HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from 30-story building built in 15 days! Construction time lapse of J57, Changsha, China. Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

30-story building built in 15 days! Construction time lapse of J57, Changsha, China.

AI+R
Demos
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this demo1 month2012–2015 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Shared as a striking example of what prefab modular construction can achieve in speed.

Time-lapse of Broad Group erecting a 30-story prefabricated hotel (J57) in Changsha, China in about 15 days. The description touts modular construction's precision, speed and low waste.

“Super impressive timelapse” (HN, 2013)

1 recommendations · 2 citations · Demos · partly dated

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@ChuckMcM Nov 2012 Cites it
on HN thread World's tallest skyscraper to be built in just 90 days
Actually not BS, see the Broad Group's web site and their timelapse of the 'demo' project [1]. They don't count the time to put in the foundation and drive the pilings, just the erection part. That part consists entirely of lifting pre-fabricated sections in place, connecting pipes and wires, welding to the rest of the building and moving on to the next one. [1] [this video]
Timelapse showing prefabricated building erection
@reustle Jul 2015 Cites it
on HN thread On Full-Stack Startups
Read more
This format is painful to read, so I'm copying the content here. This is a series of tweets by [link] -- If you are using software to go after a legacy physical vertical, we are most excited if you do it "full stack" [0]. With @counsyl, we found that one cannot live by bioinformatics alone. So built a full clinical lab + software + national salesforce. Here is a video of our robotic genome factory: Also: insurance coverage, clearances, clinical integration... [1] The reason to do full stack is that it's hard to replace just one layer of an outdated legacy stack. CAC & integration costs can kill. For example, consider "restaurant powered by technology" vs "tech for restaurants". With code, reinvent industry and make better margins. You cannot automate something till you've done it manually many times. You cannot abstract an API till you've seen many specific examples. Need to build a site of the scale of [link] - and encounter all the problems - before you could do [link] . Reinventing agriculture? Build new kind of farm, w/ solar panels & self-driving tractors. Control all factors, show that code cuts costs. More examples of full stack startups.. Education: [2], Autos: [3], Hospitality: [4] By doing it end-to-end, you see things. First, sometimes a good reason beyond tradition (eg regulatory, logistical) for legacy practices. Second, your control of adjacent layers may eliminate the initial problem you were trying to solve. Analogous to: [5] Third, solving whole problem build
Tangential construction timelapse in a thread about full-stack startups

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close