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Gizmodo reader Xian Min Zhang just sent me this impressive timelapse video from his company’s latest project: a 30-story tall, 183,000-square-foot hotel built in just 360 hours. Just 15 days! I kept watching it in disbelief.
It was erected near the Dongting lake, in the Hunan Province, China, by Broad Group, a Chinese construction company specialised in sustainable architecture. The building uses prefabricated modules (with a +/- 0.2mm precision in the fabrication process) mounted on a steel structure, with diagonal steel bracing.
The hotel is so solid that it can resist a 9 magnitude earthquake, as tested by the China Academy of Building Research (there’s a scene in which you can see the testing process, at 1:49). They claim this is five times more earthquake-resistant than conventional buildings.
The company also says that it is five times more energy efficient, with 6-inch thick glass curtain wall insulation and four-paned windows with built-in shades, a heat recovery system and 3-stage filtration air conditioning process that purifies indoor air to be 20 times purer than the air outside. They even have air quality monitoring in every room which, given the pollution problem in China, seems to be an important selling point there.
Their previous record was a smaller 15-story building constructed in just six days, but this one is much more impressive. [Thanks Xian Min Zhang!]
Gonna show this to the builder doing the new Kitchen. He has taken a week and drinks tea more of the time and it still ain’t finished.
Wait till he finishes, I would not like to upset anyone while they are fixing my place. Just my opinion
This, Europe, is how buildings should be constructed. It was up quickly, efficiently, and with better features than almost all of ours.
There are so many things we need to learn if we still want to be relevant. We really need to get our S**t together.
Great video. It was built and to a good standard by the look of it in a very short time, the main reason for this is because everything was pre fabricated and brought to the site for fitting. The Germans do this also and are probably the only ones that can match the Chinese in engineering. All of this would not be possible of course without a positive attitude towards work, as in working hard all day and less tea breaks, the attitude towards work bit is perhaps where we fall down in the UK.
Built in 15 days and likely to remain unoccupied for 15 years.
It’s a hotel.
Hotels, shopping malls, cities… There are plenty of each sitting empty in China at the moment.
Its actually a great idea to build a city from scratch and keep it completely empty till it’s done. Everything can be done from a unified plan, designed to work together and you don’t have to worry about construction noise or traffic restrictions. Of course you have to have the space, money and political power to do a project like that, which China does.Also, during a worldwide recession it will be cheaper to build infrastructure then during a boom.
It doesnt matter. They can do it and the British cant. Simple.
Technically, this is a building “assembled” in 360 hours, rather then “constructed”. Mind you, having seen what goes in to the construction of a tower block (I was on site which my company worked on an office block in London) I can see the advantage of working on each floor at a separate location. Since most of the services run across the ceiling (Aircon/wiring/sprinklers) just being able to work on them from ground level rather than on a mobile platform would be a massive timesaving.
Also, how many trucks did they use to constantly keep bringing the prefabbed parts to the site 24 hours a day… If the trucks are not able to get there in time, it would be a pretty major hold up, I think…
yeah. But guess what? The trucks DO get there in time. Its China and not the UK where they close roads for no damn reason and every body has to drive because the public transport is either too damn expensive or shit.
A building like that done in 15 days… Wouldn’t this be a huge advantage in disaster relief situations? Assuming that the ground can be laid properly, and transport infrastructure for bringing the prefabbed parts are still working
Five times more energy efficient than what? Existing buildings in China?
It’s not really that impressive when the standards in the rest of China are so poor. The fact that China prioritises impressing the rest of the world (Beijing Olympics, Shanghai World Expo) over the welfare of its people, is worrying.
In constructing the World Expo, Shanghai began clearing 2.6 square kilometres along the Huangpu River; that involved moving 18,000 families and 270 factories, including the Jiang Nan Shipyard, which employs 10,000 workers.
How painful is it going to be when the rest of the West, especially the English with the down right cheek to call themselves Great Britain, realise they got caught slippin? All that regulation, burocraqcy and taxation really fucked us all!
Being born in England IS NO BETTER than being born in Poland or Lithuania now.
You know what gets me the most? Headlines on the BBC that read “HS2: High-speed rail link ‘being seriously considered’” What a fucking joke! IF it CAN be built then do it. And in less than 20 YEARS hahahaha! If this was China the decision would have been do it as soon as its benefit was proven and it would get done in <5 years and under budget!
Pathetic just doesnt cover it anymore. The faces on some of the overseas students that arrive here in the UK is truly priceless when they realise that they have been well and truly deceived into thinking England is anything that resembles the image portrayed around the world.
Still, at least we'll all have 2mbps broadband by 2015! Maybe.
Who are you? Where are you from? What nationality are you?
The English don’t call themselves Great Britain. Great Britain is the land mass that consists of England, Scotland and Wales. Don’t be a troll.
Having lived in one of the countries that is sticking these buildings up so quickly (UAE) I can definately say that Britain is pretty great. At least here all of the people building these things get to go home to their own family – not a dorm with 20 men in bunk beds! Things might take longer here but that is just the price we pay to have good workers rights, good planning protection and an accepting and free (relatively) country. Definately a price worth paying. You just wait and see what happens in China when “the people” eventually stand up and demand a say – it will happen sooner or later.
Dom
iMattsmith – I can see that you enjoy criticizing govt and ppl who work their asses off to get to where we are currently. So you think Poland or Lithuania is lower than Britain? Just cause they dont share the same life style or the technologies or perhaps your way of living life doesnt mean that it is not a worthy place to live. It takes time due to regulations, safety, testing, quality, perfection etc. If you think China is way better, kindly live your life there. Stop complaining and do something better for the society. There are countries where ppl dont have food to eat and you in here can get what you want, yet not satisfied.
Was that video duplicated one straight after the other?
Really impressive – was it just because of the Dragon steel…or was it because they had a round the clock team working on it?
Also, how the hell do they get that crane down from the top?