What does it take to build a 57-story building in 19 days?
That's the equivalent of a building the size of New York City's famous Woolworth Building, which took three years to build over a century ago, and which was once the tallest building in the world. As you'll see in the following video of the construction of Changsha's J57 Building by China's Broad Sustainable Building Group, the secret is modular design and fabrication.
Some more notes on the advantages of this kind of construction technique from RealtyToday:
The Daily Mail notes that the developer of the project, Broad Sustainable Building, opted for a construction methodology that is not just innovative in itself, but is also very eco-friendly. Today, China has a growing concern over its air pollution problem.
The use of prefab materials that were manufactured in a separate factory off the site not just resulted to a quick process. It also paved the way for the avoidance of what was supposed to be 15,000 truckloads of cement to be hauled in to the site that could have brought forth an accumulation of unwanted dust particles in the air. The people behind the construction also used super thick glass, and made sure that the process is also sealed "99.9 percent tight".
We'll note that the other advantages of this kind of approach to introducing modern factory production methods to major construction projects like this will be higher levels of quality, because factory environments are much easier to control than outdoor construction sites.
Optimized to work with today's freight transportation systems, there's no reason that similar buildings couldn't start popping up in city skylines around the world and perhaps giving a whole new meaning to what we mean when we say that something was "Made in China".