China erects 15 story hotel in less than 6 days (video)

http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/25/china-erects-15-story-hotel-in-less-than-6-days-video/

by stefanobernardi • 16 years ago

50 19 16 years ago

singularityhub.com

ximeng• 16 years ago

Earlier discussion about the hotel construction at

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901274

acangiano• 16 years ago

And even earlier discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1895354

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

When you work with 'prefab' it's not rare to see a structure go up in an incredibly short time, I've seen a house 'erected' in less than a day. In the morning there was just a concrete pad and in the afternoon they were busy connecting the electrical wiring.

Still, that does not detract from the very impressive performance here. A carpenter from Canada once remarked that if a million guys all swing a hammer once that's a lot of work done. Throwing 200 workers at this likely didn't hurt either, the logistics and the choreography are what impress me most about this.

if you watch the video wait for the covering of the outside, it's like watching a slowed down flood-fill but with real life hardware. In spite of the 'no work injuries' reported some of the stills had me cringe, I'm pretty sure that a building inspector or safety officer on a crew from the US or Canada would have had a heart attack on the spot.

widgetycrank2• 16 years ago

I wonder why prefabs houses aren't more common.

A friend of my parents was building a house. I asked him if he considered prefab, he had no idea what I was talking about.

shashashasha3• 16 years ago

Prefab has a bunch of hurdles and it's kind of a chicken and egg problem right now.

A friend of mine used to work at Michelle Kaufmann's firm in East Bay, and what would happen is that there is such a low volume of prefab orders that they can't get the costs down enough to justify building prefab. Plus it's not standard "from scratch" construction, etc. It's really sad, and the firm shut down for a while in 2009 (I think they're back now though).

zasz• 16 years ago

For an idea of how good these buildings actually are, check out this story about a 13 story building falling over in Shanghai: http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-tips...

mousa• 16 years ago

I'd imagine after all the publicity that got, this one was built to higher standards. They claim to go well beyond the standards, and I don't doubt it for this particular project since they are using it for marketing.

The problem with the building that fell was obviously the foundation, which has to be done way in advance anyways.

brudgers• 16 years ago

Amish barn raising in one day...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pg_vpy2mxg.

It's all comes down to coordinated mobilization and logistical management. Seven cranes costs a lot of money, around the clock operations cost even more. Construction schedules are prepared to optimize the start of revenue streams with the cost of construction.

zackattack• 16 years ago

Soon, humans will eclipse Hymenoptera in productivity.

antihero• 16 years ago

Lets just hope it doesn't fall over like that other one.

That said, it does remind me an awful lot of Total Annihilation when you get about fifty construction vehicles to make things damn near instantly.

goodgoblin• 16 years ago

I picked up one of these from IKEA, it took me over 2 weeks to put together.

jrockway• 16 years ago

I lived right next to a construction site a few years ago, and even "normally", some things move pretty quickly. The lot was a parking lot. One day, I looked out the window, and it was a pile of dirt with a fence around it. The asphalt was removed in a workday. Then the lot sat for a few months. Then a drilling machine came in, and they spent a few months doing something with that and some concrete, presumably some part of the foundation. Then when that was over, the workers got busy and constructed 7 stories of parking garage in a week. (That was when I stopped paying attention, because now the new building was blocking all light.) In another few weeks, the whole skyscraper was "finished". Then it sat around for a year, finishing the interior.

So my conclusion is that the hard part of building a building is not erecting the steel skeleton and pouring the concrete. It's the foundation and details that take all the time, and the article omits any details about how long that process took for this hotel.

Mithrandir• 16 years ago

There's also a sometimes interesting webcam of a building being constructed (obviously not this one) in Hong Kong: http://202.94.229.4:81/view/view.shtml?id=3418&imagePath...

whatrocks• 16 years ago

Someone sent this around the office recently in response to an email that the "coffee break room" renovation was going to be extended an additional four weeks.

vegai• 15 years ago

So?

China erects 15 story hotel in less than 6 days (video)

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