Video shot in April of 2010, documenting the construction of Broad Pavilion at 2010 Shanghai World Expo

WEI TIAN (China Daily)

Broad pavilion, one of 17 corporate pavilions at the Shanghai Expo, was completed within 24 hours. provided to china daily

Group builds 6-story energy efficient Expo pavilion in less than a day, presenting a model for the future of residential communities, offices and hotels

Rome wasn't built in a day, but a Shanghai Expo pavilion can be as contractors proved this month by having the Broad pavilion up and running in just 24 hours.

The Broad pavilion was the 17th and final corporate pavilion at the Expo site.

"We've been preparing for two months, but producing the prefabricated parts took us less than a week," said Fu Lixin, the man in charge of the six-story, 3,200-sq-m pavilion.

"This is the way to build houses in the future. The building itself will be the largest exhibit at Expo," Fu said, adding that most of the floors were completed within 30 minutes and the job finished by 10 pm the same day.

Broad, the world's largest producer of non-electric (lithium bromide) air conditioners, wanted a structure to exemplify its trademarks of innovative technology and sustainable development.

Pavilion plans were delayed after Broad was named the official global partner of the Shanghai 2010 Expo in January 2009, but were finally realized in a race-against-the-clock construction project on March 6.

The finished product is an L-shaped, brick-and-steel structure that rises 20 meters. The bricks were delivered from the group's home base in Hunan province.

Designed to save energy and be environmentally friendly, the pavilion will only consume 20 percent of the materials used by other pavilions of a comparable size, while consuming just one-sixth of the energy of similar-sized pavilions.

It is also designed to minimize site waste. With construction waste accounting for 20 to 30 percent of urban refuse in modern cities, the pavilion uses prefabricated materials brought directly from Broad's factories to trim its waste to 1 percent. As the entire structure is assembled from prefabricated parts, it can also be dissembled and reused after the exhibition.

Expo pavilion built in 14 hours

This is the fourth building of its kind the group has built over the past eight months, including an apartment block, hotel and office. Broad president Zhang Yue said the company is planning to construct 30 more buildings overseas and another 15 in China, including a 50-story hotel in Beijing, using the same construction methods.

Zhang is also deputy president of the sustainable building committee of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and is part of a UNEP team working to decrease energy and materials consumed by construction projects worldwide by 80 percent.

"We're still looking at lowering the energy consumption in our buildings," Fu said. "Our next goal is to totally rely on non-fossil fuels, by which I mean clean energy such as solar and wind power."

The earthquake that devastated parts of Sichuan province in May 2008 put China's construction industry in the spotlight, especially its use of shoddy materials and thin walls lacking steel support beams. Similar tragedies in Haiti and Chile in recent months have again drawn attention to the importance of building safety.

Sustainable buildings, although built more quickly and with fewer materials, are safer than regular concrete buildings, said Fu. On Nov 11 last year, Broad produced a 1:4 scale model building that could withstand a 9-magnitude earthquake, according to tests conducted by the China Academy of Building Research.

"There were two reasons for the building's success. First, the components were connected by screw bolts, which gave it more flexibility than traditional steel structures, which are welded together," Fu said.

"Another key point is the weight. Normal concrete weighs about two tons per square meter, whereas sustainable buildings only weigh 500 kilograms per square meter."

Chinese buildings are usually designed to last from 50 to 100 years. However, steel structures such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, built for the 1889 Paris Expo, have proven they can stand the test of time. Given the proper maintenance, sustainable buildings can last for up to 1,000 years, Fu said.

Not bad considering such structures only cost an average 20 percent more to build.

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