Remember Broad Sustainable Building, the Chinese firm that put a 30-story hotel up in fifteen days? The web is abuzz with news that BSB is now planning to erect the world’s tallest building. The Sky City building, located in Chinese provincial capital Changsha, will top out at 838 meters.
The Burj Khalifa, currently the world’s tallest, tops out at 828 meters. But whereas the BK took five years to construct, BSB is projecting they can put Sky City up—all 220 stories of it—in just three months.
The big question is, How? The answer is the same as with the 15-day hotel: Pre-fab. As CNN’s Shanghai branch reports,
The key to achieving such stunning speed is an innovative construction technique developed by BSB. Most of the company’s buildings are pieced together with prefabricated components from its factory. In this case, 95 percent of Sky City will be completed before breaking ground.
[BSB CEO Zhang Yue] said Sky City is expected to consume a fifth of the energy required by a conventional building due to BSB’s unique construction methods, such as quadruple glazing and 15-centimeter-thick exterior walls for thermal insulation.
The company’s construction methods also seem to save money. According to Chinese newspaper 21 Century Business Herald, the total investment in Sky City is RMB 4 billion (US$628 million), compared with US$1.5 billion on Burj Khalifa and US$2.2 billion on Shanghai Tower.
BSB expects the building will go up in January 2013. If it does, Dubai shouldn’t feel too bad about losing the World’s Tallest Building title; at least they can point out that the as-yet-undisclosed architect of Sky City, according to BSB, hails from Dubai himself.
Read more here:
Pre-Fab Construction Methods Mean World’s Tallest Building Will Take Just Three Months to Build
