http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5787150_cranes-removed-sky-scrapers_.html
“…Usually the large crane will hoist up a smaller crane that is connected to the top of the skyscraper. This allows workers to detach pieces of the primary crane and slowly lower them back down to the ground…
To remove the second crane, a third crane is often sent up, even smaller, to lower the pieces of the second crane down. This third crane is small enough to be taken apart by hand and removed through elevator shafts or other inner passageways…”

(image source)

Which is itself, lowered in pieces by…. a crane-lowering-crane-lowering-crane?

Which is itself, lowered in pieces by….

All products that are NOT from Germany are potentially dangerous, health hazards and of low quality.

If I had to pick a century for good architectural design and workmanship, it would be 1820-1920, but up to 1940 was mostly good.

Broad is also a leader in high-efficiency air conditioning. Their previous proposal for a 666m building (the new construction will be 838m) used their existing AC equipment to filter outside air to 20- 100x cleaner than outside air. By using air-air heat exchangers to reclaim heat, it replaces inside air with filtered outside air 5-10 times per hour at an air conditioning cost of only 205kWh per month per 660 square foot unit (61.3m^2). Total energy use for such a unit will be about 460kWh per month, counting in common spaces, elevators, lights, AC, ventilation and over 100kWh for miscellaneous appliances.

These are going to be very light units, too – 82 lbs./sq.ft. (400kg/m^2), 24.5 tonnes per 660 sq. ft. unit. The floors are steel with just 3cm of concrete. 96% of the steel scrap gets recycled at the factory. On-site construction waste is less than 1% of the mass of the building, factory waste is less than 4%.

120 m^2 of floor and 120^m of ceiling can be transported in a single truck load, (with plumbing, electric, and HVAC pre-installed)  together with all the walls, windows, doors, columns and braces. When building hotels,  major furnishings are pre-installed.

The truss structures are optimized and scale-tested for severe earthquake resistance (level 9), with short diagonal braces of the same size as the main members welded into all corners.

One of their six Chinese factories is 1.33M m^2 (14.7M sq.ft.) and produces 10M m^2 of skyscrapers per year (3.86 square miles). The factory does 93% of the labor, allowing faster and cheaper construction.

The production cost is about $50/ sq. ft., the sales price is about $75/sq. ft. ($785/m^2). A 660 sq. ft. unit would cost less than $50,000. (1/6 to 1/3 typical Shanghai prices)

The technology is available for license world-wide; Broad hopes to get about 10 joint-ventures per year over the next few years. Costs for an exclusive regional franchise are $34 million for a population of 10 million and $50 million for a population of 50 million.

One neat statistic that I always like was, if you can accept a population density equal to Manhattan, you can squeeze all 7 billion of us humans into a square 350 miles by 350 miles (or 550×550 km).  That would be such an epic city, and you would have the rest of the world freed up for reserves and food production.

It’s not so much the actual construction that concerns me, it’s the fact that they are planning to complete it in record time for far cheaper than any other comparable structure.

Yeah, we should have never built the Empire State Building, either.  Four and a half stories of riveted ironwork a  week?  Far too risky!  Better to sink into an idle stupor on the couch.  Hey, Beastmaster‘s on!