This was in November, but I just figured maybe some people don't know about it so here I posted . I personally found this pretty amazing. How the hell did they do it that fast, and why? The first thing that came to mind was how safe this building is - since it was built in such a short amount of time. But in the article in bold it states that it can withstand a mag. 9 earthquake. Hmm makes me wonder what other achievements China will come to accomplish. They sure are developing hella fast As the United States and China battle over the finer points of currency manipulation at the G-20 summit, American negotiators may want to take note of this startling testimonial to the productivity of Chinese workers: A construction crew in the south-central Chinese city of Changsha has completed a 15-story hotel in just six days. If nothing else, this remarkable achievement will stoke further complaints from American economic pundits that China's economy is far more accomplished than ours in tending to such basics as construction. Meanwhile, it's easy to imagine the disorientation of Changsha residents who'd gone away, or who just hadn't recently ventured into the downtown neighborhood of the new Ark Hotel: "Honey, I don't remember a hotel there, do you?" The work crew erected the hotel -- a soundproofed, thermal-insulated structure reportedly built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake -- with all prefabricated materials. In other words, a crew of off-site factory workers built the sections, and their on-site counterparts arranged them on the foundation for the Ark project. Despite the frenetic pace of construction, no workers were injured -- and thanks to the prefab nature of the process, the builders wasted very few construction materials. In the link below there's a youtube video that shows the hotel being built from the ground up in less than a week. Credits: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upsho...workers-build-15-story-hotel-in-just-six-days
@Cameron: Dam those pics are mad nice.. OMFG i can't wait to go to Shanghai. Crazy how they developed over the years..so perty
here is a comment from a developer: 1. They didn't show any excavation, which is when all the pipes and services are laid underground. This takes a lot of time. Construction time should include this stage. 2. They used pre-fab concrete, which is when concrete slabs are pre-made off-site and assembled on site. This severely limits the design of the building, allowing only a simple, (and boring), building. Poured concrete on site needs time to cure. 3. They worked around the clock, which may not be very efficient. Using 6 cranes when one would have been sufficient, multiple shifts of workers, night-lighting, all result in needless additional costs. In my opinion, more a publicity stunt than serious construction design. The technology has been around for years. I would think that if it was a good idea to build this way, more people would be doing it
It is never the productivity of the Chinese workers per se, but rather, the Chinese system; if you transplanted said Chinese workers to the US, they wouldn't even be able to get the proper permits within 6 months, much less actually build. Many overseas Chinese take pride in Chinese labor (I guess out of ethnic affiliation or solidarity), even as they loathed to actually have to toil under such a system themselves. I recall that years ago, when the PRC first opened up, Hong Kong factory owners moved their plants to Shenzhen, where the cost of labor was cheaper, but more importantly, where they could skirt the restrictive worker safety rules that were in effect within the former colony. Productivity (and profit of course) rose dramatically. Both sets of workers were obviously Chinese. But if anyone even hinted that this was evidence that mainland Chinese were somehow more productive than HK Chinese, I'm sure there would be an immediate hew and cry forthcoming. Further, in this instance, the lack of worker injury (if one is to believe the article) certainly isn't a testimony to superior Chinese worker safety rules or protective equipment. Given the Chinese reputation as a nation that persistently and pervasively eschews worker safety for expedience, I would chalk that up more so to serendipity than actual effort. If I were being confrontational, I would ascribe it to a party orchestrated cover up and that the real site injury or death figures were purposely hidden as "state secrets" never allowed to see the light of day. One has to realize that China has not yet matured to be a nation that feels comfortable publicly talking about its failings or shortcomings to the degree that western nations routinely do. This has as much to do with state manipulation as it does with nationalism. The one thing that Americans have over the Chinese is that even though they feel pride in and for their nation, they don't feel the need to cover up or defend US misdeeds under the charge of 'America Bashing' or anti-Americanism. This construction exercise immediately reminds me of the RyugYong Tower Hotel in Pyongyang. It stands under a primary purpose of propaganda, and all else are secondary. There are many things the Chinese worker can honestly take pride in (example): [video=youtube;IkM4F77dgAs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkM4F77dgAs"[/video] This hotel is not even in the same league. The hotel reminds me of the Chinese Olympics, where a excessive number of players were brought to bear to put on an extravagant and expensive show. While it was going on, it was great face, but at a cost that some would consider obscene. Further, their claim of 15 stories with pre-fab being able to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake seems a bit of a stretch. While pre-fab constructs have been known to withstand lateral forces (events with much smaller buildings at much lower levels of tremor), with each additional story, the degree of seismic stress is markedly amplified. Since pre-fabs are essentially bolted together, there is no reinforced concrete to hold the structure together. While the builders in this case claim the ability to withstand a magnitude 9 event, I seriously doubt it based on the design limitations of the construction. At three or four stories, yes. Maybe even at seven or eight. But at fifteen floors, the amount of lateral movement would likely exceed the strength of the materials used. That is, the steel bolts would literally snap and the building would fly apart. Further, how much transmission of the seismic event through the earth to the building itself is also wholly dependent on the intrinsic geologic character of the building site; some sites would act to dampen the effects of a quake whilst others may serve to amplify the shaking. For example, building on solid granite is safer than building on mud flats. During a quake, the rock shakes a lot less than soft damp earth (which is akin to a sitting atop a giant bowl of jello). Thus, maybe this type of construction may theoretically withstand a level 9 quake only because it was built on ground that would make it feel like just a level 5 quake.
thanks how china can prove they have tons of man power. similar event they held during the olympics of 2008 where they had lots of people putting a show together were as the vancouver winter olympics didnt have as many people
the trains are a disaster waiting to happen. thanks again to low quality > high quality. cheap and numerous as main goal. they used low quality fly ash and their life span is cut in half, at best. way to go mainland. SOURCE: 'Judgment day' fears for high-speed rail tracks Stephen Chen Jan 10, 2011 Construction of the mainland's massive high-speed rail network is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. The breakneck speed at which track is being laid means engineers are likely to have to sacrifice quality for quantity on the lines' foundations which could ultimately halve their lifespan. The problem lies in the use of high-quality fly ash, a fine powder chemically identical to volcanic ash, collected from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants. When mixed with cement and gravel, it can give the tracks' concrete base a lifespan of 100 years. According to a study by the First Survey and Design Institute of China Railways in 2008, coal-fired power plants on the mainland could produce enough high-quality fly ash for the construction of 100 kilometres of high-speed railway tracks a year. But more than 1,500 kilometres of track have been laid annually for the past five years. This year 4,500 kilometres of track will be laid with the completion of the world's longest high-speed railway line, between Beijing and Shanghai. Fly ash required for that 1,318-kilometre line would be more than that produced by all the coal-fired power plants in the world. Enter low-quality fly ash. Professor Wang Lan , lead scientist at the Cement and New Building Materials Research Institute under the China Building Materials Academy, said that given poor quality control on the mainland, the use of low-quality fly ash, and other low-grade construction materials, was "almost inevitable" in high-speed railway construction. And that could have fatal consequences, Wang said. With a catalytic function almost opposite to that of good fly ash, the bad fly ash could significantly weaken railway line foundations and shorten a railway's lifespan by about half. That would mean China's high-speed rail tracks would last only 50 years. But Zhu Ming - a researcher at Southwest Jiaotoing University's School of Civil Engineering who experimented with fly ash at a Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway construction site last year - was even more pessimistic. The use of low-quality fly ash would threaten the safety of rail passengers and "judgment day" might come sooner than expected, Zhu said. "Quality problems with Chinese high-speed railways will arise in five years," he said. "I'm not talking about small problems, but big problems. Small problems such as occasional cracks and slips that delay trains for hours have already occurred. Big problems that will postpone an entire line for days, if not weeks, will come soon. "When that happens, the miracle of Chinese high-speed rail will be reduced to dust." The 2008 study conducted by Yin Yaxiong , senior engineer at the First Survey and Design Institute of China Railways, concluded that though China produced more than 100 million tonnes of fly ash a year, only a small fraction of it would meet the quality requirements for high-speed rail construction. In high-quality fly ash, the presence of unburnt carbon is extremely low. Coal-fired power plants with large, advanced furnaces are the main producers, but on the mainland, especially in less developed provinces, there are few such power plants. Most fly ash on the market comes from small or medium-sized plants whose furnaces cannot achieve full combustion, therefore producing low-grade fly ash with higher levels of carbon. The unburnt carbon in fly ash seizes water molecules. Cement needs lots of water for the chemical reaction that makes it set and harden. Wang said that the bad fly ash competed with cement for water and messed up the reaction. "Without an adequate ... reaction, high-speed rail is lying not on a concrete foundation, but sand," he said. Reports about the widespread use of low-quality fly ash in high-speed railway construction began surfacing in mainland newspapers in 2007. Undercover journalists followed fly ash convoys from power plants to railway construction sites in various provinces. Their reports generated a public outcry, prompting the Ministry of Railways to team up with the Communist Party's Propaganda Department in ordering newspapers to kill all reports about low-quality fly ash related to high-speed railways. Some journalists received threats. Some lost their jobs. Since the 1950s, Chinese civil engineers have tried to use fly ash in building construction, and the dangers of low-quality fly ash are widely known. In a bid to ensure that only high-quality fly ash is used, the Ministry of Railways has set up testing laboratories at major construction sites. But fly ash suppliers sidestep the testing process, according to a Beijing-based journalist who spent three months investigating them during construction of the Guiyang to Guangzhou high-speed railway line last year. He requested anonymity. Arriving at a railway construction site on the Guizhou-Guangxi border with a convoy of trucks carrying low-quality fly ash produced by a small coal-fired plant, the journalist said he saw the trucks drive directly to a cement mixing facility and unload straight into it. "No sampling, no testing and no questions asked," the journalist said. When that was completed, the convoy leader entered a building nearby with a bag of fly ash that he had in his pocket. In the temporary building was a small laboratory and in the bag was high-quality fly ash. The man handed the laboratory clerk the bag for sampling - with an envelope containing a bribe - usually 10 to 20 per cent of the fly ash price, the journalist said. Zhang Shuguan , deputy chief engineer for the Ministry of Railways, told Xinhua last month that the speeds on high-speed railways would reach 500km/h by 2050. But Zhu said the average speed of trains on Chinese high-speed railways would probably decrease. The system must endure the daily, if not hourly, grinding and twisting of heavily built passenger trains travelling at 350km/h, Zhu said. Such operations would significantly speed up ageing of the railways. Some people had already urged that operations be slowed down to save the lines. "We will need luck to maintain 250km/h for long." he said. CRH (China Railway Highspeed) 中国高速铁路 - Page 35 - SkyscraperCity
This is because the workers in China actually work! Here in Australia it took 10+ years to build the Ernst and Young building in Sydney Chinatown area, when if it was in China the building would have been completed in 2. I know the HK Yoho towers in Yuen Long was done in about 1 year (a little more), and that looks more spectacular than EY. Workers in other countries strut around in their worksites, too much focus on worker safety and their "needs" rather than productivity.
Here's a couple pictures of what Shanghai should look like by 2020ish... I suspect by 2050 Shanghai is going to be the most impressive looking city on earth... it's urban planners are doing an amazing job.
