Constructing a fully completed, ready to open 30 story hotel in just 15 days might seem an impossible task, unless you’re considering a cardboard hotel of course. In China however this is not only possible but it has been done, setting the record for the fastest construction of a building of this size.

Built near the Dongting Lake in the Hunan Province of China the Broad Group was able to construct this glistening 17,000sqm glass wrapped hotel with only 200 workers. At the end of the 360 hours the hotel rooms were completed, fully furnished and the hotel ready to open.

Presented for your viewing pleasure is the hypnotic time-lapse video of the buildings construction. Day and night the construction continues; relentlessly the multi-faceted building grows with steel and glass falling into place.

The building is no show pony either, it’s tough enough to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake and is five times more energy efficient than a conventional building. The 4 Panel insulated windows along with energy recovery systems keep heating to a minimum. While an air filtration systems guarantee pollution free air that is 20 times cleaner than the outside air.

The secret to the amazing feat is prefabrication, a word becoming more common in construction every day. Treating the floor and the roof as one  and the same panel, with lighting mounted on the underside for the floor below and carpet on top for the floor above, allowing the completed prefab sections to be hoisted into position, bolted, wired up, job done.

Constructing each of the prefab floor/roof panels off site affords the advantage of shelter, built on a factory floor large enough to allow each trade to work together on the job simultaneously.

Zhang Yue, the man with the grand constructions plans disclosed his company’s plans for the near future recently; Broad Group are planning to construct 20 buildings a month in 2013 and 50 a month during 2014, as always in China the scale massive. This is high speed construction in action, an incredible spectacle that makes me feels a little like having a holiday for some reason.