When it comes to building a large building from one day to the next, China's construction companies are unrivaled.

When workers in Wuhan built a hospital with beds for around 1,000 Covid 19 patients within eight days in February 2020, it caused an international sensation.

Another lightning-fast construction project is now making a name for itself: In Hunan's provincial capital, Changsha, a ten-story apartment block called Living Building has grown in a little more than a day - and is ready for occupancy.

Birgit Ochs

Responsible editor for "Wohnen" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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    According to the client, the Broad Group, it is the “world's shortest construction time” for buildings of this size. That is not all. From the modules that were used, a skyscraper up to 200 floors high and thus living space for an entire village could be created in record time, the company claims in a video that shows the construction in fast motion.

    That sounds cheap, and also a little dubious when you know that the Broad Group announced a 200-storey high modular tower back in 2012, but which was never built due to static imponderables, among other things.

    For Roland Bechmann, board member of Werner Sobek AG in Stuttgart and chairman of the high-rise association CTBH Germany, this is too simple a judgment.

    "The project is not a blueprint for building in Germany, but it puts a finger in the wound," says the engineer.

    Because in this country building is generally too slow and too material-intensive.

    "Large-scale projects in the city center with construction times of one and a half years are an enormous burden for the surrounding area." The living building can accordingly be seen as a contribution to the discussion about how things could be done differently.

    Urban planning reference?

    Nothing!

    After the unsuccessful building of the tower almost ten years ago, the Broad Group invested in the development of its special modular system. It looks like this: Standardized, container-sized modules made of stainless steel with the dimensions: 12.19 meters (length), 2.44 meters (width) and three meters (height) are used. They can be stacked and connected by folding down the walls. The balconies are also folded out. Supply lines and electrics are already in the walls, the interior work is finished when the units come to the construction site, where they basically only have to be screwed.

    Urban development relation to the environment? Nothing. In China it doesn't matter, in this country it does. Even with the eight-fifteen floor plans and the standard equipment, it would not be possible to make a start on the local market. The sound insulation will not correspond to the German standard. And steel doesn't exactly sound like breathable walls and a good indoor climate. The module structure is still interesting. The walls and floors are each made of two stainless steel plates that separated hundreds of small stainless steel pipes. Thanks to this sandwich system, the panels are ten times lighter and a hundred times stronger than conventional floor panels, the company claims.

    Nobody in Germany would come up with the idea of ​​building a high-rise from steel modules. The building material is more expensive than in China, where it is produced with high emissions but also in large numbers. In terms of the life cycle, steel does better than concrete because it can be melted down and recycled, but it lags far behind wood. Accordingly, the building material from the forest is the first choice for local module builders. In this respect, too, the “living building” is not a prime example of residential construction. But “building leaner is something that our construction industry must continue to work on,” says Bechmann.