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19 days to build a 57-storey tower

bbc.co.uk

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Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#71

Post by rayiner »

mikeash wrote: post #58
melling wrote: post #46

The new World Trade Center took 8 years and is the most expensive building in the world: http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/may/11/one-world... Everything done is the U.S. takes more time and costs a lot more money. Consider, for example, that China has constructed 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in about a decade. We still have 0.0 miles. Yeah, yeah, we don't need 10k but we need more than 0. Airports, subw…

I live in the DC area and frequently visit Beijing. The DC Metro is currently building the Silver Line, an extension out to Dulles airport and a bit beyond. The first segment of the extension, with five stations, was completed last year after five years of construction. The remainder is planned to be complete in 2019 or 2020... assuming there aren't any more delays. In a similar amount of time, the Beijing subway wen…

What slows down development in the U.S. is accommodating competing interests in a democratic society. My parents, who live in the area, were among the people who strongly opposed the overland route and wanted a tunnel through Tysons, which would have cost another billion dollars and jeopardized federal funding. That tunnel fight took up a lot of time. There are environmentalists who care a lot more about the impact on the environment than the economic or convenience benefits of the new line. There are folks who remember when Fairfax County was a pretty sleepy place and strongly objected to any line at all. In the U.S. we try to reconcile competing interests as much as possible. In China, pro-development officials steamroll over everyone else.

Not to mention, the GDP per capita in the Tysons area is about 8x that of Beijing. We spend a lot more on safety because we have a lot to lose.

I'm a pro-development kind of guy, but the Chinese model of unelected technocrats dictating what gets built isn't the right answer. We should be looking to Western Europe, where development like public transit gets done because there is widespread public support to push things through the democratic process.

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#72

Post by innguest »

aries1980 wrote: post #27
drinchev wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so not joking. 100 developers might equal = 10 experienced developers these days. You can't just "put more force into the project and make it for 10 days", because actually the people that you want to hire might be not that easy to find.

Agreed, but I feel the renaissance of the 'Learn xyz in 24hrs' books in the form of 'Check how Joe Bloggs made xyz in 3 weeks' articles.

So you judge a field by the sophists that come to exploit it?

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#73

Post by blisterpeanuts »

Wow, he's like a Chinese version of Elon Musk (if Elon Musk believed in uniforms, company anthem, and tight social controls over his employees)!

I don't know that I agree with all of his thinking that the BBC article outlined, e.g. the very strict and intrusive control over employees' lives, but he definitely is creative and unusual, and he thinks big.

Perhaps a "green" tower that accommodates 800 apartments and thousands of offices and other businesses is the way to go; occupies a small physical footprint but delivers a huge amount of useful space in a country where cities are already congested and space is at a premium.

The BBC website by the way is quite interesting. I am not sure I would like all websites to look like that, but it's a creative take on interspersing multimedia with text, and the layering of the second image over the first is brilliant. Awesome!

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#74

Post by ubercore »

mikeash wrote: post #67
jonknee wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have clean air (any many other nice things!) because of regulation. China can do things faster, but pays a very high cost in public health and safety. The US could also build things a lot faster/cheaper if we didn't worry about the consequences.

Regulation isn't a monolithic entity. The regulations that keep our air clean and our structures safe aren't the ones slowing everything down, as far as I can see.

But the general concept of controlling externalized risks through regulation is. That's the lesson here, rather than dissecting individual regulations and causes. And the same process that regulates externalities and allows people affected by the decision a voice in the process (in contrast to a more autocratic decision to do something; people and costs kinda be damned) slows things down, sometimes because of over-regulation or dishonest actors.

I'm not making any value judgements here, but I think it's important to understand and recognize how when dealing with systems this complex, bad coming with good is inevitable. Both approaches have benefits, both have costs.

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#75

Post by blisterpeanuts »

melling wrote: post #46

The new World Trade Center took 8 years and is the most expensive building in the world: http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/may/11/one-world... Everything done is the U.S. takes more time and costs a lot more money. Consider, for example, that China has constructed 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in about a decade. We still have 0.0 miles. Yeah, yeah, we don't need 10k but we need more than 0. Airports, subw…

10K miles of high speed rail in the U.S. would be great. We desperately need a realistic alternative to air travel.

Unfortunately, Americans simply don't see it as a priority, and we have huge legal and environmental obstacles to building almost anything these days. The new WTC only got built because there was a national consensus that it should be built. There's no national consensus that a high speed rail line should be built, so it probably won't happen in our lifetimes, other than a minimal, barely-fast-enough 20th Century design here and there such as between D.C. and NYC.

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#76

Post by minthd »

nkoren wrote: post #42
mianos wrote: post #15

The Soviets built these type of buildings at the same speed in the 60s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel%C3%A1k Amazing, doing it higher than 20 floors though.

I am unfamiliar with the paneláky, but I would be surprised if they were built at a comparable speed. While I am aware of large building shells which have been constructed on this sort of timescale, they still required many months/years of fit-out afterwards (plumbing, electricity, fine interior finishing). what is unique about what Broad Group is doing is that they are assembling fully fitted-out modules, which are…

In the article they mentioned the issue of leaks.I read about it in another piece about an American pre-fab building, where it has been a huge problem.

What do you think about that issue ? how can it be solved ?

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#77

Post by tacojuan »

innguest wrote: post #70
snowwrestler wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's over-engineered unless a big truck bomb goes off next to it, or an airliner hits it, or it's subject to a significant earthquake--in which case it will then hopefully be just-right engineered.

The original WTC towers were already over-engineered. They could not be brought down by a plane hitting them, just like previously a plane hit the Empire State Building and it also did not collapse. That's why they needed the planes plus [redacted] in order to bring the towers down.

Don't be silly, the plane that hit the empire state building is a rinkydink fraction of the size of the planes that hit the WTCs.

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#78

Post by ChuckMcM »

I have been following the 'sky city' stuff for a while and it really does read like a fraud. The original attempt to build it wasn't some "missing paperwork" it was a pretty clear that the building would fall over if he built it, and some folks in the structural engineering community made that point to the government and BSB could not show how their assertions were incorrect. I've not seen the complaint but it was related to the wind loading and torque requirements on lower sections.

It will be interesting to watch this 'mini' tower and see how it holds up prior to trying something more dramatic.

But structural engineering aside, being able to rapidly assemble a building of significant capacity and a small foot print is a worth while capability to have. It doesn't lend itself to variety (and like an air craft carrier would probably require grid co-ordinates in the hallways to make navigation inside the building possible) but by shortening the time to erect, you eliminate a huge variability in cost which is the time on site/equipment use. Over half of the Bay bridge's cost overruns were associated with storage, inactive equipment and staff, and material cost bids expiring. So being able to do all of the erection in even a straight shot of two or three months would improve the economics tremendously.

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#79

Post by minthd »

brudgers wrote: post #38
mmrasheed wrote: post #5

I am fascinated by their construction technique, which is nothing but perfection of management. I was eagerly waiting to see the proposed 220 story, 850 m tall building construction in seven months since 2012, but that plan was halted due to continuous rejection by the authorities and the engineering communities. I am not a civil engineer, so I can't criticize their construction method. But I wonder if it is traditio…

Development projects stall for many reasons among them are modifications of the developer's pro forma that reduce the viability of a project - interest rates go up, the cost of construction goes up, rents go down, local occupancy rates dip, etc. etc. The technology has the potential for some small incremental change to the real-estate development process, but it doesn't alter the underlying market forces where a hous…

Can't these kinds of buildings change the dynamic in real-estate ?

For example , in israel, where the land is usually bought from the state, sometimes groups of private people gather together to build an apartment complex and save a bit of money.But that's a long(and maybe risky) project, so people rarely do so.

But let's say it was a short process - a group gathers, gives the funds , and in month they enter their apartments. I could see this becoming more common, because you can have decent savings .

And assuming that happens - now it's people buying their own land(and build higher structures on it), won't that change the pricing dynamic on land, and the political pressures on the state which sells such land ?

Re: 19 days to build a 57-storey tower

#80

Post by snowwrestler »

innguest wrote: post #70
snowwrestler wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's over-engineered unless a big truck bomb goes off next to it, or an airliner hits it, or it's subject to a significant earthquake--in which case it will then hopefully be just-right engineered.

The original WTC towers were already over-engineered. They could not be brought down by a plane hitting them, just like previously a plane hit the Empire State Building and it also did not collapse. That's why they needed the planes plus [redacted] in order to bring the towers down.

You've got the right mindset, but your conspiracy is backwards. The plane that hit the Empire State Building DID cause it to collapse, but the leaders of the media, academia, and construction industries formed a conspiracy to quickly rebuild it and pretend it never happened.

Edit: In case it's not obvious, they did this because they knew skyscrapers would be essential to the future growth of New York, and they did not want the public to be scared of them.

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