Meet the Man Who Built a 30-Story Building in 15 Days

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/broad-sustainable-building-instant-skyscraper/all/

by mayop100 • 14 years ago

107 67 14 years ago

revelation• 14 years ago

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.

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.

dfc2• 14 years ago

If I have to choose between giant skyscrapers and massive suburban sprawl I will opt for the 100 floor elevator trip over the 15 minute car ride any day.

barrkel• 14 years ago

False dichotomy much?

I don't think skyscrapers (usually commercial use) are particularly correlated with suburban sprawl (residential use) one way or the other. You can have one with or without the other.

I think the gated / fortress mentality of upmarket high-rise accommodation is corrosive to a sense of community. I'm more in favour of walkable streets than either of short car or elevator trips.

olalonde• 14 years ago

High population density has a lot of advantages and it's actually one of the things I like most about China. I think most Chinese would dislike living in a low density area. In fact, when I show pictures of Montreal to Chinese/Hong Kong people their first impression is that "it looks boring".

mc32• 14 years ago

High density has advantages of scale, i.e efficiency. On the other hand, when things break, they break massively I.e. a power outage, a garbage strike, etc. Also, infectious diseases propagate faster.

Still, I would take density over sprawl, if push came to shove. I wish San Fracisco would adopt some of the Chinese practicality when it comes to urbanism --not the ugliness of the uniform apartment block buildings, but the allowing of change and growth.

ww520• 14 years ago

High density buildings are much more environmentally friendly than suburban sprawl. People need to travel less to work, shopping, seeing friends, thus less cars, less oil used, less roads needed to be built. Mass transit actually is profitable and sustainable. It's easier to build out network type of infrastructure. Broadband is easier to build and cell towers covers more. Services are centralized to cover more people, less fire house, less hospital, less police.

jseliger• 14 years ago

People need to understand this and often don't. If you're interested in the research behind the environmental friendliness and economic importance of density, see Edward Glaeser's book The Triumph of the City: http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...

smoyer• 14 years ago

I agree except for the "cell towers covers more" statement. Cell tower coverage is actually greatest in areas like Iowa. Cell towers could in theory cover more people in a dense city, but you end up putting in more towers for both capacity and RF reasons.

- Channel capacity remains approximately the same per user, so in high density areas, you need more towers.

- RF signals are heavily reflected and/or shielded by the vast "concrete canyons" of a modern city, so more towers are needed to eliminate shadows.

rayiner4• 14 years ago

Super-tall skyscrapers don't make much sense with existing technology, but there is plenty of residential skyscraper development in the US. My neighborhood here in Chicago has several under construction right now.

I'm not really sure why you'd build anything other than skyscrapers. They're extremely efficient, and high-density development saves a lot of money on road construction.

if_else• 14 years ago

It is mainly because of the infrastructures. It is a developing country with massive population, where the infrastructure is poor(er) outside cities. It is all part of cycle.

jarajelissa• 14 years ago

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.

dfc2• 14 years ago

The title was even more of a let down after the recent story about the man who single handedly carved road through a mountain [1].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4557726

zaidmo• 14 years ago

It's also what I expected when I read the title. I thought one man physically created the building (like the guy who carved the road in the mountain)

underwater• 14 years ago

Do you have a source for any on that? The article specifically mentioned elevators.

malandrew• 14 years ago

The images/schematics also show conduits for electricity and pipes for water and waste.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Well if you looked at the schematics for the sections it is conceivable that it is habitable. There is a company in the US doing homes somewhat like this [1] where the market is for building a house in a place with a limited building cycle (think mountain cabins). I've walked through the BluHome factory and met with their engineers, they pre-fab everything, when they 'build' it on site its basically an unfolding operation.

That said, the Broad building looks to have the necessary systems (perhaps not fire suppression) and it looks in the video like they build the crane into the building (which is sort of a waste of a crane) but it is "space." Now if he wanted to impress folks he could build two of those in Haiti for the folks who are still living in tents because their shacks did not survive an earthquake.

[1] http://www.bluhomes.com/

Devilboy• 14 years ago

Who pissed in your corn flakes?

riffic2• 14 years ago

"There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy." - Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language.

mjb• 14 years ago

Alexander then goes on to not present any real evidence. I know that the standards of evidence of low in fields like architecture, but it makes me sad to see people engage with important topics like this one using nothing but assertions and platitudes. Dense cities have many advantages, especially around energy effeciency and environmental footprint. If we are going to make the right decisions for the future of our species, we need to make them based on evidence. If we don't have evidence, we need to do research.

As much as I like Alexander's book, I wish people wouldn't buy into his opinions so wholeheartedly.

riffic2• 14 years ago

Yes he does: http://books.google.com/books?id=hwAHmktpk5IC&lpg=PA115&...

chipsy• 14 years ago

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.

yardie4• 14 years ago

Prefabbed homes already have a track record. They collectively sucked. Look at any disaster film following a hurricane or tornado and all the flattened houses were usually prefabbed trailer homes. The builders learned that lesson and started on something simpler, prefabbed freeways, bridges and conduits. But the damage has already been done. When you say prefab people think Hurricane Andrew and the acres of flattened houses it left behind. Maybe in another 10 years they'll be more common. For now, people aren't signing 20+ year mortgages so some builder can work out the kinks in their technique.

Evbn3• 14 years ago

Cheap wooden houses get blown away regardless of fab technique.

jacques_chester• 14 years ago

I've often wondered why more buildings aren't made this way.

There'll always be a place for one-offs, of course; and in prestige markets like NYC it'll almost always be so.

But a lot of the world's construction is really quite simple in requirements, and centralising manufacturing must surely make it more efficient overall.

This already happens somewhat for "big box" stores and warehouses, with some adjustment it just seems like an obvious step to me.

I'd be interested in hearing from construction industry experts as to why this isn't already the norm.

confluence• 14 years ago

The construction industry suffers from the same problem that most ERP Java shops and aerospace contractors do - the only way they can stay in business using their business model is to use cost-plus contracting (software/buildings/military jets) and customize the hell out of their products to rack up the largest bill/longest hours/institutional knowledge (it's their incentives - hence most software projects fail/military jet fiascos/building overruns).

This could also be because some of these programs are actually hard to make (and some are) but it's also due to the fact that they have to keep reinventing the wheel and don't transfer institutional knowledge/expertise across projects or scale out their time.

They'll pursue this through "lowest" bid contracts, sales teams, obscure knowledge (APIs/systems/building codes), "personal networks" and other inefficient and economically wasteful mechanisms to maximise their take.

Product companies don't have this problem.

Prices are non-negotiable, things must meet exacting standards, things must be standardized, their is no institutional knowledge and there isn't any customization.

You get what you pay for - and that's it.

Java shops and aerospace contractors are starting to meet their reckoning with the rise of SAAS apps and vertically integrated companies like Tesla/SpaceX/Solar city. Who wants a customized rocket when I can get an off the shelf fully tested and consistent Falcon 9 for ~$60 million (even less than what China charges)?

Construction is the next industry.

Products > services for the simple reason that they are more cheaply produced, easily sold, iterated upon and created.

nostromo• 14 years ago

All the components used to build a house are indeed created in a very efficient factory. The concrete, insulation, drywall, lumber, nails, electrical -- it's all been driven down in price by centralized manufacturing.

These components still use onsite assembly because of shipping costs. It's obvious why you can't easily ship someone a 1,500 sq ft house from China. Even shipping sub components (like say a wall) is more expensive than shipping someone a stack of 2x4s and some nails and paying someone to nail it together.

Prefab homes exist, but they are more expensive than traditional homes per square foot for nice homes that are bigger than a double-wide trailer, so they remain a bit of a novelty (in the US anyway). The fact that the market has yet to find a way to drive down the cost using prefab makes me wonder if onsite assembly isn't in fact the cheapest form of construction at our disposal today.

justin66• 14 years ago

> Prefab homes exist, but they are more expensive than traditional homes per square foot for nice homes that are bigger than a double-wide trailer, so they remain a bit of a novelty (in the US anyway). The fact that the market has yet to find a way to drive down the cost using prefab makes me wonder if onsite assembly isn't in fact the cheapest form of construction at our disposal today.

A narrower set of financing options for prefab homes exists as opposed to traditionally constructed homes. That leads to a pretty serious difference in demand, and an awful lot of the price difference might just come from that.

smackfu2• 14 years ago

Commercial construction uses a very different philosophy than modular construction. Modular construction uses boxes whose size is constrained by the highway system, and works best when all the boxes are the same. Commercial construction treats the whole building as a single structural box, and then the walls can be non-structural and easily moved around as demands and tenants change. Reconciling those two ideas is hard, since commercial tenants like that flexibility.

These videos of fast-builds are only for commercial buildings that are inherently and permanently modular, like hotels.

JoeAltmaier3• 14 years ago

From the article:

...hallways are uncomfortably narrow; climbing the central stairway feels like clanging up the stairs of a stadium bleacher.

It’s worth noting, though, that the majority of apartment buildings going up in China are equally ugly. Broad’s biggest selling point, amazingly enough, is in the quality.

bane• 14 years ago

I believe that in many cases they are.

http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog261/Brown_Seoul/images...

Drive around a modern city in Asia and you'll likely see kilometer after kilometer of cookie cutter apartment buildings, with building plans so simple, they could almost be replaced with stacks of cargo containers and a central elevator shaft.

I may be wrong, but I'd be highly surprised if there wasn't a tremendous amount of prefab on display here.

xyzzy123• 14 years ago

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.

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.

token784• 14 years ago

I don't believe that the objections come down to the principle of prefabrication itself, but the execution. In Europe and the Anglo-sphere, we've learned the hard way that when we try to regiment human lives to rigid efficient clean modernist boxes... it doesn't work and there are social consequences. Our buildings, our homes and our workspaces must conform to us, and not the other way around.

megablast• 14 years ago

I have trouble believing that social consequences are relieved through the unique designs of houses that people live in. But even that isn't the point, there is no reason that each house can't be unique and prefabricated.

token784• 14 years ago

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.

I can't help but think his promotional material might read suspiciously like the spam in my inbox: 'Big erections, FAST!'

IsaacL• 14 years ago

A while back I had two friends, one an architecture student, one a civil engineering student. They had some interesting banter:

Architecture student: if civil engineers had their way, all buildings would be square concrete blocks

Civil engineering student: if architects had their way, all buildings would be beautiful, and collapse in the slightest breeze

token784• 14 years ago

Hehe - I'm sure there's a middle ground somewhere!

grumblepeet• 14 years ago

I used to work in a civil engineering company and ran the intranet. The most secure part was the company wiki, which held all of the organisation's collective wealth about how to make things that wouldn't fall down, explode etc. They used this knowledge to help architects make buildings that would be safe, but were equally careful to ensure that none of this knowledge was ever transferred to other civil engineers.

I suppose this made perfect financial sense, but it does mean that there is no "collective knowledge pot" that people can pull against to ensure they don't make the same mistakes.

BTW in the wiki there were countless pages about concrete. Concrete pipes, concrete under water, concrete in a desert, concrete under stress, you name it. Ever tried tuning a search engine results page for concrete pipes?

Evbn3• 14 years ago

Anything tall is phallic?

lywald• 14 years ago

Why is the whole page refreshed when I click to see another picture?

And it seems all Wired articles behave the same. Annoying.

sixQuarks• 14 years ago

I know, I was wondering if it was just my browser or something.

bennysaurus• 14 years ago

Try adding '&viewall=true' without the quotes on the end of Wired URLs.

It is annoying though, a little bit of jQuery would fix it in about 5 seconds flat.

Aardwolf• 14 years ago

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.

josephlord• 14 years ago

If you live next door I think 15 days is the effect even if planning and part construction has been taking place for longer.

Also if the parts become standardised then maybe it really would count as 15 days.

smackfu2• 14 years ago

Yeah, usually they start the time-lapse videos after the foundations are dug, which seems like cheating.

noarchy• 14 years ago

Reading the article, I get the impression that working for this guy is similar to being a cult member:

"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."

intended• 14 years ago

I think this a good place to mention the Pullman riots - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike)

and George Pullman - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pullman

mhd• 14 years ago

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).

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Group

(links to e.g. http://www.broad.com:8089/english/down/T30_Technical_Briefin...)

tokenadult• 14 years ago

From the photo caption showing the existing (ugly) pre-fab skyscraper:

"Prefabricated skyscrapers can be inflexible. To create a lobby for this hotel, Broad had to stick an awkward pyramid onto the base."

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.

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

http://www.gostructural.com/magazine-article-gostructural.co...

http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&...

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.

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.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/...

(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.

AFTER EDIT: An interesting second-level comment below asked about

it looks in the video like they build the crane into the building (which is sort of a waste of a crane)

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.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/explainer/2012/05/tower_c...

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.

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,"

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

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.

flexie2• 14 years ago

I totally agree with your view on communist concrete buildings (I have to look at them every day).

But before we completely dismiss the idea of using prefabricated elements, consider the good old bricks, which are basically prefabricated elements that allow for enormous flexibility. Same with roof tiles.

To me it seems that prefabricated elements become a problem if they are too large relative to the building's total size. It's hard to make an interesting lego house using 200 lego bricks because the square shape of the lego bricks define the shape of the house. But if you use 20,000 lego bricks the shape of the building doesn't appear to be defined by the shape of the individual bricks. Sort of the same way fonts appear ugly on low resolution screens.

Prefabricated elements should be smaller.

JoeAltmaier3• 14 years ago

Assembly costs are already a major expense in large buildings. TO drive costs down, the prefab elements will be getting larger, not smaller.

Meet the Man Who Built a 30-Story Building in 15 Days

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