How do you relocate an entire 8,270-ton, 43,380-sq-ft (4,030 sq m), 100-year-old Shikumen brick building complex so you can build a multi-level subterranean shopping center, parking lot and subway connections under it? With robots, of course.
That’s exactly what engineers of the Shanghai Construction No 2 (Group) Co Ltd did in Shanghai, China. The Huayanli Shikumen-style complex – a fusion of Western row-houses with Chinese courtyards representative of the urban Chinese middle-class – was built in the 1920s and 30s and had to be temporarily relocated to make way for the 570,500-sq-ft (53,000-sq m) underground development.
To make it work, engineers used 3D scanning, self-guided drilling robots, thousands of feet of conveyor belts to haul away dirt and debris, and AI that could distinguish between soil structures. The kicker was the 432 tiny hydraulic “walking” robots that suspended the entire city block above them as they clocked a scampering pace of about three ten-thousandths of a mile per hour – or about 33 feet (10 meters) per day. There’s a fun timelapse video on the Shanghai government website.
The “walking” robots in question are actually omnidirectional modular hydraulic jacks that are capable of lifting around 10 tons each. Sensors monitor pressure, vibration, and alignment while a centralized AI control unit coordinates the balance and movements into a synchronized crawl. I can’t find any specific information about what company designed and built these robots for this project, but would love to know.
The project initially started in late 2023 when they relocated the block about 157 feet (48 m) west and 151 feet (46 m) north to make way for the underground construction – which has no definitive name yet. The walk back “home” started on May 19th of this year and wrapped up a quick nineteen days later on June 7th with the complex lowered back onto its original foundations.
Hundreds of robots move Shanghai city block
This isn’t the first time people have moved large structures. Back in 1985, the Fairmount Hotel in San Antonio, Texas got chucked onto wheeled dollies and rolled six blocks down the road to a new home. It took six days to complete the move using dump trucks, a crane, and a lot of cable-and-pulley systems – and still ranks number one in the Guinness Book of World Records for heaviest building moved on wheels, tipping the scales at about 3.2 million pounds (1.45 million kg).
In 1930, Indiana Bell – the telephone company – pivoted its 8-year-old, 7-story headquarters 90 degrees sideways to make room to build a new HQ. The craziest part of all is that while rotating it, business went on as usual with operators, employees and execs coming in and out. Gas, water, electricity, and importantly its telephone service were never disrupted during the month-long lazy-Susan move.
It was one of the first times officials elected to relocate a large building rather than destroy it.
Much like the move in China, engineers hoisted the building up with jacks, but rotated it 90 degrees using hydraulic rollers on 75-ton spruce beams before plopping it back down onto its new foundation. Sadly, the building was demolished in 1963 to make way for a 22-story office building that – ironically – now houses AT&T.
Something to think about next time you see “WIDE LOAD” on a tractor-trailer carrying a small house down a freeway.
Source: Shanghai Gov
