Shanghai Tower: Second Tallest on Earth

Today, I want to share my photos of the tallest building I’ve ever seen. It’s the second tallest building in the world and a skyscraper that defined the skyline of China’s economic capital. This is the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China and a beautifully engineered skyscraper.

Understanding the Scale

Photography has a way of normalizing enormous heights. It is a challenge to illustrate the enormous height of the Shanghai Tower, the second tallest in the world, not least because it stands beside the twelfth tallest building in the world. So I’m using some comparisons and graphs to aid me. I know. You must be thrilled. The building is 2,073 feet tall, making it 644 feet shorter than the Burj Khalifa. In New York City terms, the 644-foot difference is just three feet shorter than the AT&T Building at 550 Madison Avenue, the famous postmodernist skyscraper by Philip Johnson. The Shanghai Tower is taller than the Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building stacked on top of each other. In London terms, it’s twice the height of the Shard. Same again for any of Singapore’s tallest skyscrapers, many of which hit the height limit of 920 feet.

The express elevators designed by Mitsubishi Electric for the 119th level observation deck are the fastest in the world - they travel as fast as 40 miles per hour. The building contains over forty passenger elevators, and the world's heaviest single mass tuned damper, weighing 1,100 tons, i.e. 4.88 Statues of Liberty. That is the equivalent weight of a stone tomb in Turkey. This may seem like a random comparison, but here’s a video of the tomb being moved to make way for a hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river. The video helps illustrate the scale of 1,100 tons.

Design

The curving profile rises like a snake with a generic blue curtain wall skin into the sky. When the light shines through the building, it becomes clear how the skin is removed from the interior, meaning the building practically has two facades. It is composed of over twenty thousand glass panels shaped in over 7,000 unique designs. Its scale is monumental. The experience of standing at its base is awe-inspiring, but its height becomes most apparent when you see how it looms over the city from a distance.

The building is designed by Gensler, an architecture firm which you might not have heard of even if you’re an architecture enthusiast, despite being one of the most productive architecture firms. Their projects do not usually rise to be high-profile, but they do hold the title of the world’s largest revenue-generating architecture firms, generating over 1.2 billion dollars in 2018.

Regardless of its aerodynamically forgetful design, the building does have a valuable distinction as China’s most high-profile skyscraper. Gensler wanted the building to have meaning, writing that, “The spiraling tower symbolizes China’s emergence as a global financial power,” (Gensler). Behind their language is real meaning. The tower is located in the center of Lujiazui commercial district, making it the pinnacle of the economic heart of the Yangtze River Delta, which generates US$2.62 trillion in GDP. That’s more than the GDP of Italy. Yet, the tower has struggled with drawing in foreign occupants and opening the luxury hotel it promised. It has only recently reached 80% occupancy after four years, most of which comes from domestic companies. This has become a marker for the fears of a hostile relationship between China and foreign companies during the country’s rise, underscoring itself as a symbol for China’s global emergence with all its nuance.

Conclusion

The 127-story building was developed by the Shanghai Tower Construction and Development Company. It was built at a cost of US$3.14 billion and is owned by the developer’s parent company Shanghai Municipal Investment Group, a Chinese sovereign wealth fund that is also developing Central Park Tower in Manhattan.

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