Robots move Shanghai city block [video]
19 comments
·July 3, 2025selimnairb
This title is misleading. It makes it seem like the robots did this autonomously, when in reality hundreds if workers were involved. The “robots” were “smart jacks” I would say. Humans couldn’t have done this without hydraulic jacks, they used fancy hydraulic jacks.
ddtaylor
I was not really lead to believe they did this autonomously. It seemed to me like either (a) they were doing the lockstep in a pre-programmed way that required timing of the equipment working together or (b) the same but with humans operating the timing. In either case I find the use of robots impressive.
jayde2767
It is still a very impressive feat of engineering.
smusamashah
I dont understand this. I always thought houses/buildings have underground supports on which the structure is erected. Doesn't have to be tall towers, all small buildings have underground support too.
How come these buildings don't have any of that? Or is the support in form of metal rods which these structures are freely screwed to?
Avicebron
I found this because I had a similar question, I think it might be hard to gauge how much prep work was done from the video.
https://parametric-architecture.com/shanghai-relocates-7500-...
The houses: https://shanghaistreetstories.com/?page_id=1288
bmmayer1
This is incredible -- serious question -- has anything of this scale been done in the US or Europe? Do we even have the technology?
crooked-v
Check out the raising of Chicago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago). From buildings up to entire city blocks were raised, moved on rollers, or both, usually while businesses and residents stayed in them for normal day-to-day life.
wenc
Chicago also reversed the flow of the Chicago River.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl...
They also rebuilt much of the city because it was wiped out during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and now the grid system is one of the most commonsensical ones in any major American city.
Chicago is an example of a (more or less) clean-slate engineered large city -- one that arose as a result of tragedy (fire) and failure (cholera).
dcrazy
In 1930 they moved an entire telephone exchange in Indianapolis without even taking it offline: https://indianahistory.org/blog/instead-of-moving-mountains-...
The technology in this video appears to be computer control of the many pistons underneath the raised block. I would estimate that could be done with roughly 1970s-level of technology.
pxc
So the impressive thing is really the social coordination, the project management, which was doubtless challenging but is hardly unique.
It's still kind of a wonderful, imo. And it's awesome to be able to see it on video like this.
mmsc
Yes, it has been common enough, no "robots" required. The Indiana Bell Building is a famous one from a century ago, which gets videos posted about it on social media ever so often.
mayneack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel#Relocation
In the 60s a massive stone monument was moved 200m up in elevation to avoid being flooded by a dam.
slyall
Moving single buildings is pretty common
funkaster
lower tech/scale but in Chile (in the island of Chiloe) they have been doing this for centuries for individual houses: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/moving-houses-of-chilo... - although no smart jacks, only bulls and people.
piptastic
not quite the same scale area wise, but interesting nonetheless https://www.archdaily.com/973183/the-building-that-moved-how...
As for your actual question, I'm pretty sure we (US, Europe, humans in general) could do quite a bit more than we do now if we had a reason to do so. (or were 100% sure about the results)
janfoeh
Here is the Kaisersaal in Berlin being moved on air cushions in 1996 [1]. And wasn't a better part of Chicago jacked up building by building some time in the 19th century to make room for a sewage system?
[1] https://www.bz-berlin.de/archiv-artikel/hier-schwebt-ein-den...
null
A few years ago they moved a (historic) train station where I lived. It needed to be moved for some underground tube construction, but also a few meters to make the new buildings fit. I witnessed, it was awesome.
https://www.e-architect.com/images/jpgs/leipzig/bayerischer_... / https://www.e-architect.com/leipzig/bayerischer-bahnhof-buil...