The latest jaw-dropper in China: prefab skyscrapers that are green and gigantic
The Broad Sustainable Construction company has announced that it plans to break ground on Sky City, a 220-story, 2,750-foot skyscraper in a remote field in Changsha, China in June this year—and aims to finish erecting the final story by December.
That may sound insane—and it kind of is. But BSC's building, Sky City, isn't like other skyscrapers. It's a prefab building—soon to be the world's biggest—which means all of its parts are manufactured to spec and pre-packaged for (relatively) easy assembly. The component parts are mass produced in modular factories, so yeah—BSC is hoping that this Sky City will merely be the first of many. ...
If it succeeds, it will be a loaded feat indeed: Made-to-order skyscrapers bigger than any the world's ever seen–that's resource- and energy-efficient to boot–may well become a hot commodity in our quickly urbanizing world—remember, by 2030, the UN expects 5 billion people to live in cities. And once they're there, we're going to need space to live. Cheap, massive skyscrapers may be a viable option.
Obviously, there are concerns aplenty, and not just with the structural soundness; the reliablity of a 2,500 foot city manufactured in 3 months. There's a more distant concern that this may not be the most pleasant way to live; stacked atop one another, separated from open air and nature. Plus, that cookie cutter aesthetic could eventually sap the architectural diversity of the cities of the future, and turn our most notable population hubs into towering Levittowns.
Or maybe it's exactly what we need, with resource consumption and energy use spiraling out of control. Maybe our best hope is to churn out a host of massive, identical, self-contained Sky Cities to house the booming population—maybe this is the future of how we'll live on a teeming planet.
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| Sky City One compared to Chicago's skyline |
