57 storey sky-scraper in Nineteen days ! @ '3 floors - a day'

The oft heard statement from people visiting any place after a long time, say 10 years is – ‘lot has changed – so many new buildings have come up !’. 

All of us know that houses do not come up in a week or a few days ! and buying an existing home is some compromise.  For middle class people, house has always been a dream ~ [in recent decades independent house has vanished with apartments themselves becoming costlier].   Chokkalinga Bagavathar did a commendable performance in Balu Mahendra’s ‘Veedu’ depicting the travails of a middle class family man bent upon building own house. 

When you plan to build a house on a vacant plot of land, there are so many variables.  The plan / blueprint is just the start – there will be so many plans and procedures.  Again, one can leave everything to a Contractor or get involved in everything.  If it is an old house, demolition too can be cumbersome.  Experts estimate that building a new house can take anywhere from five months to over a year depending on  the many  factors.  One can get overawed at the pre-construction period itself,  thinking of various permissions and the cost escalation.   Laying of foundation heralds the beginning of the project – clearing out, levelling, foundation laying all can take some time.  Then framing,  construction of walls, pillars, roofs and the like can take more months.  Once the physical structure gets ready [there will be some overlapping] – wiring, plumbing, interiors and finishing – all will take more months towards completion. 

At the construction stage, curing plays an important role on strength development and durability of concrete. Curing takes place immediately after concrete placing and finishing, and involves maintenance of desired moisture and temperature conditions, both at depth and near the surface, for extended periods of time. Properly cured concrete has an adequate amount of moisture for continued hydration and development of strength, volume stability, resistance to freezing and thawing, and abrasion and scaling resistance.

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According to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1973 it took, on average, six months to build a single-family home.   In 1980, that number was up to 6.9 months, and in 2009 it was up to 7.9. In 2013, the latest data available, it was back down to six months.  Another source of UK -  (2012) of Survey of Construction (SOC) from the Census Bureau shows that on average it takes about 7 months from obtaining a building permit to completing a new single-family home.

There are areas of Chennai which bursts with construction activity with tall buildings coming up so regularly ~ can you ever imagine building a skyscraper of 57 storeys coming up mere ’19 days’ at an astonishing ‘3 floors – a day’. 

How to build a skyscraper in NINETEEN DAYS: Time-lapse shows how Chinese firm builds 57-storey block at a rate of three floors a day.

MailOnline has this interesting report of a developer in China building  an entire 57-storey building in just 19 days.  The  time-lapse video shows, the Mini Sky City building was put up brick by brick at a rate of three full storeys a day in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in south-central China. The building has 800 apartments and enough office space for 4,000 people. It was originally planned to be built up to a height of 220 storeys, but it was cut down because of concern it was too close to a nearby airport.

The prefab construction, which has 19 atriums which are each 10 metres tall, is also environmentally friendly, claims the developer, as large sections were put together at another location and taken to the building site to be stacked on top of each other.  That significantly reduced the number of trips needed to transport the raw materials, they said.  In all, 15,000 fewer truck journeys were made, greatly reducing dust and fuel pollution.    The company behind the construction, Broad Sustainable Building, previously accomplished constructing a 30-story building in Changsha in just 15 days. 

The building was also constructed with China's pollution problem in mind, using quadruple-thick glass and tight '99.9 per cent sealed' construction. Broad claims that its technology is 'the most profound innovation in human history'.  While the rapid construction is eco-conscious, some online users have raised concern over safety.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

12^th Mar 2015.