More than 500 people died in the Sampoong Department Store – not because of a gas explosion or a North Korean bomb (two early suspicions) – but because of sheer negligence in construction and maintenance of a building not yet six years old.
The company's potential is fairly large, given the sheer number of construction projects ongoing globally at any given time.
Sheer numbers, an ongoing construction boom in the holiest city of Islam, poor communication and inadequate emergency planning were all contributing factors.
And yet its logic of construction, its sheer blazing inventiveness, removes it from the domain of fantasy and creates one of the world's most sublime architectural spaces.
Although the sheer volume of concrete construction in the city might have something to do with those figures, Ms. Lancaster said the issue was broader.
Since Deng Xiaoping launched market-led economic reform 30 years ago, China has prospered on the back of a combination of cheap labour, cheap capital, an undervalued currency, government pump-priming relentless construction and sheer hard work and ingenuity.
In this case, part of what has created the conflict is the sheer size of the construction plans, which started out with the addition of a second story and became a one-floor apartment with its own gas-fired heating system — the Weinrebs maintain that the existing heat and water were inadequate — that would incorporate parts of the roof and terrace.
As with most Stalinist projects, the conditions in which it was built were brutal, resulting in innumerable casualties; from 1938 until 1956, it made extensive use of forced labour, but the sheer beauty of its construction seems to win over even the sharpest critics.
Alas, a dense haze often covers the landscape, blotting the outline of some beautiful buildings and preventing appreciation of the sheer magnitude of the construction that has marked the explosive growth of Beijing in recent years.
