A 5-story building in China 'walks' to new location | Hacker News Reader

A 5-story building in China 'walks' to new location

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119 pointsmpweiher27 comments

In Chicago, they used to do this with people:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

My favourite example is the Indiana Bell Telephone Company headquarters in Indianapolis. It was moved 46m while operating, and retained connection to all grid utilities including electricity, gas, and sewage...

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/10/an-incredible-move-ind...

...using only 1930s technology.

In Seattle, they just modified buildings to have entrances on the 2nd floor, and raised the sidewalks, leaving the 1st floor as a basement.

Chicago has some of that too, northwest of downtown.

Yeah, you can find a lot of houses like that near Division and Milwaukee, more towards the Kennedy.

Would love to learn more about how they actually got the jackscrews under the building. Did they carefully knock out part of the foundation and placed the jackscrews there? What about the parts of the building that were not at the edges; did they place the jackscrews at the edges and then dug under the building and placed the other jackscrews there? The Briggs House illustration from the bottom of the Wikipedia article, seems to shows beams of wood or concrete/stone at the bottom of the building. Wonder if they were there from the start, or put there when the jackscrews were inserted?

The looping video of the "feet" is one of the most hypnotic and amazing things I've seen in a long time, at least given the context of what they are carrying. Absolutely incredible engineering.

I'm upvoting comments that mention the feet because that is the impressive aspect of this walking building. (Obviously, buildings have been moved or raised before.)

They also did this in Wellington, NZ in 1993:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Art_Hotel

the building was saved and moved instead of being torn down in order to preserve architectural heritage. From the outside the building doesn't look special.

One of my favorite places in Moscow [1], the Andreevskij Most, was moved from its place to new one to become pedestrian bridge (it was railroad bridge before that, I used to see fireworks from its heights).

[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B8... (Russian)

The move was big deal back then - the preparation took eight months and the move itself took hour and a half (for about kilometer of walking distance).

I like the view from there.

Similar stuff was done in Moscow (in Russian, but lots of photos): https://kak-eto-sdelano.ru/kak-dvigali-doma/

When I was a kid, I thought this was what happened when people said they were moving, that people would cut their house out of the ground and physically move it to where ever they wished

That's a nice mechanism. There are Self Propelled Modular Transporters for that kind of job, truck-sized platforms with all wheels steerable. Those can be ganged together to move just about anything you can get them underneath. This walking setup looks simpler in some ways. Less lift needed, and the power is external; note all the hydraulic hoses.

SPMT's are one of the more amazing things in the modern era. We are using them to move all kinds of things once thought not feasible, from bridges to rockets.

Yes. Here's another old building in China, this one being moved with some SPMTs.[1] Watch it turn a corner.

What's so useful is that they scale. Large numbers of units can be ganged together if necessary. Mammoet Heavy Lifting has 3000 units worldwide, although few jobs need as many as 100.

[1] https://youtu.be/PN4i6yjQdG4

Archigram’s Walking City http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/project.php?id=60

> there has been growing concern about the architectural heritage lost as a result of demolition across the country

Hardly looks like a building worth preserving. What am I missing?

"The Lagena Primary School, constructed in 1935 by the municipal board of Shanghai's former French Concession was moved to make space for a new commercial and office complex, which will be completed by 2023."

Australia's "heritage" buildings are pretty funny by comparison to Europe, or even the USA, when you think about the age of them. Never thought about China's being newer still.

Something similar, but much more impressive was done in central London with a much larger magnificent monumental nine-story Victorian building over a much larger distance... in 1983!

The video shows it all: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xyqxc?start=325

Interesting tidbit: Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Eric Idle and other famous actors worked in that building around the time it got moved.

City refactoring

Now why does this reminds me of the Luggage in Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories?!

A pyramid was moved once by cutting into pieces

You’re thinking of the Abu Simbel temples, perhaps? Those weren’t pyramids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel_temples#Relocation

So countries can now play real time factorio?

It looks amazing.

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