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Workers in blue overalls stroll from dormitory to factory across immaculate lawns.Ī clucking of geese from the company's extensive organic farm punctuates the hum of giant air conditioning units.īehind all of this is the man himself: Chairman Zhang Yue. Spread out over a square kilometre, it's home to 1,200 of the firm's 4,500 staff. Nor, for that matter, would you expect a 40m-high gold Egyptian pyramid.īut here they all stand at the centre of Broad Town, Zhang Yue's company headquarters. It's not a place you'd necessarily expect to find a replica of Buckingham Palace, with a bronze statue of Napoleon on horseback in front of it, sword raised in a heroic charge. It's where Mao began his political career, and you find his favourite dish at every corner - red-braised pork belly. You have to make exactly the same meal every time.”Ĭhangsha is known in China as a cradle of revolutionary Communist leaders, and as a hotspot for fiery cuisine. You have to be a like a chef in a restaurant. “You can't be like a housewife making dinner thinking: 'Oh let's add some soy sauce, maybe a touch more vinegar.' No. When you're building modular towers, you have to make sure every single detail is right before you begin. “That's a stupid way of thinking,” he says. That's the problem with pre-fabricated parts.”īut Zhang Yue scoffs at such talk. “I've been an engineer for 20 years, and I worry that if you run into problems while assembling a modular tower you can't fix them.

On a traditional bricks-and-mortar building site a stone's throw from Mini Sky City, civil engineer Chen Zhipeng identifies a different snag. He argues that reinforced concrete will continue to be the future of residential buildings, as anything under 30 storeys would cost too much - though he accepts that the Broad Group towers are structurally safe. An engineering professor from Beijing’s Tsinghua University, Zhang Jun, has been widely quoted in the Chinese media arguing that modular buildings have an Achilles heel - a tendency for water to seep in between the modules over time. He recently expressed exasperation at China's rush of avant-garde buildings that look like anything from ancient gold coins, massive teapots to huge pairs of trousers.īut whether Chinese consumers would want to live in an urban environment where many apartment blocks looked strikingly similar is another matter. Their simple, unadorned form may come as a relief to President Xi Jinping. “In Sky City, you can find anything you need from cradle to grave except a crematorium,” Zhang has written.īut how are his towers perceived in China? By living vertically, more land could be left in its natural state. People would live and work in the same building, so they would not need cars. In a building like the proposed 220-storey Sky City, with 30,000 residents, there would be further benefits, Zhang argues.

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“At that time, everyone was debating how to make safer buildings,” Zhang says. The death toll among children particularly - killed during lessons as schools caved in on top of them - gave rise to much soul-searching. Many Chinese people were appalled at how easily thousands of buildings collapsed. In May 2008, China was already gearing up for the big party that was to be the Beijing Olympics, when disaster struck.Ī powerful earthquake hit Sichuan province, killing 90,000 and leaving almost five million homeless. In fact, Zhang says safety is the very reason he got into construction, seven years ago. Can something built so fast really be safe? This last figure requires a slight caveat - the tower was built in two bursts: the first 20 storeys went up in a week in 2014, but red tape held up construction for a year, with the final 37 storeys completed in 12 working days in February.įor some, the speed of construction has raised a question. Newspapers in many countries have listed its eye-catching vital statistics: 19 atriums, office space for 4,000 people and 800 apartments, and of course the 19 days it took to build. Since the roof went on Mini Sky City on 17 February 2015, Zhang Yue's tower has attracted plenty of attention.Ī YouTube video about the building has been watched three million times.

China skyscraper fast