
Meet the Man Who Built a 30-Story Building in 15 Days - mayop100
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/broad-sustainable-building-instant-skyscraper/all/
======
jarajelissa
How about "Meet the Man Who Supervised A Crew That Built Assembled an
Uninhabitable 30-Story Building of Preassembled Component Parts in 15 Days."
No inspections were done, there are no functional water supply nor waste water
systems, fire supression system, elevators, electrical distribution system,
solid waste disposal system, HVAC or environmental control system of any
sort... and the parking sucks.

~~~
dfc
The title was even more of a let down after the recent story about the man who
single handedly carved road through a mountain [1].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4557726>

~~~
zaidmo
It's also what I expected when I read the title. I thought one man physically
created the building (like the guy who carved the road in the mountain)

------
jacques_chester
I've often wondered why more buildings aren't made this way.

There'll always be a place for one-offs, of course; and in prestige markets
like NYC it'll almost always be so.

But a lot of the world's construction is really quite simple in requirements,
and centralising manufacturing must surely make it more efficient overall.

This already happens somewhat for "big box" stores and warehouses, with some
adjustment it just seems like an obvious step to me.

I'd be interested in hearing from construction industry experts as to why this
isn't already the norm.

~~~
nostromo
All the components used to build a house are indeed created in a very
efficient factory. The concrete, insulation, drywall, lumber, nails,
electrical -- it's all been driven down in price by centralized manufacturing.

These components still use onsite assembly because of shipping costs. It's
obvious why you can't easily ship someone a 1,500 sq ft house from China. Even
shipping sub components (like say a wall) is more expensive than shipping
someone a stack of 2x4s and some nails and paying someone to nail it together.

Prefab homes exist, but they are more expensive than traditional homes per
square foot for nice homes that are bigger than a double-wide trailer, so they
remain a bit of a novelty (in the US anyway). The fact that the market has yet
to find a way to drive down the cost using prefab makes me wonder if onsite
assembly isn't in fact the cheapest form of construction at our disposal
today.

~~~
justin66
> Prefab homes exist, but they are more expensive than traditional homes per
> square foot for nice homes that are bigger than a double-wide trailer, so
> they remain a bit of a novelty (in the US anyway). The fact that the market
> has yet to find a way to drive down the cost using prefab makes me wonder if
> onsite assembly isn't in fact the cheapest form of construction at our
> disposal today.

A narrower set of financing options for prefab homes exists as opposed to
traditionally constructed homes. That leads to a pretty serious difference in
demand, and an awful lot of the price difference might just come from that.

------
xyzzy123
I'm surprised by all the negativity here; this seems like a fairly practical
version of Buckminster Fuller's ideas around prefabricated buildings -
achieving significant savings in materials, labour and time.

This is a practical demonstration of a streamlined factory-based building
construction system. The general idea has been around as long as the
industrial revolution, but it seems to me that their impressive execution of
it really marks the start of a major technological shift.

~~~
token78
I don't believe that the objections come down to the principle of
prefabrication itself, but the execution. In Europe and the Anglo-sphere,
we've learned the hard way that when we try to regiment human lives to rigid
efficient clean modernist boxes... it doesn't work and there are social
consequences. Our buildings, our homes and our workspaces must conform to us,
and not the other way around.

~~~
megablast
I have trouble believing that social consequences are relieved through the
unique designs of houses that people live in. But even that isn't the point,
there is no reason that each house can't be unique and prefabricated.

~~~
token78
Agreed. My point was simply that I don't believe it's prefabrication itself
that folks are taking issue with. It's the fact that we're talking about a
sterile, impractical and dehumanising box.

------
revelation
I don't get the obsession with building skyscrapers in rapidly developing
countries and regions like Dubai or China. Especially China, where they have
plenty of space in the hinterlands, yet all the wealth concentrates in the
coastal regions. I thought a socialist-planned era of capitalism would know
better than that.

That said, the USA stopped having the largest skycrapers because they stopped
making sense in a world where technology can close even the biggest physical
gaps.

~~~
ww520
High density buildings are much more environmentally friendly than suburban
sprawl. People need to travel less to work, shopping, seeing friends, thus
less cars, less oil used, less roads needed to be built. Mass transit actually
is profitable and sustainable. It's easier to build out network type of
infrastructure. Broadband is easier to build and cell towers covers more.
Services are centralized to cover more people, less fire house, less hospital,
less police.

~~~
smoyer
I agree except for the "cell towers covers more" statement. Cell tower
coverage is actually greatest in areas like Iowa. Cell towers could in theory
cover more people in a dense city, but you end up putting in more towers for
both capacity and RF reasons.

\- Channel capacity remains approximately the same per user, so in high
density areas, you need more towers.

\- RF signals are heavily reflected and/or shielded by the vast "concrete
canyons" of a modern city, so more towers are needed to eliminate shadows.

~~~
Xylakant
Well, true. Cell tower coverage is actually very good in the kalahari desert.
They build huge towers that cover cells way bigger than anything you'll find
in any city. But those patch-cables they need from the tower to the backbone
:). I think the OP meant something along the line "it's easier to supply a
sufficiently dense network" since you probably need more antennas but in the
end, it's easier to put up those antennas since you have a reliable cable
connection close by.

------
token78
It's a pity his ambitions don't embrace even a hint of design thinking or
aesthetic virtue. Seriously, they're butt ugly. Just phallic boxes that
describe an obsession with size and haste that seems to have trumped even the
most basic functional considerations for a building.

I can't help but think his promotional material might read suspiciously like
the spam in my inbox: 'Big erections, FAST!'

~~~
IsaacL
A while back I had two friends, one an architecture student, one a civil
engineering student. They had some interesting banter:

Architecture student: if civil engineers had their way, all buildings would be
square concrete blocks

Civil engineering student: if architects had their way, all buildings would be
beautiful, and collapse in the slightest breeze

~~~
grumblepeet
I used to work in a civil engineering company and ran the intranet. The most
secure part was the company wiki, which held all of the organisation's
collective wealth about how to make things that wouldn't fall down, explode
etc. They used this knowledge to help architects make buildings that would be
safe, but were equally careful to ensure that none of this knowledge was ever
transferred to other civil engineers.

I suppose this made perfect financial sense, but it does mean that there is no
"collective knowledge pot" that people can pull against to ensure they don't
make the same mistakes.

BTW in the wiki there were countless pages about concrete. Concrete pipes,
concrete under water, concrete in a desert, concrete under stress, you name
it. Ever tried tuning a search engine results page for concrete pipes?

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lywald
Why is the whole page refreshed when I click to see another picture?

And it seems all Wired articles behave the same. Annoying.

~~~
bennysaurus
Try adding '&viewall=true' without the quotes on the end of Wired URLs.

It is annoying though, a little bit of jQuery would fix it in about 5 seconds
flat.

------
chipsy
Construction constitutes a huge part of economic activity. While the public is
going to have to be skeptical of any new construction technique until the
buildings have some track record(imagine what people thought about the first
skyscrapers), the cost and environmental footprint of new buildings is one of
those "Big Problems" that is obviously worthwhile to solve.

~~~
yardie
Prefabbed homes already have a track record. They collectively sucked. Look at
any disaster film following a hurricane or tornado and all the flattened
houses were usually prefabbed trailer homes. The builders learned that lesson
and started on something simpler, prefabbed freeways, bridges and conduits.
But the damage has already been done. When you say prefab people think
Hurricane Andrew and the acres of flattened houses it left behind. Maybe in
another 10 years they'll be more common. For now, people aren't signing 20+
year mortgages so some builder can work out the kinks in their technique.

~~~
Evbn
Cheap wooden houses get blown away regardless of fab technique.

~~~
yardie
Probably so, but during a storm or tornado warning it's the trailer parks that
get evacuated. Cheap wooden homes are left to the owners to figure out if they
are going to survive or not.

------
riffic
"There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy." -
Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language.

~~~
mjb
Alexander then goes on to not present any real evidence. I know that the
standards of evidence of low in fields like architecture, but it makes me sad
to see people engage with important topics like this one using nothing but
assertions and platitudes. Dense cities have many advantages, especially
around energy effeciency and environmental footprint. If we are going to make
the right decisions for the future of our species, we need to make them based
on evidence. If we don't have evidence, we need to do research.

As much as I like Alexander's book, I wish people wouldn't buy into his
opinions so wholeheartedly.

~~~
riffic
Yes he does:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=hwAHmktpk5IC&lpg=PA115&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=hwAHmktpk5IC&lpg=PA115&ots=luLtScBY1C&dq=alexander%20%22There%20is%20abundant%20evidence%20to%20show%20that%20high%20buildings%20make%20people%20crazy.%22&pg=PA115#v=onepage&q=alexander%20%22There%20is%20abundant%20evidence%20to%20show%20that%20high%20buildings%20make%20people%20crazy.%22&f=false)

------
noarchy
Reading the article, I get the impression that working for this guy is similar
to being a cult member:

"To become an employee of Broad, you must recite a life manual penned by
Zhang, guidelines that include tips on saving energy, brushing your teeth, and
having children."

~~~
intended
I think this a good place to mention the Pullman riots -
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike>)

and George Pullman - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pullman>

------
mhd
The Wikipedia page of the Broad Group[1] has some PDFs with detailed floor
plans and building stats. Quite interesting. Sure they're bland as can be, but
as this seems the Model T of this type of building, we might get some
improvements later on (although I wonder how e.g. different outside structures
would mess with the energy management).

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Group>

(links to e.g.
[http://www.broad.com:8089/english/down/T30_Technical_Briefin...](http://www.broad.com:8089/english/down/T30_Technical_Briefing.pdf))

------
tokenadult
From the photo caption showing the existing (ugly) pre-fab skyscraper:

"Prefabricated skyscrapers can be inflexible. To create a lobby for this
hotel, Broad had to stick an awkward pyramid onto the base."

Central planning of the national economy during the Warsaw Pact era left some
cities in central and eastern Europe with some of the world's ugliest and most
user-unfriendly "modern" architecture. Only in a country with a centrally
planned economy could a builder come up with the idea that skyscrapers built
like Lego toys will become the new standard for skyscrapers.

I think it's here on Hacker News where I learned most of the interesting story
of the construction of the Burj Dubai (now Burj Khalifa) skyscraper. There
were structural innovations in that building

[http://www.gostructural.com/magazine-article-
gostructural.co...](http://www.gostructural.com/magazine-article-
gostructural.com-12-2009-design_and_construction_of_the_world_acute_s_tallest_building__the_burj_dubai-7709.html)

[http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&...](http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&C=690)

that allowed it to reach its world-record height. It was also built during a
crazy, boom economy, and it remains to be seen how soon, if ever, the building
will produce an economic return for its investors.

I think the most thoughtful book I have ever read about architecture,
published before Hacker News was founded, is Stewart Brand's How Buildings
Learn: What Happens After They're Built.

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-
Theyre/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-
Theyre/dp/0140139966)

(Yes, the author is the same Stewart Brand who is famous among HN participants
for saying "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so
valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On
the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it
out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting
against each other.") Brand's book How Buildings Learn: What Happens After
They're Built is all about the many modifications that building owners make to
buildings over time as the economy changes, as new materials and technologies
are invented, and as buildings change owners. The gee-whiz articles about what
the Chinese builder PLANS to do with buildings made of pre-fab parts are less
interesting to me than what the possibilities are for modifying such buildings
after they are built.

AFTER EDIT: An interesting second-level comment below asked about

 _it looks in the video like they build the crane into the building (which is
sort of a waste of a crane)_

and that prompted me to look up an article about how the tower cranes that
build the tallest skyscrapers interact with the buildings they build.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/explainer/2012/05/tower_c...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/explainer/2012/05/tower_crane_building_one_world_trade_center_how_do_cranes_get_on_top_of_skyscrapers_.html)

There are occasions when some parts of the crane's support structure is built
into (or onto) the building as the building goes up, but usually the working
part of the crane is disassembled and reused.

AFTER ONE MORE EDIT: While doing something else, I remembered that another
Hacker News participant recently linked in a comment in another thread to Paul
Graham's 2005 essay "The Submarine,"

<http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

about the public relations industry, and how "news" stories are inserted in
the mainstream media. I have seen a lot of kind submissions to HN of stories
about the Chinese builder's PLAN to build the world's tallest skyscraper out
of pre-fab components, but those stories, even in the best instance, have
included remarkably little actual reporting from the scene about the economic
viability of the plan or how well the builder's existing buildings are liked
by owners or occupants. He has a great publicity machine, but I'd like to know
more about the buildings.

~~~
flexie
I totally agree with your view on communist concrete buildings (I have to look
at them every day).

But before we completely dismiss the idea of using prefabricated elements,
consider the good old bricks, which are basically prefabricated elements that
allow for enormous flexibility. Same with roof tiles.

To me it seems that prefabricated elements become a problem if they are too
large relative to the building's total size. It's hard to make an interesting
lego house using 200 lego bricks because the square shape of the lego bricks
define the shape of the house. But if you use 20,000 lego bricks the shape of
the building doesn't appear to be defined by the shape of the individual
bricks. Sort of the same way fonts appear ugly on low resolution screens.

Prefabricated elements should be smaller.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Assembly costs are already a major expense in large buildings. TO drive costs
down, the prefab elements will be getting larger, not smaller.

~~~
flexie
Yes, except if they invent something to make assembling easier (for example a
click system of some kind). If prefab elements get so small that a person or a
small robot could carry it and so that it could be stacked easily, transported
in containers, raised up with elevators etc. it could be cheaper.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Even then, to drive costs down further, you could make them larger and you
have fewer of the easier operations.

The minima for cost will always be, make the elements as large as feasible.

------
Aardwolf
But they usually build all the prefab materials beforehand, taking longer than
15 days. So saying it's built in 15 days is a bit cheating. Still an
interesting feat though.

~~~
josephlord
If you live next door I think 15 days is the effect even if planning and part
construction has been taking place for longer.

Also if the parts become standardised then maybe it really would count as 15
days.

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, usually they start the time-lapse videos after the foundations are dug,
which seems like cheating.

