[Hunted]

Reporting from Changsha, China— In early December, Liu Zhangning was tending her cabbage patch when she saw a tall yellow construction crane in the distance. At night, the work lights made it seem like day.

Fifteen days later, a 30-story hotel towered over her village on the outskirts of the city like a glass and steel obelisk.

"I couldn't really believe it," Liu said. "They built that thing in under a month."

A time-lapse video of the project in Changsha, which shows the prefabricated building being assembled on site, has racked up more than 5 million views on YouTube and left Western architects speechless.

"I've never seen a project go up this fast," said Ryan Smith, an expert on prefabricated architecture at the University of Utah.

In other countries, the most advanced prefab construction methods can reduce building times by a third to half, Smith said. The builders of the Changsha hotel did better, knocking one-half to two-thirds off the normal schedule.

"It's unfathomable," Smith said.

The warp-speed construction is a startling illustration of the building boom in China, where an exodus from the countryside to the cities has swelled the urban population by almost 400 million since 1990.

Skylines are peppered with cranes. Smog-choked streets echo with the pounding of jackhammers. Residential high-rises sprout like weeds in the plains between major cities, creating an endless sprawl along the country's east coast.

Link

[Cumulonimbus]

That's damn impressive.

[Brometheus]

yea.. and only 15 days.. WOW

[Ed Gein]

amazing.

[jdankens]

Very impressive.

China has the skilled labor force, infrastructure and suppliers to do things like this. We harp on 'higher education' in the U.S. but when you end up with millions of business and psychology majors it doesn't really do much for the country

Conversely:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pktM__i-8IQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[DannyDrama]

It's made in fucking China people, the thing will fall down in less time than they took to put it up.

[Faline]

Originally Posted by DannyDrama ↗

It's made in fucking China people, the thing will fall down in less time than they took to put it up.

lol

[xstunt1ngx]

How is that impressive if its in China? show me a video of African's doing this and then I'll be impressed.

[Pyramid_Head]

We need them here in America, takes us forever to build anything. Just look at the Freedom Tower in NYC.

[Brometheus]

Originally Posted by Pyramid_Head ↗

We need them here in America, takes us forever to build anything. Just look at the Freedom Tower in NYC.

lol i finally saw that thing last weekend.. at least we can say its ALMOST done. heck, i forgot about it, thought they decided not to build it. clearly i dont go to that side of manhattan much.