200 Yuan per night] Motel 168 or HomeInn is perfectly clean, safe and more convenient." or "Have a laptop and a standing desk if you like, it saves more than having you unhappy or leave." or "50 Yuan per day travel bonus, enjoy the local food." It is not penny pinching (the opposite, he'll spend where it is needed), it is a true conviction that things should be done differently (from the status quo). When it encroaches on personal things such as the size of a family (below, from the article's Zhang Yue) I do not like it - work is work and life is life - but there is a deep dislike of the way things are done by the moneyed by a lot of business people (and women are far more represented in this grouping than in large companies operating in China, including multinationals or traditional government backed companies) than a lot of people outside China are aware of. Further quotes: > “Don't buy things you only use once, such as newspapers.” > “Grow your own vegetables.” > “Most importantly, have only one child, to allow the population of the world to return to a level it can bear.” > Another company handbook urges staff to brush their teeth twice a day, and to share cars. > His hair is greying. Dyeing your hair is bad for the environment, he says. > I have to set an example. My staff imitate me, and they then influence those around them. That's how we influence society.”
- kayoone 11y agoGreat quotes, the "only one child" quote is only meant for certain countries i guess. In Germany we have a problem with the population growing older and older because young people get less and less kids. That taxes the health care system and skews politics towards the old among other things.
- ido 11y ago
- zimpenfish 11y ago19 days to -assemble- a 57 storey tower. Four and a half months constructing the modules for assembly. > Broad Sustainable Building spent four and a half months fabricating the building’s 2,736 modules before construction began. The first 20 floors were completed last year, and the remaining 37 were built from 31 January to 17 February this year, Xiao said. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/chinese-construction-firm-erects-57-storey-skyscraper-in-19-days http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/chinese-constru...
- duiker101 11y agoStill amazing if you ask me...
- hellweaver666 11y agoYup and when it's scaled up there would be warehouses full of parts waiting to be shipped at a moments notice.
- zimpenfish 11y agoI'm not denying that - the whole process is good stuff. But I'm suggesting that "assembled in 19 days" is more accurate than "built in 19 days".
- gambiting 11y agoMy dad used to work on 1 day houses. Essentially the whole house would arrive from the factory and just had to be assembled. In the morning, there was nothing, in the evening, you had a complete house, with windows and doors which could be locked. Still, the foundations took a month to settle properly before the construction could start,but it didn't change the fact that the whole house was actually assembled in a day. You could leave for work in the morning, and arrive in the afternoon to see that your neighbor now has a house where 12 hours before there was just concrete.
- protomyth 11y ago
- pjc50 11y agoEarly on in the article I wondered about how steel was going to be CO2-efficient, given the amount of coal involved in its production; but then I see it's as a replacement for concrete, which is much worse.
- oska 11y agoSteel fabrication does not necessarily require coking coal. [1] http://www.thespec.com/news-story/4190319-u-s-steel-natural-gas-process-will-soon-replace-coke/ http://www.thespec.com/news-story/4190319-u-s-steel-natural-... [2] https://coalactionnetworkaotearoa.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/can-we-make-steel-without-coal/ https://coalactionnetworkaotearoa.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/c...
- yxhuvud 11y agoAs a one off cost, for a building that stands for so long and house that many, is it really a relevant question, compared to what the house and its inhabitants will use during its lifetime?
- Symmetry 11y agoYeah, but in general any skyscraper will end up being a relatively CO2-efficient way to house people. The heating/cooling savings of the shared all are huge and then there's the shorter transport distances for denser development.
- mianos 11y agoThe Soviets built these type of buildings at the same speed in the 60s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel%C3%A1k http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel%C3%A1k Amazing, doing it higher than 20 floors though.
- smcl 11y agoThese paneláky were built at some scale in Czech Republic too. They're a little grim normally, but quite a lot get painted in nice pastel colours so many look quite pretty sometimes. I stayed in one in Brno for a while, the walls are paper thin so I had a very ... intimate knowledge of what my neighbours were up to (our bedrooms were adjacent, as were the bathrooms) and vice versa :)
- mianos 11y agoI know, we own one in Slovakia. :) Pretty badly built but compared to the ones in Moscow the Slovak ones are huge. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-eGxBiuFCFsU/Sd89UGTbtCI/AAAAAAAADBo/OiyhKoe94-s/w829-h622-no/IMG_0509.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-eGxBiuFCFsU/Sd89UGTbtCI/A...
- smcl 11y agoI don't mind them so much tbh. It's pretty surprising how similar they can be though, I saw that picture and thought "that looks like my girlfriend's parent's place in Prievidza"
- mianos 11y agoThey all look similar because they are all constructed from the same pre-fabricated panels, like this Chinese building. The interesting thing to me is seeing the slow change of the designs over time. In Puchov they have about four series of designs. Fifty buildings but all one of the four basic designs.
- smcl 11y ago
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- spainispain 11y ago...and 500 nights. (spanish joke)
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- pharke 11y agoThe description of these buildings reminds me of the 'lifeboat city' eco-doom-meme that was floating around for a while seemingly inspired by Lovelock's idea of 'lifeboat islands' or geographic areas that will weather the coming catastrophe well enough to continue supporting a sustainable society. While I don't agree with really any of the above doomsaying or wild speculation I am somewhat fond of the idea of packing up the modern anthropic world into self contained bubbles. This shouldn't, however, be a license to run rampant across the newly freed land with industry or to simply stack these habitats as tightly as possible to increase density. The opposite should be true, provide a clean, comfortable, and efficient location for people to live and do business while freeing up the rest of the land for enjoyment and recreation or sustainable food production.
- brudgers 11y agoPruit-Igoe is the poster child for the theory of apartment towers in the park meets reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe
- jarek 11y agoAmerican reality, so with a healthy dose of classism, racism, and general political failure. "Residents cite a lack of maintenance almost from the very beginning, including the regular breakdown of elevators, as being a primary cause of the deterioration of the project. Local authorities cited a lack of funding to pay for the workforce necessary for proper upkeep of the buildings. ... The project's parking and recreation facilities were inadequate; playgrounds were added only after tenants petitioned for their installation. ... Housing projects of similar architectural design were successful in New York, but St. Louis's fragmented political culture and declining urban core contributed to the project's failure."
- melling 11y agoThe new World Trade Center took 8 years and is the most expensive building in the world: http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/may/11/one-world-trade-centre-build-time-lapse-video http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/may/11/one-world... Everything done is the U.S. takes more time and costs a lot more money. Consider, for example, that China has constructed 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in about a decade. We still have 0.0 miles. Yeah, yeah, we don't need 10k but we need more than 0. Airports, subways, cities, and I imagine roads are being constructed at an incredible pace. This Bill Gates blog gets the point across: http://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Concrete-in-China http://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Concrete-in-China This is all good for China but the U.S. looks like it will quickly be passed as the largest economy. That may have some repercussions.
- SanFranManDan 11y agoIm not saying that this particular tower is unsafe, but in the US we have loads of regulation. Depending on your political view, this can mean either the US is helping to protect citizens or it means that it gets in the way of business/progress. Having some regulation in place helps prevent things like: http://i.imgur.com/McgeoNa.jpg http://i.imgur.com/McgeoNa.jpg But that doesn't mean that US isn't over regulated.
- SCAQTony 11y agoWOW! I just looked this up using Tin.eye and the imgur link to locate this fiasco and how it happened. This event happened in 2009 in Shanghai, China. The location was Block-7 at Lotus Riverside in the Minhang District. The building did not fall due an earthquake but rather due to very poor foundation planning. The coup de grace or death blow came when an underground parking garage was being dug below the building. (Why did not not dig out the garage first?) One worker was killed and no residents had moved in yet. (They want their money back) Building a sky scrapper in just a few weeks or even months seems pretty rushed and quite ill advised. Each floor would have to be inspected and certified as safe and I don't believe that could be done in under a year. Here is a page on what went wrong: http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2010/02/its-no-fun-it-fell-right-over.html http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2010/02/its-n...
- BenoitEssiambre 11y agoChina seems to be winning at capitalism.
- snowwrestler 11y agoHere is a great short documentary about a similar "pre-fab" approach to building a new tall building in London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5RgRboBE2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5RgRboBE2Y I think it took longer than 19 days, but they had more limited space and time to work each day, and (almost certainly) more stringent standards for safety and quality.
- jklein11 11y ago<zenophobia>*story</zenophobia>
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoWow, he's like a Chinese version of Elon Musk (if Elon Musk believed in uniforms, company anthem, and tight social controls over his employees)! I don't know that I agree with all of his thinking that the BBC article outlined, e.g. the very strict and intrusive control over employees' lives, but he definitely is creative and unusual, and he thinks big. Perhaps a "green" tower that accommodates 800 apartments and thousands of offices and other businesses is the way to go; occupies a small physical footprint but delivers a huge amount of useful space in a country where cities are already congested and space is at a premium. The BBC website by the way is quite interesting. I am not sure I would like all websites to look like that, but it's a creative take on interspersing multimedia with text, and the layering of the second image over the first is brilliant. Awesome!
- ChuckMcM 11y agoI have been following the 'sky city' stuff for a while and it really does read like a fraud. The original attempt to build it wasn't some "missing paperwork" it was a pretty clear that the building would fall over if he built it, and some folks in the structural engineering community made that point to the government and BSB could not show how their assertions were incorrect. I've not seen the complaint but it was related to the wind loading and torque requirements on lower sections. It will be interesting to watch this 'mini' tower and see how it holds up prior to trying something more dramatic. But structural engineering aside, being able to rapidly assemble a building of significant capacity and a small foot print is a worth while capability to have. It doesn't lend itself to variety (and like an air craft carrier would probably require grid co-ordinates in the hallways to make navigation inside the building possible) but by shortening the time to erect, you eliminate a huge variability in cost which is the time on site/equipment use. Over half of the Bay bridge's cost overruns were associated with storage, inactive equipment and staff, and material cost bids expiring. So being able to do all of the erection in even a straight shot of two or three months would improve the economics tremendously.
- mfoy_ 11y agoContent aside, the article employs some really cool scrolling effects too.
- schnaars 11y agoAmazing story, but reminds me of the buildings in Manna by Marshall Brain.
- lifeformed 11y agoPretty cool but I hope they don't overlook the importance of aesthetics. It's worth spending extra time and money to make a building look unique and fitting for the location it is in. A city filled with identical mass-produced skyscrapers will not be pleasant once the novelty wears off.
- hobarrera 11y agoThis really is amazing, but do we really need to keep building super-dense areas? I don't mean to say this isn't awesome: it is. But we have lots of unused surface, and generally, building horizontally has lots of advantages: more sunlights for citizens, more room for parks, less congestion/traffic. I've noticed that places were people live more relaxed and happy lives tend to have less tall buildings, while places with more stressful inhabitants tend to be those with larger tower. More traffic, less green/sun and plenty of other factors are usually strongly related to both.