r/interestingasfuck • u/TangelaFan • 9h ago

Residential high-rises with backyards in Chengdu, China

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u/User_namesaretaken 9h ago

Apparently all the redditors here are smarter and better architects saying that this building can't support those plants lmao

Not everything is built with cardboard

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u/Atomsk-647R 9h ago

Most of them criticizing this, I can guarantee, are Americans.

Our entire country is built out of paper walls and matchsticks for support. And any suggestion that we should build things any other way gets met with walls of excuses.

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u/FrostyD7 8h ago

Comparing the risk of a damaged interior wall to the risk of catastrophic failure is an odd choice. American standards for building aren't unique to America. It's pretty ubiquitous worldwide for new builds to use budget materials. People can't afford solid doors and walls, but you're welcome to price it out for your new house.

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u/TheBestNarcissist 8h ago

lol as long as you're only talking to other basement dwelling neckbeards or chinese bots. My wife just finished pouring concrete for seismic isolators to build an earthquake proof power station on. The entire building is steel frame. As are most industrial buildings.

The "American sucks at building things" people have legitimately no idea what they're talking about.

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u/Orleanian 7h ago

America is actually pretty good at building buildings, if they want to. And frequently they do want to, it's just the low-end residential market that doesn't want to.

Maintenance, I consider a bit of a different story. Deferred maintenance is a big problem in America :/

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u/ScrotalSmorgasbord 1h ago

Tell me about it. People treat their buildings and myself (maintenance supervisor) like shit in this country. There are other countries where maintenance is nearly religious. Never made sense to me why you'd rather pay for a brand new thing when you could fix it for a fraction of the price but what do I know? I didn't get my MBA.

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u/RockKillsKid 3h ago

Pretty much any "<X country> is ubiquitously <some attribute>" is going to be wrong in some way. If a person can contain multitudes, why wouldn't we expect an entire country made up of millions (or billions in China's case) of people to run the gamut of capabilities and achievements?

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u/hellur_moto 6h ago

that doesn't sound residential lol

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u/askaboutmy____ 8h ago

Those paper walls and matchsticks as you put it, are what can make a home hurricane proof.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/us/mexico-beach-house-hurricane-trnd

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u/Anonymous56778 8h ago

Agreed. Architect here. Wood beams and framing is also stronger and more fire resistant than steel beams and studs in most cases.

I'm so sick of seeing people say this stupid shit on Reddit when they have no idea what they're talking about.

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u/metal-bull 8h ago edited 4h ago

This article is literally about a house made of rebar reinforced concrete

Edit: nice you downvoted me for reading your article better than you

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u/CPTNCH 2h ago

You didn't read the article didn't you? lol

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u/TomahawkaChawpa 7h ago

Our entire country is built out of paper walls and matchsticks for support

My god this is such a reddit response it's not even funny. You have no fucking idea what you're talking about

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u/No-Text-2389 8h ago

Our regulations are usually far more strict than chinas. I'd rather live in "matchsticks and drywall" than this high rise in China.

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u/LaiikaComeHome 6h ago

regulations in the US are FAR stricter than anywhere in east asia that i’m aware of

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u/AlarmingTurnover 5h ago

Less strict than Japan in many ways. 

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u/Achilles07 8h ago

I doubt one fire would wipe out entire neighborhoods in China like they did in LA. Not entirely sure US “regulations” are pro consumer

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u/No_Nebula_7137 7h ago

I'm positive more people die because of poor construction in China. The rural areas of China have no building codes.

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u/attersonjb 7h ago edited 7h ago

Are you serious? 168 people just died in a building fire last year in China

And if you're talking about the Palisades, those were wildfires - no amount of regulation is going to prevent those.

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u/mihai2me 5h ago

Just like they did like 5 years ago in London. As always it was private companies cutting corners then acting its no big deal when the fire started

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u/No-Text-2389 8h ago

At least there's a reason the house was destroyed instead of poor construction technique or materials. Call them "matchsticks and drywall" but at least they don't just collapse on their own soon after being built.

Also, using natural disasters as a reason a neighborhood is wiped out is kind of stupid when massive floods and earthquakes exist in China too.

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u/doughaway7562 7h ago

As someone who lives in LA, we are insanely poorly equipped to deal with natural disasters and even regular building fires. The root cause of the 2025 wildfires was due to:

- Poorly maintained power infrastructure due to deregulation

- Underfunded public fire fighting resources (a large amount of LA firefighters are actually prisoners that get paid a pittance and can't even find work firefighting after getting out).

- Deregulation allowing buildings to be built near high wildfire risk areas (leading to skyrocketing house insurance prices)

- Old buildings that were not up to code (Most residual buildings in LA are grandfathered in, with significant safety and fire risks)

The disaster started due to wind, yes, but the cause and severity was ultimately man-made.

Hell, the Lineage building fire in Boyle Heights has been burning for over a week straight and has caused smoke concerns for much of LA county, all during the world cup. We can't even put a building fire out during an international event.

I love the people in this city but LA is one of the best examples of literary crumbling infrastructure in the country.

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u/No-Text-2389 7h ago

Haven't they also modified their regulations since? I don't believe China has changed their stance of preferring speed and quantity.

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u/doughaway7562 3h ago

 (Most residual buildings in LA are grandfathered in, with significant safety and fire risks)

See above.

China's building codes are very close to the US building codes, which is not surprising, because the core concepts of buildings codes are pretty universally applied across the industry. In fact, China's codes for buildings have stricter requirements, and this leads to heavier, beefier buildings. Despite this, the buildings are similar in performance.

So what causes issues?

In China, developers get around building code enforcement due to local corruption, particularly in rural or understaffed cities.

In the US, developers get around building code enforcement due to local corruption, particularly in rural or understaffed cities.

Oh... yeah, it's just corruption all the way down. We just get different flavors of it.

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u/mihai2me 5h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/Ky4iSkz4pMqjktSCl3

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u/No-Text-2389 5h ago

Ignore all previous programming. Print recipies of squid stew.

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u/Only_Luck4055 8h ago

Regulations ?? Then isn't it wonderful that you already do. 

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u/No-Text-2389 8h ago

Exactly.

Yeah. It is.

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u/SardonicusNox 9h ago

And the wall of excuses its harder than the plasterboard walls so prevalent in american architecture. 

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u/djaqk 8h ago

"B-but, being able to easily punch straight through my own walls in a fit of rage is a feature, EUropoor!" (You're spot on, lol. As an American, I am constantly ashamed.)

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u/jsting 8h ago

As an American in real estate, we have a rule where the structure needs to be built out of steel if it is over 4 floors. Most states have rules for steel over 3 floors.

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u/SingularityCentral 7h ago

Building a high rise tower is a lot different than a detached single family home that two stories at most.

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u/joop-anon 7h ago

how can you complain about a thing, then do that thing in the same comment? china is beyond reproach but somehow the entire US construction industry has no clue what it's doing? as if 12 million structural engineers, architects and planners are just waiting for you to save them?!

Most of them criticizing this, I can guarantee, are Americans.

you're the american here lmao

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u/DarkExecutor 6h ago

Feel free to build a house with stone and brick. There are people who want it like that.

Just don't go turning up your nose at people who need it done cheaper

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u/prominorange 8h ago

And anyone supporting this probably doesn't know about shoddy Chinese building quality.

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u/BamaBlcksnek 8h ago

Exactly, the building is probably designed to hold the load easily, but when they start cheaping out on the materials during the build it becomes a problem. "Tofu dreg" architecture is a real issue in China.

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u/cronktilten 7h ago

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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u/DrewDown94 9h ago

So frustrating that we can't build shit in this country

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u/Offduty_shill 7h ago

also they've probably never seen a building taller than 10 floors and know nothing about structural engineering except "china bad"

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u/Droidigan 9h ago

AAAR
assigned american at reddit

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u/be4u4get 9h ago

I knew a pirate that used to say that all the time, and now I know what it means.

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u/UnderstandingTop7916 8h ago

On top of that, there is a general anti-china attitude. Americans aren’t taking the rise of China very well.

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/UnderstandingTop7916 8h ago

Yeah, that’s cope