Laura showed me this article, and I thought I would post it. This happened last June, but it's still incredibly ridiculous. A development company in Shanghai had built a series of apartment buildings in a very desirable part of the city and was selling the condos for 18,000 RMB/sq. meter (quite a high price for China). Many of the buildings had already been occupied as they were finishing construction on another with the same design. One Saturday morning there may have been a high wind or maybe the ground settled a little, and the entire 13-story building just tipped over. Apparently they had poured a slab of concrete and stacked a low-rise apartment building on it!
In the pictures you can see the short pegs that were supposed to hold the building into the ground. It literally doesn't take any training as an engineer to know that that is not a secure foundation. While this is definitely an extreme case, I'm reminded everyday of the outward show that China puts on with its new buildings, military parades, and knock-off name brands. It's too bad that there isn't very much of substance behind it all.
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