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Lofty plan builds on pioneering technique
 ©Reuters
Broad Group, a Chinese company best known for making air-conditioners, is drawing up plans to build the world’s tallest skyscraper in just three months, using prefabricated blocks that are slotted together like Lego bricks.
Broad describes the construction technique as “the most profound innovation in human history”. Others wonder if “reckless” might be more apt. But Broad is deadly serious and, having completed a reassuringly solid 30-storey building in a mere 15 days last year, maybe its skyscraper dream is not so crazy after all.
If built, Broad’s tower will reach 838 metres – 10m higher than the world’s current tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. While the Burj took nearly six years to complete, Broad wants to build its 220-storey skyscraper at a rate of about two storeys a day.
Since announcing the plans in June, Broad has encountered heavy scepticism, with questions about whether it will be able to obtain government approval, funding and, last but not least, the technical expertise needed for such an ambitious project.
But in an interview with the Financial Times, Zhang Yue, Broad’s chairman, said all the pieces were coming together. He said financing was in place, architects were putting the finishing touches to the blueprints, engineers were producing a model for earthquake tests and construction was slated to begin in December.
One local investor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he doubted that Zhou Qiang, Communist party chief of Hunan province where Broad is based, would sign off on the skyscraper plans because the risks of a disaster were just too great.
But Mr Zhang was not worried. “We’ll definitely get approval. It’s just a question of timing,” he said from the factory that will be used to make the building’s main structural components.
Mr Zhang is among the most successful of a breed of hard-driving entrepreneurs who have emerged in China over the past three decades of rapid economic growth. Through a combination of native wit, confidence and good timing, they have built large companies from scratch and many are now looking to expand into more complex business lines.
Founded with $3,000 in 1988, Broad had long focused on producing non-electric central air-conditioners. It made its fortune when constant blackouts in the late 1990s boosted the appeal of its products, which are powered by alternative fuels such as natural gas. The company has since become one of the world’s biggest air-conditioner manufacturers.
But Mr Zhang, a wiry man who seems incapable of sitting still, wanted more. After watching buildings crumble during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed nearly 70,000 people, he decided that his true calling was construction.
“We’ve always thought that there are lots of problems in construction. It’s a very dated, backwards industry,” he said. “Lots of industries are very high-tech these days but not construction and we wanted to fix that.”
Mr Zhang’s big idea was to take the concept of prefab homes, common throughout suburbs worldwide, and to scale up dramatically.
In workshops on the factory campus of Broad Sustainable Building, thousands of workers weld and hammer away, creating standardised floors and walls in 15.6-by-3.9 metre blocks, which are then carried by flatbed trucks to construction sites where they are quickly hoisted into place.
Whether a 30-storey hotel or a 220-storey skyscraper, the component pieces are all identical; they are simply stacked higher or lower depending on the size of the building.
Mr Zhang says this technique is nothing short of a revolution for the construction industry, reducing building costs and minimising environmental harm.
Outside experts are somewhat more restrained, but Broad is still getting plenty of attention, helped along by the nearly 5m views that time-lapse videos of its lightning-quick construction methods have attracted on YouTube.
“There is limited precedent for prefab high rises. I think it is a modest innovation,” said Kiel Moe, a professor of architectural technology at Harvard University.
Asked why Broad is setting its sights on constructing the world’s tallest skyscraper when the company has achieved only 30 storeys, Mr Zhang downplayed the significance of the target. “A lot of people think that this is just being done as a showcase project. In fact, it’s really just a normal building for us. We are using the factory construction process that we have pioneered, only this building is going to be a little bit higher,” he said.
Mr Zhang said his bigger point was to prove that skyscrapers are the most efficient solution for housing the world’s growing population, because they concentrate so many people on such little land. His plan is to build the 220-storey tower on the rural outskirts of Changsha, a city in central China with a population of 7m.
Dubbed the Sky City, the building will have schools, hospitals, homes, stores and offices. More than 30,000 people will be able to make their lives in it, moving about in its 104 lifts without any need to travel elsewhere by car, Mr Zhang said.
Mr Moe of Harvard said a skyscraper in the middle of the countryside was a rotten idea from both an urban planning and an ecological standpoint. “Such fantasies have never proved to work and most are utter failures,” he said.
Scurrying to a meeting with architects, Mr Zhang was not easily dissuaded. “There is not enough innovation globally for dealing with climate, pollution and resource problems. Our plans are the most concrete, the most realistic.” |
