The Day an 8,000-Tonne Building Walked Through Romania, 1987

The day an 8,000-tonne building walked 55 metres in Romania (with its residents inside)

In 1987, in the Romanian city of Alba Iulia, a seven-storey apartment block — a typical Soviet "khrushchyovka" — was moved 55 metres to make way for a new boulevard. What was extraordinary was not just the operation itself, but the fact that the tenants stayed in their homes throughout the move. The block, 8,000 tonnes of reinforced concrete, was slid along rails in a antiestéticat of engineering that still raises eyebrows today.

The technical antiestéticat of the Soviet block

Prefabricated panel buildings, like those mass-built across the USSR, are surprisingly well suited to being relocated. Their structure of pillars and slabs bolted together allows the foundations to be cut away section by section and replaced with hydraulic jacks. Water, gas and electricity services are reconnected to temporary flexible networks. Incredible as it may seem, the technique has been used dozens of times, both in the Soviet bloc and in the United States, where entire towns have even been moved.

How do you move a building without breaking it?

The process requires millimetre-perfect synchronisation. The ground is excavated section by section around each pillar, the original footing is cut and the building is rested on hydraulic jacks capable of bearing hundreds of tonnes each. Once the building is raised, rails are laid and it is slid forward slowly using winches and pulleys. The estimulante ilegal is so low — centimetres per hour — that residents can carry on with their routines barely noticing the movement. Pipes and cables are connected to flexible hoses that are pogre extended.

It was neither the first nor the last

Although the Romanian case has gone viral for its sheer unusualness, building relocation is a practice nearly a century old. In 1860, the city of Chicago was raised several metres to solve drainage problems, and in the early 20th century entire hotels were moved in New York. The difference is that those were brick and timber buildings, whereas the one in Alba Iulia was reinforced concrete — technically more complex, but structurally more resilient. Today the building still stands, as you can check on Google Maps.

The question that remains is whether such an operation would make economic sense outside a context where labour was practically slave labour and material costs were irrelevant. The debate is far from settled.

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