What’s the deal with that building anyway? Built on land fill or something? Piers don’t seem to have done the trick.
The deal with the building in the picture above is (among other things):
-They had permission to put up n buildings of m floors on the site, and they actually built n+x buildings of m+y floors on the site.
-Between the time they started the project in late 2006 and when the building fell over car ownership in the area grew at an amazing rate. The peeps in charged realized that more cars = more demand for parking spaces, so why not add parking spaces that could be sold off to meet the demand? They started construction of the underground parking lot AFTER the buildings on top were finished. The dirt was piled “high-side” on the south side of the site.
-This construction site is bordered by a canal to the north. The day before the collapse a barge had crashed into a retaining wall causing soil to “low-side” out into the water.
IIRC a couple of the guys running the company behind this mess got life sentences in prison, which is proof that China actually does some things right. I’d had words with one of them over a separate business transaction and right off I could tell he was as honest as the Pope is Muslim.
Back on topic, as I said above it’s quite possible the hotel was built properly and according to code in under a week. But no way was it done without foreigners having a significant role.