From Disaster to 26-Story Building in Five Days

Imagine a construction site so efficient that a 26-story apartment complex rises from bare ground to move-in ready in less time than most of us take to finish a decent vacation. That’s exactly what happened in Changsha, China, when BROAD Sustainable Building completed the Jindu Holon Tower in just five days starting January 7th, 2024—and it represents far more than a clever building hack.

The real story starts years earlier with tragedy. In 2009, a devastating earthquake shook Sichuan province, collapsing reinforced concrete towers that had seemed unshakeable. That disaster haunted the company’s founder, sparking a 17-year mission to reimagine how we build tall. The answer wasn’t pouring more concrete—it was abandoning concrete altogether in favor of modular stainless steel construction.

Here’s how it actually works: Instead of months of concrete pouring and on-site welding, BROAD Group manufactures entire apartment modules in a factory in just 21 days. Each unit arrives fully loaded—plumbing, windows, HVAC, lights, kitchen cupboards—measuring 12 meters long, 3 meters high, and 2.4 meters wide. Workers simply stack these stainless steel containers like giant building blocks, bolt them together, and connect the utilities. No welding needed. No concrete disasters. No three-to-five-year timelines that plague traditional construction in cities like New York or London.

The structural secret is B-CORE, BROAD Group’s patented stainless steel sandwich design that gives the building extraordinary tensile strength and ductility. According to Andrew Zimman, marketing director at BROAD Group USA, the company made the switch to stainless steel about five years ago after recognizing its mechanical properties extended far beyond corrosion resistance.“That’s why we chose stainless steel for our load-bearing elements. We’re the first to do so.”The result is a building that will bend rather than break if another magnitude 8 earthquake strikes.

But here’s where it gets really clever: when the building’s useful life ends, there’s no demolition. The entire structure simply unbolt, unstacks, reloads onto trucks, and drives away. No excavators, no dust clouds, no landfill waste, no gas-guzzling cleanup crews. That’s a game-changer for municipalities managing zoning restrictions or insurance companies calculating disaster risks.

BROAD Group already has projects in the pipeline for Ohio, Texas, and California, plus work underway in the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. Like the world’s great suspension bridges, stainless steel performance suggests there’s no particular height ceiling—as long as there’s design and demand, these buildings can keep climbing.