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Chinese Firms Claims It Can Build World's Tallest Tower in 90 Days
An anonymous reader writes "Even since the current world's tallest builing — the Burj Khalifa in Dubai — was completed, there has been a constant battle to build the world's next tallest building. The current record holder stands tall at 828 meters and took five years to build, but a Chinese company called Broad Sustainable Building aims to smash that record by building the 838 meter Sky City tower, in Changsa, China in a mere 90 days. BSB plans to use prefab building techniques to construct the tower in record time."
As long as it remains upright.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Well, from raising a 30 story building in 360 hours to erecting an 830 meter tower in 90 days... why not? Sure they can do it, that's what happens in free markets - innovation and competition.
You can't handle the truth.
Is that "90 days from foundations" or "90 days from turf"? The concept art shows quite a fat design with a lot of mass, which in turn needs a good foundation (or the tower won't last for 90 days). And good foundations need time for the concrete to settle.
Imagine - this beasts' foundations dive on one side once the scyscraper is done (or nearly done). I wonder what the chinese equivalent to the warning shout "TIMBER" is...
... they ALL say it'll be done in 90 days. Right up to 11:30 on the 89th day, when realistically there is still six years of work to do, they'll still insist it'll be done in the next 30 minutes.
We have people fly half way around the world to work on projects. "Will you be ready for us?" we ask as we get on the plane. "Yes!" comes the resounding response. We arrive, discover the project is nowhere near ready, go home again, come back in anywhere from eight weeks to two years when it's actually ready and charge them a hefty chunk of cash for the inconvenience.
Wildly unrealistic schedules and dogged insistence that they're sticking to them in the face of all the evidence is the modus operandi of Chinese construction.
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The Almighty will demolish that mandarin tower halfway in construction, so the han cannot scale into heaven and topple his sacred throne. He will then mix up the tongues of han people, so they will start to speak 1000 different, mutually exclusive dialects and that will be the end of the chinese empire. The jewish people will take over the entirety of the chinese land, as the Name promised the entire world to them, his chosen people.
At a claimed cost of 628,000,000,000 and supposedly being able to house 100,000, it's a bargain too - only 6280 per person. Here in Aus, housing costs somewhere between 50,000 to about 100,000 per person for housing. (Roughly 100000 per bedroom room for a house, on average.)
The difference is the Empire State Building is still here decades later. This building will be moldering and falling apart five years hence. I've seen Chinese buildings built while I was in China, moved away, and then come back for a visit years later and was shocked at the deterioration.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
In this case, I'm pretty sure that most of the pre-fabbed parts are specific to this particular building. So the manufacturing time of the pre-fabbed blocks should be considered in the total building time. A lot of software projects have components that are developed as libraries specifically for the project. These certainly would be counted in the development time. That being said, 90 days to assemble the tallest building in the world is still hugely impressive.
In beijing. The sparkly, new main train station was built in half the time normally required. 6 months later you could see daylight through the cracks in the ceiling. This is the real maoist legacy: make ridiculous claims, pretend you accomplished them, then blame running dog capitalists and rightists when it al blows up.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
You sir are incredibly insightful. I researched this company and this topic. In the local paper they described how this company managed to build a 15 floor building in 15 days! Yes 15 days!
The reason why this company can do what it can is because it builds these buildings using a pre-fab approach. North American's, and Europeans partially are not yet used to prefab houses. In Europe it is slowly trickling in, but nobody wants them to be built because they seriously undercut the housing lobby. Take for Ikea homes. Yes Ikea sells homes, using this method. They are cheaper than any other home. Look at this Ikea home for 86 K, which includes everything in the inside as well.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2108775/Ikea-launches-80-000-flat-pack-DIY-house.html
It is hard to beat with all appliances and furniture of 86K. Now is it the final dream? No not really since Ikea is just partnering with a prefab company. BUT imagine if the Chinese managed to put it all together like this company. Then the west has serious issues!!!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Am I the only one feeling a bit uneasy about this thread? Some Chinese construction projects are underfunded and of poor quality, therefore all Chinese buildings are crap? Some Chinese products are rip-off of foreign products, therefore all Chinese tech is copied? All Chinamen talk funny therefore all Chinamen dumb?
That's not it at all... what's making people uneasy about this construction project is that we have a firm claiming they can do, in 90 days, what has traditionally taken many years. While I'm very willing to accept that they can find efficiencies in the process, it's a bit much.
Hi, Mainland Chinese person here.
I lived a decade of my life in China, and go back there every few years. The real problem is that human life in China is not valued. Nobody feels responsible if a building falls over. It's bad if it gets international attention, not that lives were destroyed. People cut corners, bribe officials, anything to maximize profit.
The real problem is that human life in China is not valued.
This is true, the company I am working with were looking at data centers in mainland China, and asking about the fire supression system, in particular how long people had to get out once the alarm goes off. The answer was "In the Western world, you value human life over data, here we value data over human life."
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
And whether or not you want (or are required to have) water, electricity, gas, and sewage disposal
Yes, most people don't realize that about half of a building is site preparation. Putting in all the utilities and building a strong foundation is key.
Of course, the Burj Khalifa doesn't even have this.
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/08/what-happens-when-you-flush-a-toilet-in-the-worlds-tallest-building.html
That depends on the technology being used. Take ecolite concrete for example. I looked into it, and although prefab, it is pretty amazing stuff.
All steel and a special mixture of concrete. Amazing properties for fire resistance, insulation, strength, etc. All of the 3rd party test reports are available.
They just replace the load bearing structures and wall framing which is a pretty huge part of the cost and time. You can put up the entire framing of a house in 1-2 days and it will be far more durable and stronger than any wood framing could hope to be.
After that you can put up whatever you want against the ecolite walls. Sheetrock and textured walls, wood, whatever you want. It's up to you.
Hard to say that a steel and concrete house with amazing properties (I forgot to mention the acoustic properties) is crappier and will far apart quicker.