The Mad (?) Genius (?) Behind China's Turbo-Prefab Revolution

Even though Broad documented building a 30-story building in only 15 days in 2011, when its plans to build Sky City, a 220-story mega-building in the provincial capital of Hunan Province, were announced earlier this year most readers (including yours truly) likely dashed it off as pure fantasy.

Well, it turns out we underestimated Zhang Yue, founder and chairman of Broad, a company whose core business is in manufacturing industrial air-conditioning units, and is now revolutionizing how skyscrapers are built. "So far," notes Hilgers, "Broad has built 16 structures in China, plus another in Cancun...The company is in the process of franchising this technology to partners in India, Brazil, and Russia. What it's selling is the world's first standardized skyscraper, and with it, Zhang aims to turn Broad into the McDonald's of the sustainable building industry."