![]() ![]() The building – to feature 121 storeys of office, retail and hotel space according to Gensler – is constructed a bit like a Thermos flask. “It’s the greenest super high-rise building on earth at this point in time,” says Dan Winey, Asia managing principal for Gensler, the architecture firm that has designed the tower. The structure was designed to satisfy the US Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) “gold” standard, the second highest of its sustainability rankings. It is an industrial revolution kind of view – and not one that is consistent with Shanghai’s ambition to become a world-class financial centre by the end of this decade. Greenness is central to that image, and the view from the top of the tower (which is due to be completed in 2015), leaves no doubt as to why that is: even on days when Shanghai’s smog registers as only “moderate” on the government’s air quality index, the view is murky and grey. The tower’s spiral shape ‘minimises wind loads’ © Nicky Almasy At nearly twice the height of the Eiffel Tower, they want it to do for brand Shanghai what that earlier tower did for Paris and complete a distinctive skyline that will symbolise China’s most futuristic city. Those behind the Shanghai Tower, however, want it to be more than another freakish Chinese vanity project. And Chengdu, another hinterland Chinese city, recently completed the world’s largest building by area, a scheme that included its own artificial sun. However, a company in the central Chinese city of Changsha has announced plans to build the world’s tallest skyscraper, at 838 metres, in just three months. Skyscrapers are nothing new in China, where municipal gigantism has become such a fad that the country accounts for 13 of the 20 tallest buildings under construction in the world, according to figures from the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.Īt the time of writing, the Shanghai Tower, although still being built, is widely considered the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world after the 828-metre Burj Khalifa in Dubai. And soon these two cults – the cult of the tall and the cult of the green – will meet at Shanghai’s newest skyscraper, the 632-metre Shanghai Tower, billed by its makers as the world’s greenest tall building. These days the country also has an obsession with greenness (running parallel to its increasingly dire pollution problems). China likes everything tall: tall buildings, tall people – there are even special summer camps aimed at growing taller children. ![]()
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