Gizmodo reader Xian Min Zhang just sent me this impressive timelapse video from his company's latest project: a 30-story tall, 183,000-square-foot hotel built in just 360 hours. Just 15 days! I kept watching it in disbelief.


It was erected near the Dongting lake, in the Hunan Province, China, by Broad Group, a Chinese construction company specialized in sustainable architecture. The building uses prefabricated modules (with a +/- 0.2mm precision in the fabrication process) mounted on a steel structure, with diagonal steel bracing.

The hotel is so solid that it can resist a 9 magnitude earthquake, as tested by the China Academy of Building Research (there's a scene in which you can see the testing process, at 1:49). They claim this is five times more earthquake-resistant than conventional buildings.


The company also says that it is five times more energy efficient, with 6-inch thick glass curtain wall insulation and four-paned windows with built-in shades, a heat recovery system and 3-stage filtration air conditioning process that purifies indoor air to be 20 times purer than the air outside. They even have air quality monitoring in every room which, given the pollution problem in China, seems to be an important selling point there.

Their previous record was a smaller 15-story building constructed in just six days, but this one is much more impressive. [Thanks Xian Min Zhang!]