China to build TALLEST building in the world in 90 DAYS
China Will Build the Tallest Building In the World in Just 90 Days
According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013. Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days!
It's not a joke. According to the construction company, the skyscraper will be built in just 90 days at the unbelievable rate of five floors per day.
It's hard to believe, but they claim the building has been designed by some of the engineers who previously worked at the Burj Khalifa. It is also the same firm that built a full 30-story hotel in 15 days—which yes, is still standing and in perfect working condition.
Foundation work is beginning at the end of the month, once the Chinese authorities give the final go ahead to the project.
Pre-fab magic
They will be able to achieve this impossibly fast construction rate by using a prefabricated modular technology developed by Broad Sustainable Building, a company that has built 20 tall structures in China so far, including the that 30-story hotel.
Since they built that hotel, the company has been perfecting their technology, which they are now claiming will turn their project into the world's tallest skyscraper in just three months. That's a whooping five floors per day, which seems just absurd. According to Construction Week Online, the company is very serious about it. The senior VP of the Broad Group, Juliet Jiang, has publicly said that they "will go on as planned with the completion of five storeys a day."
Record numbers
Unlike the Burj Khalifa, the tower will be mostly habitable. Its final height will be 2,749 feet high (838 meters). Compared that to the Burj's 2,719 feet (829 meters), which include the spire at the top resulting in a total of 163 floors.
Sky City will use an astonishing 220,000 tons of steel. The structure will be able to house 31,400 people of both "high and low income communities". The company says that the residential area will use 83-percent of the building, while the rest will be offices, schools, hospitals, shops and restaurants. People will move up and down using 104 high speed elevators.
The record figures don't stop there: in addition to the 90-day construction time—as opposed to the 210 days initially reported by the Chinese media—the company claims it will cost $1,500 per square meter as opposed to the Burj's $15,000 per square meter, all thanks to the prefab technology.
They also claim it will be able to sustain earthquakes of a 9.0 magnitude and be resistant to fire for "up to three hours," as well as be extremely energy efficient thanks to thermal insulation, four-panned windows and different air conditioning techniques that were already used in their previous constructions.
To be honest, it all seems like a tall tale to me—no pun intended. Although the credentials of the company seem to be quite serious, one thing is to build a 30-story hotel in 15 days and the other is to built the largest skyscraper in the world in 90 days. It just boggles the mind. Maybe it was April's Fool in China yesterday.
Whatever it is, we will discover it in March. If it's confirmed, the time-lapse videos are going to be epic. [Broad Sustainable Building via Construction Week Online]
Update: These are the company headquarters in China. They call them Broad Town. Yes, that's a huge pyramid at the bottom.
***30-story building built in 15 days*** Construction time lapse
TIME - China Plans to Build the World’s Largest Skyscraper in Just 90 Days
If only constructing a skyscraper were as easy as stacking Legos. Then, we’d be throwing together 200-story towers in a matter of weeks, just clicking blocks together until we got bored. But the idea isn’t so far-fetched: if China’s Broad Sustainable Building Corp. is doing its math and crossing its ts properly, it could be topping out a 2,749-ft.-tall skyscraper — the world’s tallest — in just three months.
Starting in January, the race will be on against what seems to be an impossibly short deadline. Broad is allotting just 90 days to construct the 220-story tower, dubbed Sky City, in the city of Changsha, in China’s southeastern Hunan province — meaning the building will go up at a rate of about five stories a day, according to Construction Week Online.
It’s not only the speed, though; it’s the height. Upon completion, Sky City will be 32 ft. taller than the Burj Khalifa, the current tallest building in the world. It’ll also go up 24 times quicker. Upon completion, the tower will contain a school, hospital, 17 helipads and apartments for 30,000 people, according to online design magazine Dezeen. It’s unclear, though, if it will have a lobby — the regimented prefab construction has prohibited wide open spaces on the ground floor of previous Broad buildings, Wired explains.
Broad began as an air-conditioner manufacturer but diversified after developing a new method of constructing prefab skyscrapers, whose components slot together like Erector Set pieces. According to Wired, the company’s founder and chairman Zhang Yue was inspired by the immense devastation of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, which killed more than 68,000 people, to develop quake-friendly building designs; the sturdy modular style Broad pioneered is 95% prefabricated in the company’s factories in Hunan province.
As of September, Broad had built 17 of the prefab structures, all but one in China, and fast: the company put up a 15-story hotel in just two days, and a 30-story tower in just 15. The structures are as bland as a Sears Catalog Home, and as pretty as a stack of plywood, but for Zhang, it’s not about style. Broad’s buildings use less concrete in the floors and less steel in the support beams, reducing the weight and increasing its earthquake resilience — Zhang says his buildings are meant to withstand a 9.0-magnitude temblor.
Indeed, the towers’ blandness and adaptability is part of the plan: Broad plans to monetize its housing concept by licensing the technology to countries across the globe. Franchisees can then build the pieces locally to prevent the exorbitant cost of shipping the prefabricated pieces.
As for Sky City, Broad plans to start laying the foundation at the end of November, with the three-month race against the clock starting at the end of the year and running through March. Ladies and gentlemen, get out your stopwatches — this one could be a nail-biter.
Oh, well good for them. It's sad how this'll hold the record for tallest building on Earth though because the Burj Khalifa actually looks like a piece of art, and this thing just looks like a massive slab of concrete.
Oh, well good for them. It's sad how this'll hold the record for tallest building on Earth though because the Burj Khalifa actually looks like a piece of art, and this thing just looks like a massive slab of concrete.
At least this'll provide housing for 100k people. The Burj Khalifa ain't helping nobody but rich people.
It's sad how this'll hold the record for tallest building on Earth though because the Burj Khalifa actually looks like a piece of art, and this thing just looks like a massive slab of concrete. 
