January 13, 2026
Skyscrapers on autoplay
Japan's Skyscraper Factories (2021)
Press Start to build? Dreamers cheer, skeptics snark
TLDR: Japan tried turning skyscraper sites into robot factories, but real-world chaos limited results. Commenters dreamed of a ‘press Start’ future like the [X‑Seed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Seed_4000), while skeptics warned that automation just shifts the bottlenecks—making this a global puzzle with hype outpacing reality.
Japan tried turning skyscraper sites into robot factories, moving the assembly line onto the dirt. It started with single-task bots in the ’80s—sprayers, welders, tile checkers—and evolved into plans for fully linked, automated workstations. Cool idea, messy results: lots of setup, cramped spaces, safety limits, and new bottlenecks popping up.
The comments lit up over the wild X‑Seed mega‑pyramid. User Analemma_ wondered if dreams like that felt closer back when people thought automation was nearly solved—just “Press Start” and watch a tower build itself. Cue split reaction: dreamers cheered “SimCity in real life,” while skeptics rolled their eyes, reminding everyone that construction sites aren’t orderly factories and robots hate surprises.
Jokes flew about a Roomba in a hardhat getting lost on rebar, and readers quipped that the “Start” button would just move the chaos to another step. The hottest mini‑drama: does automating everything make super‑projects possible, or do we still end up shuffling delays around the schedule? The thread became a mood board of mega‑ambition vs. reality checks—push‑button skyscrapers on one side, “good luck with the setup crew” on the other. One thing the crowd agreed on: the problem is global, and the hype is timeless
Key Points
- •Japan’s major contractors, supported by MITI, invested heavily in construction robotics from the late 1970s to address high costs, labor shortages, and stagnant productivity.
- •Early efforts produced single-task construction robots, starting with the SSR-1 in 1983 for fireproofing, leading to over 100 robot types by the 1990s.
- •Moving the factory to the jobsite via automated on-site building systems aimed to build entire skyscrapers and avoid off-site constraints.
- •Single-task robots achieved high task efficiency but faced setup/teardown burdens, site access issues, safety constraints, and shifting bottlenecks.
- •By the mid-1980s, Japan shifted toward fully robotic construction sites linking workstations to reconfigure the entire process around automation.