

China erects 15 story hotel in less than 6 days (video) - stefanobernardi
http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/25/china-erects-15-story-hotel-in-less-than-6-days-video/

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jrockway
I lived right next to a construction site a few years ago, and even
"normally", some things move pretty quickly. The lot was a parking lot. One
day, I looked out the window, and it was a pile of dirt with a fence around
it. The asphalt was removed in a workday. Then the lot sat for a few months.
Then a drilling machine came in, and they spent a few months doing something
with that and some concrete, presumably some part of the foundation. Then when
that was over, the workers got busy and constructed 7 stories of parking
garage in a week. (That was when I stopped paying attention, because now the
new building was blocking all light.) In another few weeks, the whole
skyscraper was "finished". Then it sat around for a year, finishing the
interior.

So my conclusion is that the hard part of building a building is not erecting
the steel skeleton and pouring the concrete. It's the foundation and details
that take all the time, and the article omits any details about how long that
process took for this hotel.

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jacquesm
When you work with 'prefab' it's not rare to see a structure go up in an
incredibly short time, I've seen a house 'erected' in less than a day. In the
morning there was just a concrete pad and in the afternoon they were busy
connecting the electrical wiring.

Still, that does not detract from the very impressive performance here. A
carpenter from Canada once remarked that if a million guys all swing a hammer
once that's a lot of work done. Throwing 200 workers at this likely didn't
hurt either, the logistics and the choreography are what impress me most about
this.

if you watch the video wait for the covering of the outside, it's like
watching a slowed down flood-fill but with real life hardware. In spite of the
'no work injuries' reported some of the stills had me cringe, I'm pretty sure
that a building inspector or safety officer on a crew from the US or Canada
would have had a heart attack on the spot.

~~~
widgetycrank
I wonder why prefabs houses aren't more common.

A friend of my parents was building a house. I asked him if he considered
prefab, he had no idea what I was talking about.

~~~
shashashasha
Prefab has a bunch of hurdles and it's kind of a chicken and egg problem right
now.

A friend of mine used to work at Michelle Kaufmann's firm in East Bay, and
what would happen is that there is such a low volume of prefab orders that
they can't get the costs down enough to justify building prefab. Plus it's not
standard "from scratch" construction, etc. It's really sad, and the firm shut
down for a while in 2009 (I think they're back now though).

~~~
widgetycrank
Can you explain why "not from scratch" construction is a bad thing? AFAIK most
houses these days are built from cookie-cutter plans.

~~~
shashashasha
Sorry, yes most houses are built from cookie-cutter plans. I guess I meant
from scratch in that they're mostly built up with wood framing (simple to do),
vs a lot of prefab which may require welding and more specialized skills to
assemble the panels (harder to do, or at the very least less conventional).

~~~
jacquesm
In the US yes. In Europe most new houses use a concrete inner structure with a
brick facade if they're family sized houses.

That makes them particularly well suited for prefab, a whole wall segment can
be constructed including isolation, ducts, windows / doors etc and hoisted in
to place by a crane in one movement. Because the brick is laid in the mould a
bricklayer can work on a gantry under a roof instead of in the open air which
means year round bricklaying instead of only when it's not freezing or raining
(you can't lay brick in pouring rain).

Because the wall segments are made on a guaranteed flat surface a section is
always going to be perfectly straight without any measurement at all.

Note that these are full bricks, not the typical 'slices' of brick used to
give US houses a brick-like appearance over a wooden interior ('brick
siding').

~~~
shashashasha
Ah that's great. I'm definitely slanted because of my experience in
California, where earthquake regulations basically mean no masonry
construction ever, and very rarely anything other than wood framing for
residential houses.

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brudgers
Amish barn raising in one day...<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pg_vpy2mxg>.

It's all comes down to coordinated mobilization and logistical management.
Seven cranes costs a lot of money, around the clock operations cost even more.
Construction schedules are prepared to optimize the start of revenue streams
with the cost of construction.

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ximeng
Earlier discussion about the hotel construction at

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901274>

~~~
acangiano
And even earlier discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1895354>

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antihero
Lets just hope it doesn't fall over like that other one.

That said, it does remind me an awful lot of Total Annihilation when you get
about fifty construction vehicles to make things damn near instantly.

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zasz
For an idea of how good these buildings actually are, check out this story
about a 13 story building falling over in Shanghai:
[http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-
tips...](http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-tips-over-in-
shanghai/gallery/)

~~~
mousa
I'd imagine after all the publicity that got, this one was built to higher
standards. They claim to go well beyond the standards, and I don't doubt it
for this particular project since they are using it for marketing.

The problem with the building that fell was obviously the foundation, which
has to be done way in advance anyways.

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whatrocks
Someone sent this around the office recently in response to an email that the
"coffee break room" renovation was going to be extended an additional four
weeks.

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Mithrandir
There's also a sometimes interesting webcam of a building being constructed
(obviously not this one) in Hong Kong:
[http://202.94.229.4:81/view/view.shtml?id=3418&imagePath...](http://202.94.229.4:81/view/view.shtml?id=3418&imagePath=/mjpg/video.mjpg&size=1)

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goodgoblin
I picked up one of these from IKEA, it took me over 2 weeks to put together.

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vegai
So?

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zackattack
Soon, humans will eclipse Hymenoptera in productivity.

