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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."
Absolutely nothing can go wrong....
P90X for architecture?
-nt-
If you pre-fab everything on the ground then its not really "building", more like "assembling".
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
While it may have taken more than 90 days to build the Empire State Building, the same pre-fab techniques such as off-site fabrication and on-site assembly were used to build that monument to the American spirit.
Everyone scoffs at the Chinese when they boast like this, but there really isn't any particular problem with what they are proposing. Given enough lead time and sufficient raw materials, they should be able to assemble a world-record building in the timeframe specified. Naturally, some leeway may be necessary to account for weather, but other than that, good luck to them.
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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If you can make buildings at the rate they claim with preparation and modular techniques it should make it simple to recover after catastrophes as well. From housing to hospitals.
Create a few universal designs. Store modular components in select locations around the world under the management of the UN or such. Then when disaster strikes; like an earthquake/typhoon/hurricane; and housing or such is needed the items could be shipped. I am not saying it would be easy, but it should be doable and now on a larger scale.
If it reduces costs so much then it could simply be used in poor countries to help house people provided steps are taken not to turn them into centers of urban blight.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Skyscraper index here we come again!
As a structural engineer, I do not doubt at all that they are able, or anyone for that matter, to put together a prefab tower in 90 days. This is no big deal. For example, in bridge projects it's a terribly common thing to put together temporary structures assembled from tubular steel bars which are about 10-story tall, and there are pre-fabricated steel beams being marketed for this sort of temporary work which are about 20 or 24 meters tall.
And the only reason that these temp structures aren't taller is because in bridge works after about 20 meters the valleys tend to be wide enough so that it tends to be more economical to use other building techniques, such as incremental launch.
What I doubt is that this type of tower is economical or capable of handling the design loads for a specific region. After a certain scale, there are significant economical advantages to be had by optimizing structural elements, particular in steel structures, and "one size fits all" make it impossible to take advantage of this. Moreover, there isn't exactly a lot of demand for temporary skyscrappers. Even in cases where a catastrophy raises the need for temporary housing and infrastructure, you don't need a 1km-tall structure to sort things out.
My main concern is quality assessment and safety. If you are going to build a extremelly specialized and optimized structure intended to house tens of thousands people, you simply cannot rush things or cut corners on safety checks. If some bolts aren't screwed adequately, a lot of people can die. A couple of months ago there was a report on a chinese bridge being inaugurated while its safety railings weren't even bolted to the structure, which has been pointed out by a chinese engineer working on the project. If this sort of rush job is done with such a large structure, we have a calamity waiting to happen.
They'll find a way to cheat, they always do.
Reminds me of Big Fat Gypsy Wedding or Michael Carroll.
A rich scumbag will ALWAYS be a scumbag, despite having money (or pretending to have money). It's just that the mainland Chinese and the gulf Arabs haven't gotten the memo yet.
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.
You are asking the wrong questions. It's a cultural thing but if you ask a question that can be answered with "yes", that's all you're going to hear. You need to ask open questions. Instead of "is it going to be done on time?, ask "how far have you gotten?" and so forth. Even then it's not guaranteed that you'll get all the info you were looking for.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Only misleading part is that it will actually last only 9 days. China quality. Exploding toilets and support pillars stuffed with trash! ;)
How do you post a Chinese translation of "Hey y'all, watch this!"?
I live in Shanghai and on the other side of the river in Pudong we have quite a lot of tall buildings (Jin Mao tower 420m, Oriental Perl Tower 468m, Shanghai World Financial Center 492m) so I have no doubt that the Chinese have had some 'inspiration' from western builders on how to construct a tower. But I am wondering how the soil can deal with such a rapid construction of such a tall, thus heavy, building. Where I come from, the Netherlands, we have to put in a pretty good foundation for our buildings or they will sink into the soil. I can imagine that if you want to build such a tall building you would need some more time to allow the soil to solidify more or you'll risk the building sinking...
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.
Hell, who needs to worry about the toilets-- how are you goin to let the foundations cure? I have seen "top-down" construction for a high rise, but you still have months of ground preparation to bore through the basement levels to solid rock. The math seems to check out though-- the unimaginitive design should be very efficient to build.
Would be interesting to watch though. Presumably they would lift two-story modules.
From what I know about skyscraper construction, the biggest challenge will be access to the site. There is just so much material that needs to be delivered to put up a building of that height at that pace, even if prefabricated.
I'm aware they built a hotel in 15 days, but this building is about 300x times larger by mass and they are only giving themselves 6x more time. This means they have to work at a 50x rate as compared to the previous project.
Conclusion: color me doubtful.
An Indian company as said that they can clean up the mess caused by the collapse of the Chinese building in only 60 days.
I hope they go for quality instead of speed. China's stimulus program added thousands of miles of high speed railway. It is now the largest system in the world. But there have been some serious accidents attributed to poor quality.