The 15 story Ark Hotel that they built onsite in 6 days uses 53 kg of steel and 43 kg of concrete per square meter and a total 320 kg of all materials per square meter. They give comparisons to existing landmark buildings in China.
Buildings use 50% of the raw materials used each year in the world and 40% of the energy. Radical reductions in material usage and rapid increases in building energy efficiency will have a hugely beneficial impact on energy and the environment.
The 15 story building uses 30 kilowatt hours per square meter each year for heat and air conditioning.
Broad has already built the 50 Story (163 meter tall) Horizon hotel in Beijing.
After looking at the planned 200 story (666 meter tall) Sky city plans they plan to spend 4 months pre-making the building and spending 60 days (3.3 floors assembled per day) assembling it on site. They also indicate that the system can enable up to 8 floors to be built per day. They built the a six story expo pavillion building for the Shanghai 2010 expo in 1 day.
The first building built using these methods was a three story building on August 21, 2009.
Conventional buildings create approximately 200kg square meters of construction waste, and the construction of a 50,000 sqm. building generates roughly 10,000 tons of garbage. Construction waste comprises 30-50% of the total city garbage, and the transportation of building materials and dust generated on construction sites account for 10-30% of city air pollution, and also consumes and pollutes a large percentage of urban water resources.
The factory mass produced skyscraper has a dust free worksite and almost no construction waste.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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