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China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
21–30 of 99 posts
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's always a lead time. But the pace at which prefabricated items can be built in a factory is significantly greater than that at which items can be site built. The constraints on an urban site are a significant logistical problem - site fabrication requires lots of different trades arriving through city traffic at the same time because there isn't much space in which materials may be staged. Every trade adds to…
Do you think it's practical to ship the pieces from china to the u.s. or europe ?
They are doing that with the Bay Bridge:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.h...
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#23I’m reminded of the classic triple constraint ‘cheap, fast, good’. They’re promising cheap and fast…
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.
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?
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is common practice already.
any links related?
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#25As if Chinese building practices (and QC generally) weren't bad enough, I am definitely never going inside
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#26My 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?
Certainly there was a time when the USA seemed to be the the leaders of this kind of innovation. We're leaders of a different kind now.
The video for the 15 story hotel they built super quickly seems to show an innovative design that is also very high quality-- probably higher quality than alternatives.
The construction is impressively earth quake resistant. The air purification system, if I understood what was happening, was also innovative. The 4 pane glass windows seems cool, and since they are sealed, there's no need to clean the blinds.
Certainly China can bring more cheap labor to a project than the USA can. But this company seems to be re-thinking things in ways that the USA could emulate-- for instance, building floors offsite (including laying down the floor tile) and then trucking them to the site for assembly.
Walt Disney experimented with modular assembly back in the day, and certainly a lot of other US companies have tried it to varying degrees. This company seems to have fully embraced it in a way that the US-- despite having a head start it seems-- has not. Not sure why that is, as offsite construction of major components seems advantageous to me.
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#27I’m reminded of the classic triple constraint ‘cheap, fast, good’. They’re promising cheap and fast…
Rush to build the tallest structure in the world? What could possibly go wrong?
This thing has all the makings of the soon to be longest freestanding structure in the world.
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#28It 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...
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#29My 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?
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.
Re: China Plans To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
#30I’m reminded of the classic triple constraint ‘cheap, fast, good’. They’re promising cheap and fast…
The modular, factory-produced nature of the construction here makes a given level of quality a lot faster and cheaper. They can automate production of things that ordinarily would need to be constructed on site, they can do easier quality control, and they can devote more engineering effort to modules that get used many times.
(Note that this only applies to the parts that they can actually factory-build. For example, it doesn't apply to the concrete work for the foundations.)