Architecture

World's tallest building to be built in only 90 days

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Chinese construction company Broad Group has announced ambitious plans to construct the world's tallest skyscraper in an implausibly swift 90 days (Image: Broad Group)
Chinese construction company Broad Group has announced ambitious plans to construct the world's tallest skyscraper in an implausibly swift 90 days (Image: Broad Group)
Broad's 30-story SBS prototype reportedly passed a simulated "magnitude 9 earthquake" (Photo: Broad Group)
The Sky Tower stacks up to the opposition. This image (and lower floor-count) dates back to a 2010 concept document (Image: Broad Group)
A sample floor plan and cross section from the 2010 concept document reveals the Sky City was previously a less ambitious project (Image: Broad Group)
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Chinese construction company Broad Group has announced ambitious plans to construct the world's tallest skyscraper in an implausibly swift 90 days. If the target is met, the 838-meter (2,750-ft) "Sky City One" will take only a twentieth of the time that the Burj Khalifa, the world's current tallest building, took to construct, and will stand 10 meters (33 feet) taller still upon completion. The secret to the rapid construction is prefabrication. Approximately 95 percent of the building will have been put together in modular form before work even commences on site.

Broad has form in the area of rapid prefab construction. The company, which primarily makes air conditioning, has already demonstrated its Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) concept, albeit at a much smaller scale. It built the 15-story New Ark Hotel prototype in one week and a 6-story demo pavilion in a single day. Broad is clearly confident that the SBS principle can be applied to the 220-story Sky City One, perhaps taking confidence from a 30-story prototype withstanding a simulated "magnitude 9 earthquake."

Broad has described Sky City One is a self-contained earthquake-resistant carless city which will not only accommodate approximately 100,000 people, but provide them with retail and leisure facilities too.

According to CNN the Sky City One will contain 1,000,000 sq m (10,800,000 sq ft) of usable floor space and its 220 floors will be connected by 104 separate elevators. Broad CEO Zhang Yue reportedly claims that the tower will consume only one fifth of the energy of a conventional building of its size (if you can call any building this tall conventional) due to sustainable design approaches built into the BSB concept including 15-cm (6-inch) thick exterior walls and quadruple glazing, both of which up Sky City's insulation.

CNN reports that the the Sky City One is projected to cost US$628 million: positively cheap when compared to the $1.5 billion Burj Khalifa. Work is due to commence on site in November 2012 with completion due the following January, though final approval from Chinese authorities is yet to be granted.

Sources: CNN, Broad Group

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26 comments
solutions4circuits
A full floor installed and finished out every 48 minutes?
$60/sq ft?
Quadruple glazing????
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
Fools - everyone knows that hexuple glazing is the new green thing nowadays.
Ryan Laursen
Hmm. Worlds Tallest Skyscraper is going to be built in China in 90 days! Why am I not excited about this?
Oh, maybe this is why... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pktM__i-8IQ
Grunchy
Remarkable achievement! Personally I don't care for such tall buildings. I live in a single floor bungalow, if a fire started I could probably jump out the window without getting hurt at all. Cruise ships are built with the same modular method, and nearly as fast - it's a triumph of Project Management. Eventually, we will create a gigantic sky scraper cube 1km x 1km x 1km consisting solely of cubic modules and will house 50 million people.
Russell Vonthien
"A full floor installed and finished out every 48 minutes?" Hmmmmm
Isn't it 90 days x 24 hrs x 60 mins = 129,600 minutes. Now 129,600minutes/220 floors = 1 floor every 589 minutes (or roughly every 10 hrs.)
MBadgero
Would be impossible without prefab, since the only real limit to vertical growth is the drying time of the concrete before it can support the next layer. With prefab and enough manpower it does sound possible. I wish them the best of luck.
Sambath Pech
Why would I entrust a company that builds air conditioners to build a 220-floor skyscraper......and in only 90 days?!
Slowburn
90 days doesn't sound like enough time to let the concrete in the foundation cure.
Scion
I would imagine the 90 day time is just to install all the prefab. So once the foundations are cured and initial services set up and all the modules built then it will take 90 days to put the tower together. I, like others here, doubt it would be 90 days from first breaking ground to the first customer walking in. Having said that, much of the cost and complexity of building is in building everything on site. By building it all in nice factories with air conditioning / heating and at ground level you can save a ton of cash.
solutions4circuits
@Russell - thanks...I slipped a decimal point in my head
JPAR
Excellent - cutting edge building technique meets century old skyscraper design. It's vile - I pity anyone working/living in this Orwellian nightmare.