In modern world, what is the largest building that could be built overnight?

I've worked a couple of Habitat for Humanity mass builds where entire houses go from a poured foundation to complete in the course of a few days, and whole neighborhoods are built in a week. There's a video made a few years back where they finished a whole house in a day, including pouring and setting the foundation, using some magic cement from the US Corps of Engineers. Then this week, someone asked this question on WorldBuilding SE and one of the answers mentioned "Sunomata Castle", a fortress in Japan that was, according to legend, built overnight.

In China, in 2015, a construction company built a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days. Here's the 1.5 minute time-lapse video.

Those are real-world examples. Fiction is full of buildings raised from nothing, whether by machines in anime or Superman's Fortress of Solitude raised by kryptonite crystal. And so, I would like to know...

What is the largest building that we could build in the modern world overnight? I'm looking for tallest first, with largest footprint as the tiebreaker. I'm pretty sure we can clear-cut and put up walls for a pretty huge area very fast, but the height is the interesting challenge because of the foundation issues.

You're free to use any pre-built materials you want in your answers, but the ground you're building on is a virgin empty plain, like west Texas. No support services, no prepared ground, but also no trees to have to worry about clearing out. No roads or shipping lanes, but assume your staging area is just over the horizon (about 20 miles away). This building is supposed to spring up out of no where.

You have from sunset to sunrise on the [longest night of the year] nope: make that 12 hours. Bonus points if you leave enough time before sunrise to clean up all the construction equipment and clear the area, but that's not required. Just the building. EDIT: Damn worldbuilder technicalities of polar night. :-) You have 12 hours.

posted almost 8 years ago

SRM‭

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