alt Hacker NewsRobots move Shanghai city block [video]
Comments
If anyone is ever in Shanghai and interested in seeing this, it's in a very cool area called Fengshengli, where you can see these old preserved style warehouse buildings. The area is filled with hip breweries, coffee shops, bike shops, art galleries, and clothing boutiques, and it's actually not that crowded or busy compared to other touristy spots. It's also nicer compared to Xintiandi imo, where it feels more produced and fake, like a reconstruction as opposed to actual heritage buildings.
Great snapshot of classic Shanghai architecture, blended with new, like this really cool coffee spot: https://www.archdaily.com/973430/birdie-cup-coffee-fog-archi...
A few years ago they moved a (historic) train station where I lived. It needed to be moved for some underground tube construction, but also a few meters to make the new buildings fit. I witnessed, it was awesome.
https://www.e-architect.com/images/jpgs/leipzig/bayerischer_... / https://www.e-architect.com/leipzig/bayerischer-bahnhof-buil...
This title is misleading. It makes it seem like the robots did this autonomously, when in reality hundreds if workers were involved. The “robots” were “smart jacks” I would say. Humans couldn’t have done this without hydraulic jacks, they used fancy hydraulic jacks.
That's a nice approach. Here's a similar move back in 2020, again from the SCMP.[1] This one turned a corner.
The robotic part is that all the lifters have load measurement, probably in at least 3 axes, and report stresses to the controller. Other ways of moving big structures require getting big rigid steel beams underneath to make the building strong enough to move. Like these US building moves.[2]
I dont understand this. I always thought houses/buildings have underground supports on which the structure is erected. Doesn't have to be tall towers, all small buildings have underground support too.
How come these buildings don't have any of that? Or is the support in form of metal rods which these structures are freely screwed to?
There's a great video of the Amish doing this by hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc6IT5L3ZSk
This, and the few other famous photos and videos of similar operations, confuse me, because it violates my mental model of how buildings work. My mental model is that a modern building has a large, concrete foundation that extends significantly below the ground, and that the foundation is attached to the structural frame of the rest of the above-ground building. Then, how can jacks, whether manual or robotic, raise a building up off of its foundation?
Also, how can they scoot some, but not all, jacks over on any given step, and alternate? I understand that rigidity isn't fully binary, but I figured that buildings were on the more rigid side.
Changing the view of the Bellevue: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I52IwcC3a3c&pp=ygUaTW92aW5nIGJ...
I wonder if humanity in the future will make this a typical part of every house so that they can slowly move towards or away from water.
This is a tremendous engineering, coordination and public works feat.
Using words like "robots" and "AI" shows how much hype has taken over the latter two fields, with actual achievements being modest in comparison to the hype.
Here is an article that seems to be the primary source for the time-lapses: https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-WhatsNew/20250605/...
Wikipedia says building were being moved since 19th century. We also had a large-scale building relocation during Stalin's Moscow Reconstruction (basically, destroying beautiful historical houses to expand ancient curvy streets into straight wide roads) - some buildings were moved without cutting water supply, electricity and even with residents inside [1]. This probably was intended to showcase the achievements of Soviet engineering but judging by the comments here (and by English Wikipedia article on the topic) nobody even remembers this.
Personally I think that there should be no new construction in historical areas and there is no need to move anything.
Nothing new, a lot of landmark buildings larger than this were moved like this in the 1940s in Warsaw, during post-war reconstructions. 80 years ago.
This reminded me of that classic SpongeBob clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyn-0af_hlI
This is incredible -- serious question -- has anything of this scale been done in the US or Europe? Do we even have the technology?
In the first episode of Kyoryū Sentai Jūranger, the inspiration for the first bit of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the witch Bandora (Rita Repulsa) appears on Earth riding a flying penny-farthing bicycle, and terrorizes the people by shifting a bunch of Tokyo skyscrapers around to form her palace.
Seeing the time lapse of that whole city block being moved in one lump made me think of that. Very cool.
Reminds me of the Rinsdorf-Talbrücke in Germany, which got finished last month.
In order to renovate/rebuild the bridge they first built a new half (full lanes) next to the old bridge, collapsed the old bridge, then built the other half where the external half of the old bridge used to be, and finally moved the previously newly built half to join that latter new half, so that the new bridge can take the place of the old one, all of this while parts of it could still be used for traffic.
It is the kind of "German Engineering" which people used to talk about, but sadly our government didn't feel that this was an opportunity to do some proper PR. The Chinese have become experts at this kind of PR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iseMMVEEojk&t=23s