2011

Instant Skyscraper

In the United States and many other countries, it can take quite a bit of time to build a skyscraper. For example, Freedom Tower—the new building at the site of the 9/11 disaster—took more than a decade for design and construction. Admittedly there was a lot of emotion involved in the design process and it was not the easiest construction site, but a decade is still a long time. Most skyscrapers take well over a year to build.

In 2011, a Chinese company named Broad showed a pathway to a completely new construction paradigm for skyscrapers: Nearly the entire building is engineered to be pre-fabricated in a factory, shipped to the site in modules, and then assembled on site in a few days. Using these techniques, the company erected a 30-story hotel in just 15 days.

Because it is pre-fabricated, much of the work can happen in a factory environment with standard parts, out of the weather. For example, floor modules are standardized steel sections reinforced with trusses. The concrete is poured, tile laid, ceiling and fixtures installed along with all utilities—plumbing, HVAC, electrical, etc.

At the construction site, there are only a few things left to do. The posts that support the building are all standardized and prefabricated. So posts go in, then floor sections, then posts, then floor sections, and so on. Standardized windows and exterior wall panels are attached. Then workers quickly erect all of the interior walls

Because the building is standardized, it is easy to erect many of them. And they can all contain the same engineered features like extreme earthquake resistance, energy efficiency, and air filtration. These features would be expensive in a custom building, but in a building like this, economies of scale and standardization bring prices down.

The company has plans to use the same engineering ideas to build the world’s tallest building—taller than the Burj Khalifa—in just 90 days. It is easy to imagine engineers around the world applying these modular ideas to many different construction projects in the future.

SEE ALSO Empire State Building (1931), Earthquake-Safe Buildings (2009), Burj Khalifa (2010).

Chinese workers manufacture steel frameworks to be used to build the thirty-story Ark Hotel in the city of Changsha, which was constructed in fifteen days by Broad Group.