They Tried to Build the World's Tallest Tower in 90 Days

In 2013, a Chinese tycoon broke ground on Sky City: an 838-meter tower, ten meters taller than the Burj Khalifa, to be home to 30,000 people, with 17 helipads and a six-mile ramp, and to go up from factory-made modules in just 90 days. Within days, the work stopped. Two years on, villagers were raising fish in the foundation pit. Was Sky City a revolution in how we build, or the biggest stunt in the history of skyscrapers? We put it on trial. Watch Broad Group's original T30 time-lapse (30 floors in about 15 days):    • BROAD Group: Constructing the Record Break...   Chapters 0:00 The fish farm 1:15 The man in the jet 2:11 The earthquake 2:59 The time-lapses 3:41 Sky City 4:45 The numbers start to move 5:48 Groundbreaking 6:15 The halt 7:08 Limbo 7:39 Mini Sky City 8:38 The ending 9:26 The case against 10:17 The case for 11:05 The verdict Images are artist's reconstructions made with AI tools under human editorial control; narration is AI-generated. The T30 and J57 build sequences are our own animations, not original footage. Quotes are shown as text cards with their sources; some are translations. Sources Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, profile of Zhang Yue and Broad Group, Dec 2010 Keith Bradsher, "Across China, Skyscrapers Brush the Heavens," The New York Times, 28 Aug 2013 Jonathan Kaiman, Los Angeles Times, on Broad's 30-story T30 hotel, March 2012 Peter Ford, "China's city in the sky: just a fantasy?", The Christian Science Monitor, 13 Aug 2013 Jeff Rubenstone, "China Firm Plans To Erect World's Tallest Building in Seven Months," Engineering News-Record, 30 Jul 2013 AFP, "Work on world's tallest building stopped in China: media," 25 Jul 2013 (citing Xinhua and People's Daily) South China Morning Post, "Application to build world's tallest building in China not yet approved," July 2013 CTBUH 2013 Innovation Award (via BD+C, 9 Jul 2013) AFP, "'Build it and they will believe,' says defiant China tycoon," 16 Jan 2014 China Daily, 2 Jul 2014 (Sky City site a year on) Mingtiandi, "Changsha's Broad Group Builds 57-Storey Tower in Just 19 Days," 12 Mar 2015; Associated Press, 30 Apr 2015 Dezeen, "Foundations for planned 'world's tallest building' repurposed as fish farm," 20 Jul 2015 (citing Xiaoxiang Chen Bao) Scott Cendrowski, "How the world's tallest building got grounded in China," Fortune, 9 Jul 2015 China Youth Daily, "Changsha's 'world's tallest building' left hanging: its foundation became a fish pond," 29 Jun 2016 Mingtiandi, 9 Jun 2016 (Daze Lake protected wetland) Hunan Daily, 13 Oct 2025 (Daze Lake wetland park) UNEP, Champions of the Earth 2011 Aviation Week, 1997 (Broad's Cessna) Music: YouTube Audio Library. #SkyCity #Architecture #NeverBuilt