Projects of 2020: Blood, sweat and tears

By Elizabeth Hopkirk and Thomas Lane2020-12-18T06:00:00

Source: Alamy

2020 had its fair share of controversial projects but it also offered up some gems. We look back over quite a year…

In late January, at a point when most of us were still struggling to spell coronavirus let alone imagine it would reach the UK, you probably read a headline on Building’s website that made your jaw drop.

“China building hospital in six days for coronavirus patients,” it said, accompanied by a picture showing 35 diggers on a vast, empty site.

The hangar-like buildings erected in Wuhan could care for 1,000 highly infectious patients suffering from this strange new disease. To all but a few specialists, the speed seemed extraordinary, the kind of thing that can only happen in China.

Yet just two months later Britain was frantically starting work on similar facilities to cope with a feared tidal wave of patients as the pandemic began to wreak havoc across the world.

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