Chinese builder puts up 57-story skyscraper in 19 days

A Chinese construction company is claiming to be the world’s fastest builder after erecting a 57-story skyscraper in 19 working days in central China. The Broad Sustainable Building Co. put up the rectangular, glass-and-steel Mini Sky City in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha using a modular method, assembling three floors per day, company vice president Xiao Changgeng said. The company, which has ambitions to assemble the world’s tallest skyscraper at 220 floors in only three months, worked on Mini Sky City in two spurts separated by winter weather.

With the traditional method, they have to build a skyscraper brick by brick, but with our method, we just need to assemble the blocks.

Chen Xiangqian, engineer at Broad Sustainable Building Co.

Mini Sky City, which has 19 atriums, 800 apartments and office space for 4,000 people, goes on sale in May. The structure is safe and can withstand earthquakes, Xiao said. Such modular approaches have been used for high-rise apartment blocks elsewhere, including in Britain and the U.S. Some critics say the method could lead to cityscapes with overly uniform architecture.

China Business