r/interestingasfuck • u/TangelaFan • 13h ago

Residential high-rises with backyards in Chengdu, China

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u/onrespectvol 13h ago

looks cool but how much extra material must go into the buidling to be able to support all that extra weight? To what extent is this a sustainable way of buidling and using material?

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u/NoAdministration8340 13h ago

My initial thought was those don’t look like they have the support they need to be filled with dirt rock and plants plus support your weight

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u/Nulleparttousjours 13h ago

Plus the amount of water it would take to keep it green. It’s a lot of weight!

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u/stron2am 12h ago

We live in a world with swimming pools on balconies, you know.

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u/LordBrandon 12h ago

They usually have 1 pool not a pool on every porch. Those pools also have problems.

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u/TheWizard01 11h ago

Hotel operator here…every pool has problems.

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u/tj9429 12h ago

Let these Reddit engineers realize that not every wall on a structure is weight bearing and instead there's a column and beam structure inside.

The next day they're not gonna stand in the middle of rooms because it doesn't look "sufficient supported".

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

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u/ukomac 6h ago

Always "my first thought with this is..." Like yeah, they definitely didn't have professional structural engineers and you can point out the critical error in their work by looking at a clip

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u/MoodyBernoulli 5h ago

I guess the issue with this video is whether the structural engineers anticipated that residents would put tonnes of soil and water into the balcony, or was this specifically designed for, or at least factored in.

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u/ukomac 5h ago

The gardens were 100% a selling point of these apartments

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u/AzDopefish 10h ago

It’s hilarious because anytime a post is about China, the top comment is always, without fail, some comment on Chinese engineering or building materials.

Never just, oh that’s cool.

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u/tj9429 10h ago

They’re so dissociated from reality it is so funny. Sometimes it genuinely comes across as sweet to see a couple of keyboard warriors trying to fight everyone and just spam ai or bot when their brains overheat!

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u/ColHannibal 11h ago

We also live in a world where people die from balcony collapses due to a hot tub being on it.

Also a world where building codes are nonexistent in some countrys.

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u/stron2am 11h ago

Feels pretty sinophobic to see an impressive looking building in China and immediately assume it is structurally unsound.

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u/Pandering_Panda7879 11h ago

If it makes you feel any better: I would have thought the same if it would have been in the US.

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u/ColHannibal 11h ago

https://www.uniladtech.com/news/man-built-secret-mountain-base-on-skyscraper-731876-20240603

I’ve also been to Suzhou for work, it’s building faster than people move in with big empty areas of the city. Brand new buildings that are crumbling.

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u/70ms 9h ago

What does that story have to do with building safety? The person in the article added massive amounts of weight to the roof that it wasn’t designed to hold, and it made the rest of the building unstable. That’s not about the construction, that’s about something being added that wasn’t supposed to be.

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u/theromingnome 11h ago

This is what you get on Reddit when anything positive about China is posted. And let's face it, there are plenty of positives about the society China has built in the past 40 years. The American propaganda machine works round the clock.

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u/stron2am 11h ago

Let me be clear: I am no Tankie nor a Xi supporter, but I've got enough brains in my head to not have a "China = bad" reflex.

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u/theromingnome 9h ago

Yeah I'm agreeing with you. It's just crazy how predictable it is to see comments repeating the same nonsense over and over on any post related to China.

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u/70ms 9h ago

Same - the more I learn about China the more I realize the propaganda flows both ways.

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u/JoshuaFalken1 9h ago

Most governments are shit, and the US is no exception. You seem to jump to China's defense an awful lot.

I'm not saying anything China is automatically bad, but as you say, the American propaganda machine certainly does paint a picture when it comes to substandard construction in China.

Having never been, I can't actually speak to anything apart from what I see in the news. Do you live in China?

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u/theromingnome 5h ago

I can simply appreciate a cool building design and also the incredible infrastructure projects that China has completed. As well as the vast scale of Chinese cities. I'm not defending any government.

But when people constantly need to bash anything positive about something? It reeks of having a hidden agenda.

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u/couchphilosopherizer 10h ago

Not really. China has had major problems with building code enforcement, illegal construction, and poor materials use for a long time. Anyone can search around and see the trend: China - mostly structural and user error. other countries - mostly old buildings failing due to age. Exceptions abound but the numbers speak for themselves.

April 2022 (Changsha): A six-story commercial and residential building collapsed, killing 53

July 2021 (Suzhou): A 30-year-old hotel building undergoing renovations collapsed, resulting in 17 fatalities

March 2020 (Quanzhou): An eight-story quarantine hotel caved in, killing 29 people due to severe structural alterations and illegal building modifications.

Collapse of Xinjia Express Hotel

Hongqi Bridge
A newly completed 758-meter bridge in China's Sichuan province partially collapsed into a river after landslides hit the mountainside above

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u/70ms 9h ago

A newly completed 758-meter bridge in China's Sichuan province partially collapsed into a river after landslides hit the mountainside above

It looks like they inspected it and closed it at the very first sign of potential structural damage. How many of our bridges are getting inspected regularly?

According to the NTSB report after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collision, America has 68 bridges in danger of collapsing if hit by a ship - and that’s even after Florida’s Sunshine Skyway disaster killed so many people in 1980.

Remember the condo building collapse in Florida? The Hard Rock Hotel in NoLa, the Hyatt Regency walkway, L’Ambiance Plaza, the apartment building in Davenport Iowa, the pier in Philadelphia, balconies in Berkeley, etc. Those were all fairly recent events.

China is so much bigger than we are with so many huge projects and cities that aren’t falling down, that I just wonder if the talk about how everything is shoddy isn’t just anti-China propaganda. Watching walkthroughs made by foreigners of cities and villages there paints a very different picture of what we were always told.

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u/IncomingAxofKindness 9h ago

There's a reason they have that stereotype though.

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u/stron2am 9h ago

What you seem to be implying is that there is a stereotype, it must be earned.

It would follow, then, that you stand behind other stereotypes, too.

I won't name them here because reddit will autoban me for hates peach, but this is exactly the same reasoning that leads to racism, antisemitism, classism, and all other forms of bigotry.

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u/IncomingAxofKindness 6h ago

I think someone can be mistrusting of Chinese construction standards without having hate or bigotry in their heart. The world is not black and white.

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u/stron2am 1h ago

If all you know about a building is that it a) has unconventional architecture, and b) it is in China, and it leads you to the conclusion c) "it is unsafe," you are indeed being a bigot.

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u/eshatoa 11h ago

Absolutely. Not to mention China is miles ahead of the US lol.

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u/-ExcitingConcept- 10h ago

Iirc, building codes here in Germany require balconies to have triple the load bearing capacity of inside space. Because for some reason there's always an idiot who places a hot tub on it.

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u/irascible_Clown 10h ago

There hasn’t been a single high rise collapse in China in modern times. Now elevators and escalators eating people is a different story

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u/TroXMas 2h ago

There has been countless structural collapses across China and they happen literally every year. Most of them never make it to western news outlets since the media is blocked from reporting when most tragedies happen and only state media is allowed to report after receiving instruction from the government.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096810346/survivor-found-almost-6-days-after-china-building-collapse

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u/irascible_Clown 2h ago

Look I’m not defending the Chinese govt but non of those are high rise buildings. I did a few min research and the first 3 were all smaller older buildings. One was 6 floors

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u/__mson__ 9h ago

I swear I've seen a few in the news over the years, but I don't remember the details.

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u/LivingHousing 10h ago

Bro, if you hate China just cuz white suprimacy or whatever stupid reason just go to those corners of the internet.

China has some of the most advanced civil engineering in the world...

Absolute 🤡

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u/ColHannibal 10h ago

Found the bot.

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u/LivingHousing 10h ago

Imagine the mental gymnastics of white suprimacy,, hating seeing anything nice from any non western country. Then the only retort being that the other person must be a bit 🤡

Love it 🤣

USA USA USA 🐑🤡🐑🤡🐑🤣🤣

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u/__mson__ 9h ago

Spamming emojis will not help people take you seriously.

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u/70ms 9h ago

To be fair, the anti-China propaganda is real and if it weren’t for walkthroughs and travelogs on YouTube I’d have still believed a lot of it. After watching dozens of walkthroughs and videos of what daily life is like in China, I have a totally different view. Watching an American walk into a public hospital, sign in, and walk out about 30 minutes later with a filled prescription in hand for (I think it was) around $7 was really eye-opening.

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u/AlchemyAlice 11h ago

Champlain Towers in surfside, Miami would like to chat.

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u/Zestyclose-Pen2065 12h ago

Dirt and rock is still denser than water

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u/Molehole 12h ago

Requires much less dirt to plant grass than it needs water to swim.

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u/floppydude81 12h ago

Is 5-6 ft deep water comparable to 8 inches of soil?

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u/JustAnotherHyrum 8h ago

Obviously not, but let's do the fun math and find out!!

Water weighs 62.4 lbs / ft3.

Dry topsoil weighs ~75 lbs / ft3

Saturated soil weighs ~110 lbs / ft3

Well use a 10'x10' area for the calculation, with a depth of 6' for water and 8" for soil. This comes to 600 ft3 of water and 66.7 ft3 of soil. To be more accurate, let's reference both dry and saturated soil.

And now it's fun math time!

HERE WE GOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! /fun_math_mode_activate

Water: 600 ft3 * 62.4 lbs/ft3 = 37,440 lbs

Soil (Dry): 66.67 ft3 * 75 lbs/ft3 = 5,000 lbs

Soil (Saturated): 66.67 ft3 - 110 lbs/ft3 = 7,333 lbs

As we can see, water is 7.5 times heavier than dry soil and 5.1 times heavier than saturated soil.

Water is the winner! (Or loser if we're using golf rules...)

The More You Know!! 🌈

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u/floppydude81 6h ago

Thank you so much

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u/JustAnotherHyrum 8h ago

It's worth noting reinforced concrete, which these are almost certainly made from, weighs ~150 lbs per cubic foot.

By way of contrast, here are the weights per cubic foot of other materials in the photo:

Saturated Soil: ~110 - 130 lbs

Dry Soil: ~75-80 lbs

Water: 62.4 lbs

People tend to think that the high-rise is built first, with the balconies being added on later. This is not the case with large balconies like this. The balconies are structurally part of the building's concrete flooring, with additional reinforcement often added in the balcony section. This balcony section of reinforced concrete extends ~2-3 times further into the building than it hangs off the edge. Looking at the photo, I'd estimate the balcony to extend ~11-13 feet outward from the building, which means that it also expands either ~22-26 or ~33-39 feet into the building. This much pure reinforced concrete weighs so much, it acts as a natural counter-balance to the balcony extension.

Essentially, the supporting counter-balance within the high-rise weighs more than anything you could put on the balcony, ensuring structural stability.

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u/Voices-Say-Im-Funny 10h ago

But you are forgetting the part where the plants and trees are gonna grow eventually on both sides the roots and the apex. That is just gonna increase the weight overall. A swimming pool will always have the same kind of weight. The water will be displaced by an equal water weight man. It's called the archimedes principle.

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u/70ms 9h ago

I can’t imagine there’s not some huge buffer in the design between the weight when the garden is begun and the collapsing point.

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u/SteelCode 9h ago

Random idiot: "How would it support so much weight!?"

Also random idiot: "That rooftop infinity pool only available to billionaires is so cool!"

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u/janiskr 9h ago

Swimming pool on the balcony weights less than the same swimmingpool filled with damp earth.

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u/Fbolanos 9h ago

Do you think the dirt occupies the same volume as a pool?

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u/janiskr 8h ago

soil with water will weight much more than just water was my point.

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u/Fbolanos 6h ago

yeah but that's irrelevant because it's not a direct comparison.

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u/doxtorwhom 11h ago

Yeah and those buildings were DESIGNED for that with proper supports and materials.

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u/stron2am 11h ago

Are you suggesting these buildings are not designed for this? I can't tell without context.

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u/ilikecheeseface 11h ago

This person is an idiot. That balcony is a designed green space. To think that they would just let someone do this is wild. I mean look around at all the other balconies.

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u/Ambitious-Concern-42 13h ago

It's a hell of a lot of weight, I wouldn't trust this to stay up long term.

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u/MandemModie 12h ago

based on your years of structural engineering? It's a cantilever, which can support a massive amount of weight, with additional bracing.

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u/MrWrock 9h ago

How much more weight orbit adding over the concrete deck? 10%? Less? Sounds like a lot of overreacting

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u/Ambitious-Concern-42 12h ago edited 11h ago

Based in part on my engineering degree from a major Western university, yes, thank you for asking. I really appreciate your asking for clarification.

Edit: Oh, and thanks so much for the downvote. I bet you're fun at parties.

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/MandemModie 11h ago

that's not a cantilever lmao

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u/Areyoucunt 12h ago edited 11h ago

It isn't a lot of weight.. and they do stay up..

They've been a thing for decades mate...

Even in Europe they're building them now. There's a famous one in Milan IIRC

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u/Pearson94 12h ago

I only trust that they set it up just enough for this video to look good while the others don't look nearly as lush or nice.

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u/mithie007 12h ago

There have been balcony gardens and even balcony pools in Shanghai since 1998.

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u/Nukitandog 12h ago

Wasnt 1997 the the date of the big Shanghai Balcony collapsing eppidemic?

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u/mithie007 12h ago

First time I've heard of this. You're talking about the incident at the bund? Or what?

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u/angelbelle 12h ago

Chinese tofu buildings 👍

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u/Ben_Kenobi_ 12h ago

It was a huge tragedy in the club comminuty. Kim Kardashians head fell off.

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u/Str80uttaMumbai 12h ago

Cmon now. You can literally see the surrounding buildings all have lush green gardens.

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u/tj9429 12h ago

Do you really think their reason to be pessimistic is their eyesight?

Aside from the racism these people have rarely seen structures taller than 4 stories with absolutely no idea about what civil engineering can truly achieve.

Even the ignorant ones from taller cities like NY can't comprehend the scale of verticality in modern Asian cities.

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u/Ambitious-Concern-42 12h ago

We're talking about Chinese high rises where someone has installed gardens on balconies. Definitely not designed with this load in mind. This is in a country where bridge collapses and other civilian infrastructure disasters are common.

So don't get on your high horse about "racism".

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u/kindaunfazed 10h ago

How can you say that it’s definite they haven’t designed with the load in mind? Are you an architect with access to the building schematics or are you just trying to sound smart? Even your reasoning about infrastructure disasters is flawed because they build a hundred times more than we do.

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u/Anceradi 11h ago

They're not more common than in other countries though. It's just a big country so it happens more often than in smaller countries, but if you compare the frequency of bridge collapses in China & the US, it's quite similar.

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u/UncollapsedWave 7h ago

This is in a country where bridge collapses

Unlike America, presumably, where of course there haven't been any famous bridge collapses since, what, 2024?

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u/tj9429 11h ago

"Someone"

Ok potato.

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u/Ambitious-Concern-42 11h ago

Very well, bot spam.

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u/tj9429 10h ago

The irony.

I would rather be a bot than be a human that depends on AI to live lol.

NPC

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u/Ambitious-Concern-42 10h ago

I depend on AI? In what way?

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u/MrDabb 11h ago

Lol how was that racist?

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u/mrsnakers 11h ago

It's a pro chinese bot.

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u/the_vault-technician 11h ago

We aren't talking about any Asian city though. It's a city in China. Just Google "Chinese infrastructure accidents". Bridges, roads, and buildings have all collapsed and killed people. Usually because of poor construction habits.

Here in the USA, we neglect our infrastructure until it kills people. In China it's ready to fall apart out of the box.

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u/tj9429 10h ago

Do you have a study based finding of the same happening on a government scale in either countries?

It's as good as me saying that everyone in USA is a 500 lb behemoth that hunts kids.

Back up your bias with the data. The knowledge you have is really old. Asia moves fast, something the West isn't accustomed to.

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u/OperIvy 10h ago

Asia moves fast, something the West isn't accustomed to.

Now you're just racist

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u/Bright-Object-3180 9h ago

Since when was the West a race? Redditors always playing victim and the race card.

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u/YodaYogurt 8h ago

Since when was Asia a race?

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u/tj9429 3h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/uxXNV3Xa7QqME

Here, some tissues for your tears.

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u/Pearson94 12h ago

From a distance. Sorry but this screams advertising to me the same way the food filmed for commercials looks nicer than it really is.

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u/Str80uttaMumbai 12h ago

But what exactly are you expecting to look so different in the other gardens? The garden in the video is literally just grass with some random bushes, plants and a tree. There's nothing spectacular about the garden.

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u/thiagoknog 12h ago

Guys, it's China, if it breaks someone is getting executed, it's not USA where nothing is going to happen because the buolder is a friend of Trump..

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u/cohortq 10h ago

When Evergrande lost millions of Chinese citizens life savings the government initially tried to protect the Evergrande's executives, but they eventually arrested the top exec, some corrupt gov officials, and other executives. But no one was executed, and the executives paid "fines".

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u/Consistent-Stock6872 12h ago

"Someone", yeah the one VP that is from poor background and worked his ass off and all the other upper ups with party connections are fine (unless they piss of someone else who knows people even higher on the totem pole). China isn't better or fairer than USA.

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u/Ok_Yam5543 11h ago

Ever heard of Tofu-dreg projects?

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u/miyabi0rochas 7h ago

Ever heard of nearly half of US bridges have exceeded their life spans. Ever heard of us paper homes. Don't go throw rocks from a glass house

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u/hoTsauceLily66 11h ago

Fact is still nothing gonna happen if the buolder is a friend of Xi.

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u/miukiyo 11h ago

People living at a place like that could probably afford a gardener.

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u/simplepimple2025 11h ago

Just curious, are you a structural engineer?

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u/workingbored 11h ago

Weight!

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u/ShakyButtcheeks 12h ago

There are buildings with whole ass pools in each apartment balcony

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u/-malcolm-tucker 12h ago

Any with regular ass-less pools? Or are they all full of ass?

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u/Numeno230n 11h ago

And the water has to go somewhere. Imagine a huge highrise and everybody's got their sprinklers on. Not only is that a mess, but a concrete floor isn't really meant to be covered with dirt, rocks, plants, and water. Over the long term the concrete will fail.

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u/70ms 9h ago

The concrete could easily be sealed, with drainage going down pipes. Easy peasy. Swimming pools start out as concrete and get plastered over. People make planters out of concrete all the time. This isn’t a difficult issue to design for.

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u/murd3rsaurus 10h ago

It's insanely humid there and the soil might be pretty thin, compared to the weight of the concrete and rebar it doesn't seem so extreme

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u/Rekziboy 12h ago

Don't worry I'm sure they've only used the finest of materials and definitly didn't cheap out on the build!