

China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days - JumpCrisscross
http://designtaxi.com/news/352814/China-Plans-To-Build-The-World-s-Tallest-Building-In-90-Days/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

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ecaron
It is hard to read this story without thinking about the massive scale of "we
just built this building, but we're going to tear it down because it is a
deathtrap" demolitions that are happening in Beijing and the other populous
cities in China that are still growing at obscene rates:
[http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-proudly-
demolishing-b...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-proudly-demolishing-
buildings-completed-pursuit-great-housing-bubble-perpetual-engine)

~~~
Danieru
There is a lot of sensationalism in that article. Half the pictured buildings
are over ten years old. Only one is less than three years old.

That is not to deny that china has an over investment issue with their state
financed industries. But still, in a country of over a billion I do not think
it is out of the ordinary to have some development.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
They also have the benefit of the rest of the developed world's experience of
how to plan cities.

Do they really only plan to use these large buildings for only 10 years and
then rebuild? Is this normal for the rest of the world?

~~~
brudgers
It's not particularly abnormal during rapid real-estate development cycles.
The scale is unusual, but then again, China is the first country with more
than a billion people.

~~~
wtvanhest
No tall building (above 3 floors wood frame) would get anywhere close to
economic viability if the plan was to only leave it up for 10 years. Think
about how many buildings that are within 20 years old that have been
demolished in the united states. The number would be insanely low.

~~~
kstenerud
Insanely low, but not nonexistent. In a country with a fraction of the
population of China.

Say you'd built a skyscraper, and a few years afterwards someone offered you
enough money to make out with a hefty profit because real estate is booming
and you're occupying a prime location. Would you sell?

~~~
wtvanhest
Prior to my current role I worked in institutional multifamily brokerage. One
of the assets I was selling was 50 years (mid rise) and it still wasn't worth
bulldozing since it is less expensive to renovate and rent is highly
coorelated to price/sf.

There are no examples of what you are talking about that I can think of. There
are cases where short mid-rises are bulldozed for ultra high density, but the
math makes it very rare circumstances and none that I know of would be 10 or
20 year old buildings. We are talking 50 year+ buildings.

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joshuahedlund
My bias wants to make some remark about unions and/or regulations inhibiting
construction innovation in the US, but I have no idea if that's actually
true... is there progress being made in the US (faster construction? more
prefab? etc) or does China's progress simply come with quality sacrifices that
are pretty unacceptable in the US?

~~~
maratd
While I too would like to make derogatory remarks about unions, regulations,
hippies, and the rest of our society that seem to make a living off of
inhibiting progress ...

The truth of the matter is that this is bullshit. The "hotel in 2 weeks" story
already appeared on HN and was thoroughly discredited. This doesn't seem much
more plausible.

In the end, if you want the building to stand for more than a year or two, it
will take a certain amount of engineering, effort, and time to do it. The
Empire State Building took more than a year to build. That sounds about right
for any skyscraper, even with our more advanced tech.

~~~
Fizzadar
I don't remember a huge amount of discredit on the hotel in two weeks?

I would expect that hotel is still standing strong for years to come; I think
China really are the world leaders when it comes to construction these days (I
heard somewhere that they're putting up some insane number of coal power-
plants every month?!). What I'd really like to see is an entire prefab,
skyscraper filled city built in a year.

~~~
maratd
There were personal accounts of the buildings being uninhabitable. In fact,
they're starting to show up in the comments here!

------
brudgers
Looking at the profile, it is much more stout than Burj Khalifa which should
make the engineering significantly less complex due to the inherent stiffness.

On the other hand, much of the building's interior spaces will have little
access to daylight due to the large size of the floor plates - at 1,000,000
m^2 it is has more than three times the area of Burj Khalifa.

~~~
nemo1618
That's a good point. You have to wonder if they considered innovating in that
area as well. Perhaps a system that diffuses light through the ceiling of each
floor? That would be quite impressive.

~~~
brudgers
The innovations are primarily logistical not technological and in the end,
lights in the ceiling are lights in the ceiling, not windows with a view of
the weather or the city lights.

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mc32
It seems like it would be more accurate to say "assembled" in 90 days. These
things are pretty much pre-built off-site and just need to be plugged and
stacked.

It's very impressive and I look forward to seeing some greater modification
(away form the standard boxy look) toward more expressiveness and personality
--similar to the turning torso building --which looks like it could be modular
as well.

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george_morgan
I’m reminded of the classic triple constraint ‘cheap, fast, good’. They’re
promising cheap and fast…

~~~
jstalin
Exactly. I'd be interested in some follow up with that 30-story building they
previously built. What's the final quality -- months later?

I'm skeptical, but with enough pre-planning and enough people, I think it is
possible to build a quality building in this way.

~~~
quanticle
It's possible, but China doesn't exactly have a good record regarding this, as
their experience with the recent Sichuan earthquake proved. I'd definitely be
wary of living in this building. Sure, on paper, I'm sure the building is
structurally sound. But who know how many corners were cut during the process
of construction to meet schedule pressure?

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kapkapkap
Just as a point of reference, this building will be taller than both of the
fallen WTC buildings stacked on top each another (sans the spire).

~~~
jameskilton
Yeah, the Burj is itself mind bogglingly tall, this new one is only 10m
taller.

I'm wondering when we're gonna see the first true Mile High tower? We're 1/3
the way there!

~~~
mayneack
If it's only 10 cm taller, that sounds like within the margin of error of
where you measure. Not that I have any idea what the standard "building
height" measurement entails.

~~~
sophacles
We can measure the distance to the moon accurately enough to determine it is
getting 3.8 cm furhter from the earth each year, I'm pretty sure 10cm is well
outside the margin of error for measurements of something as simple as a
building.

~~~
planetguy
Not disagreeing with you, but I wonder how much the Burj expands and contracts
every day.

~~~
lwat
Certainly much less than 10 meters

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DigitalSea
Wow, this will be impressive if they can pull it off. The fact that BSB was
able to construct a 15 story hotel in 15 days proves that it is indeed
possible. Pre-fabricated construction is definitely the future, I love how the
pieces seem to just snap securely onto the frame.

There will be sceptics, but China is probably the only real country innovating
in the construction sector. That hotel is 9 magnitude earthquake resistant.
It's a rare 100 year event that an earthquake ever gets past 5.6/6 on the
Richter scale (the 2011 Japanese earthquake was a 9).

Seeing articles like this make me excited for the future.

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kylec
I wonder how much of this will go unused. The "largest mall in the world" was
build in China in 2005 and has remained 99% vacant. Having the "tallest
building in the world" is an even bigger feather in their cap, but it won't be
very impressive if no one actually uses it.

~~~
brudgers
The Empire State Building didn't reach profitability until about two decades
after its completion. Nevertheless, it has remained impressive from the time
of its completion through today.

~~~
vidarh
Centre Point in London ("just" 34 floors) was left totally empty for the
better part of a decade after construction because rising property prices
combined with the owners desire to let the whole building to a single tenant
made them consider it beneficial to just wait it out until they could find a
suitable tenant... Commercial property development can be pretty weird.

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yangez
> It took more than five years to build the 828-meter ‘Burj Khalifa’ in
> Dubai—the current world’s tallest building.

> ...projected cost at US$628 million — as compared with the US$1.5 billion
> Burj Khalifa.

Seems like the only thing the Burj Khalifa has going for it is that it, well,
already exists. This is a pretty big advantage though. Anyone can talk big
before construction delays, government regulations, and other interference
come into play.

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chefsurfing
If the Skyscraper Index is predictive this is not a good sign for China's
economic growth. ;) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscraper_Index>

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devy
The building project has NOT been approved yet. It's indeed in investigation
phase where debates and argumentations are conducting.

The firm that behinds the building is called "Broad Group", it's world's
leading absorbing chiller type of central air conditioning manufacturer.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Group>

Here is the latest accurate version in Chinese. Run it through Google
Translate to see it. <http://news.sohu.com/20120619/n346011745.shtml>

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tokenadult
"According to BSB chief executive officer, Zhang Yue, he said that the company
is confident that the government will give the go ahead for this project."

I wonder if this building project, which the submitted link says has not even
received government approval, will go the way of high-speed rail in China:
first, a lot of gee-whiz headlines; second, deadly failures. Shoddy
construction of buildings led to considerable loss of life during recent
earthquakes in China.

[http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-06-06-china-
construc...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-06-06-china-
construction_N.htm)

(2008 Sichuan earthquake)

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/deadly-
earthquake...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/deadly-earthquake-
highlights-chinas-shoddy-construction-standards/story-e6frg6so-1225854273590)

(2012 Qinghai earthquake)

I've been reading the Chinese press in the original Chinese for a long time,
so I tend to read between the lines when I see news out of China.

~~~
Volpe
But you don't read between the lines with USA Today, and The Australian?

"Unbiased press" = oxymoron

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abalashov
As if Chinese building practices (and QC generally) weren't bad enough, I am
definitely never going inside

~~~
cjensen
Yep. Reminds me of how they proudly built a much faster bullet train. Did they
really think the Japanese and French were holding back on speed because they
were bad engineers?

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ShabbyDoo
The claims of environmentalism seem laughable. Surely the cost in terms of
increased material requirements, wasted space due to 104 elevators, etc. makes
this building a bad choice w.r.t. the environment compared to constructing,
say, 10 buildings of 1/10th the size?

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Volpe
China doing something innovative!

Queue the slew of pro-West/Anti-china comments.

 _sigh_

~~~
yaix
Not really, some company is only annoucing that they are planing to do
something that sounds innovative.

Tiny difference.

~~~
Volpe
Well despite proving my point.

What isn't innovative about this project?

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danso
Obviously, most of this is prefab...so I wonder how much time was spent
building all the individual pieces before the official ground breaking?

With 220 floors and 104 elevators...that's more than 2 floors and 1 elevator a
day. I imagine just the fitting/assembling in place process per floor is
enough to fill up a third of a day on its own...so is this basically a huge
vertical jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces have been made and just need to be
moved onto site?

~~~
ChuckMcM
That was one of the questions I was wondering about. I recently looked at a
new factory in the bay area of prefab houses
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmpRRoNqsDI)and> one of their claims is they
can put up a house in 7 days. But of course it isn't that they start with dirt
and 7 days later there is a house, there is a time to build the foundation,
and the house is built in a factory, but once the foundation is ready and the
house manufactured, it only takes 7 days to install and unfold it. Which is
still pretty cool.

So one way this headline could be strictly true is if all of the floors of the
building were fabricated off site, once they were ready the company might be
able to assemble the final building, in a prepared foundation, in 90 days.
That is the only interpretation I can think of that works.

Concrete can take 4 weeks to get to 90% strength [1], so if you didn't do the
prefab route you would have to spend more than 90 days just waiting for the
lower levels to cure so that you could build the upper levels.

I am interested in what they are trying to do though, it sounds like an
interesting challenge.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete#Curing>

~~~
brudgers
> _"Concrete can take 4 weeks to get to 90% strength [1], so if you didn't do
> the prefab route you would have to spend more than 90 days just waiting for
> the lower levels to cure so that you could build the upper levels."_

Concrete made with Type III portland cement achieves most of its strength
within seven days (concrete made with normal (Type I) cement reaches its
design strength in 28 days).

When one needs significant strength more quickly, the mix can be adjusted to
provide a higher ultimate strength than is required for the intended loads
during the normal life of the building and accelerants added . This results in
adequate capacity for construction to continue in as little as a few hours.

~~~
abduhl
The general rule of thumb is 75% of 28-day strength in 7 days. Most concrete
mixtures reach their design strength well before 28 days due to the fact that
any particular batch of concrete will be mixed such that its 28-day strength
is higher than the design strength by a few 10s of %s. This is due to the fact
that failing a compressive strength test for any one test or any 3 averaged
consecutive tests (guidelines are set forth for failure criteria in ACI)
requires remedial action in general.

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smiler
Dubai (& Abu Dhabi) will not be happy about this. I guess they thought they
would have the record for a while.

~~~
planetguy
If this were fark someone would reply with some kind of comment about the
threat typically posed to skyscrapers by persons of middle-eastern origin.

But yeah, I wouldn't wanna be on a high floor of this thing.

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wickedchicken
I always liked this picture. It shows how strange the judging of building
heights can be:
[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/S0IflWYaadI/AAAAAAAAGH...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/S0IflWYaadI/AAAAAAAAGHc/3Kcris5i82A/s1600/burjdubai.gif)

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nsxwolf
What's with the building height brinksmanship? Someone needs to totally outdo
what's been done. Mile High Tower.

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tshadwell
You should change the GET parameter utm_source to Hacker_News.

