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.
I've often wondered why more buildings aren't made this way.<p>There'll always be a place for one-offs, of course; and in prestige markets like NYC it'll almost always be so.<p>But a lot of the world's construction is really quite simple in requirements, and centralising manufacturing must surely make it more efficient overall.<p>This already happens somewhat for "big box" stores and warehouses, with some adjustment it just seems like an obvious step to me.<p>I'd be interested in hearing from construction industry experts as to why this isn't already the norm.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>I can't help but think his promotional material might read suspiciously like the spam in my inbox: 'Big erections, FAST!'
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.
Reading the article, I get the impression that working for this guy is similar to being a cult member:<p>"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."
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).<p>1: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Group" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Group</a><p>(links to e.g. <a href="http://www.broad.com:8089/english/down/T30_Technical_Briefing.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.broad.com:8089/english/down/T30_Technical_Briefin...</a>)
From the photo caption showing the existing (ugly) pre-fab skyscraper:<p>"Prefabricated skyscrapers can be inflexible. To create a lobby for this hotel, Broad had to stick an awkward pyramid onto the base."<p>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.<p>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<p><a href="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" rel="nofollow">http://www.gostructural.com/magazine-article-gostructural.co...</a><p><a href="http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&C=690" rel="nofollow">http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&...</a><p>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.<p>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.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/...</a><p>(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.<p>AFTER EDIT: An interesting second-level comment below asked about<p><i>it looks in the video like they build the crane into the building (which is sort of a waste of a crane)</i><p>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.<p><a href="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" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/life/explainer/2012/05/tower_c...</a><p>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.<p>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,"<p><a href="http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html</a><p>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.
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.