China Will Build the Tallest Building In the World in Just 90 Days

According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013. Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days!

It's not a joke. According to the construction company, the skyscraper will be built in just 90 days at the unbelievable rate of five floors per day.

It's hard to believe, but they claim the building has been designed by some of the engineers who previously worked at the Burj Khalifa. It is also the same firm that built a full 30-story hotel in 15 days—which yes, is still standing and in perfect working condition.

Foundation work is beginning at the end of the month, once the Chinese authorities give the final go ahead to the project.

Pre-fab magic

They will be able to achieve this impossibly fast construction rate by using a prefabricated modular technology developed by Broad Sustainable Building, a company that has built 20 tall structures in China so far, including the that 30-story hotel.

Since they built that hotel, the company has been perfecting their technology, which they are now claiming will turn their project into the world's tallest skyscraper in just three months. That's a whooping five floors per day, which seems just absurd. According to Construction Week Online, the company is very serious about it. The senior VP of the Broad Group, Juliet Jiang, has publicly said that they "will go on as planned with the completion of five stories a day."

Record numbers

Unlike the Burj Khalifa, the tower will be mostly habitable. Its final height will be 2,749 feet high (838 meters). Compared that to the Burj's 2,719 feet (829 meters), which include the spire at the top resulting in a total of 163 floors.

Sky City will use an astonishing 220,000 tons of steel. The structure will be able to house 31,400 people of both "high and low income communities". The company says that the residential area will use 83-percent of the building, while the rest will be offices, schools, hospitals, shops and restaurants. People will move up and down using 104 high speed elevators.

The record figures don't stop there: in addition to the 90-day construction time—as opposed to the 210 days initially reported by the Chinese media—the company claims it will cost $1,500 per square meter as opposed to the Burj's $15,000 per square meter, all thanks to the prefab technology.

They also claim it will be able to sustain earthquakes of a 9.0 magnitude and be resistant to fire for "up to three hours," as well as be extremely energy efficient thanks to thermal insulation, four-panned windows and different air conditioning techniques that were already used in their previous constructions.

To be honest, it all seems like a tall tale to me—no pun intended. Although the credentials of the company seem to be quite serious, one thing is to build a 30-story hotel in 15 days and the other is to built the largest skyscraper in the world in 90 days. It just boggles the mind. Maybe it was April's Fool in China yesterday.

Whatever it is, we will discover it in March. If it's confirmed, the time-lapse videos are going to be epic. [Broad Sustainable Building via Construction Week Online]

Update: These are the company headquarters in China. They call them Broad Town. Yes, that's a huge pyramid at the bottom.




Written By: Jesus Diaz

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5962070/china-will-build-the-tallest-building-in-the-world-in-just-90-days

What's the Deal With Atlantic Yards' Modular Construction?

This week, Forest City Ratner broke ground on the next phase of the Atlantic Yards, a 32-story residential tower known as B2, which will be the world's tallest modular building. It will have 363 residential units and 4,000 square feet of retail space, which is great and all, but what exactly does modular construction entail? To get some answers, Curbed spoke with John Dolan, a project executive at Skanska USA Inc., the general contractor on the project, who worked with SHoP Architects, structural engineer Arup, and consultant Xsite Modular.

How does prefabricated construction work?
Much of what is happening today began 20 years ago. We're pre-manufacturing elements of the building off-site, whether it's a pump, piping or valve that that may be put on a truck, shipped to a job site, taken off a crane or a forklift, bolted down to a floor and connected to other pre-manufactured elements. That has been going on for years.

This is a much bigger project. What's different?
We're taking a frame, we're calling it a chassis, our largest is 36 feet long by 14 feet wide and 10-foot tall, a steel tubular frame that will house all the elements of a single studio apartment or a portion of a multi-room apartment. We have drywall framing, the light fixtures, all the appliances and all the details in bathrooms, down to the toilet paper holders on the wall, in the factory, packaged up and shipped over. The chassis are built at steel fabricators manufacturers. They'll ship those to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and then to Atlantic Yards. For the most part, one chassis will be on one truck. In some cases, two small chassis will be on one truck.

How much do you save compared to conventional construction? How much faster is it?
We estimated that it's around 12 to 15 percent in savings based what we think our effectiveness will be. We hope it'll be better than that. It does provide tangible savings, because we're producing it around four months faster than conventional construction. We expect to be done in 18 months. The conventional construction would have been 24 months.

How does the prefabricated structure compare to a normal building?
There is a denser collection of material. The overall building is lighter. Our column spacing is tighter than the normal 25 by 25-foot column grid. Our column grid is every 14 feet, but I don't want that to sound like a detriment. It's very strategically laid out so the columns are not noticeable. Most of the transitions are done in the doorway and archway. You don't see the columns; you don't know the steel columns are in the walls, although they may be wider. It's not as noticeable because we have laid out the apartment where they're concealed inside the wall.

How has new technology helped this process?
We have relied heavily on 3D modeling in the past to ensure our mechanical and electrical piping all had space. This particular project is taking the modeling effort to a new level. Everything that will be produced in a factory will be on a drawing. What we don't want to have happen is have factory production stop to try to find the dimension for something like a light switch. Everything has to be done in the model.

What impact will prefabrication have on the construction industry?
New York City building trade unions have worked very closely with Forest City Ratner and Skanska. I've worked with unions throughout my 30-year career. It’s an opportunity to evolve. We all want it to pay the bills. I think it's better for the industry that we find strategies to build elements and entire projects offsite to minimize the amount of construction that occurs on the work site. The Atlantic Yards site is very difficult to navigate around. We're reducing the amount of activity. There will be fewer trucks.

Have you done any modular buildings before?
Skanska has already completed a modular data center up in Quebec, Canada for Telus, a communications company. It was partially manufactured in Danbury, Connecticut by a mechanical contractor. Some of the technical aspects of the data center were shipped out from Wisconsin. We're building a second data center in British Columbia right now, same process. We've also done modular in Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio.

What's your outlook for the future of prefabconstruction?
This will be the first of six million square feet that Forest City Ratner has committed to the city of New York. We hope this will be something we can do around the country. As a national builder, we are in nearly every state and this is a valuable system for any client. I'm expecting to go beyond the borders of New York and New Jersey.

—Roland Li
Interview has been edited and condensed.

Source: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/12/19/whats_the_deal_with_atlantic_yards_modular_construction.php