“The Dragon” to descend on the Shanghai city skyline

It’s finally coming! The “big one” eagerly predicted by Shanghaiist in 2006 — China’s tallest building will begin construction this year in Shanghai. At 580m, the Shanghai Center will top a triangle of impressive towers with the 420-meter-high Jin Mao Tower and the 492-meter-high Shanghai World Financial Center in the Lujiazui district of Pudong. The building will be designed by Gensler, a U.S. firm, in conjunction with the Shanghai-based Architectural Design & Research Institute of Tongji University. It will be designed to look like a coiled dragon, the architects said. At its completion, the building will be 118 stories high and 79m taller than China’s former tallest building, the Taipei 101, currently the world’s tallest building.
At this point, its designers are only claiming that the Shanghai Center will be China’s tallest building, but does it have a shot at being the tallest in the world? Our research shows that Burj Dubai, the skyscraper rising in the United Arab Emirates with a completion date in 2009, is currently 636m tall, but its final height is being kept a secret. Another skyscraper planned for Dubai, Al Burj, has a proposed final height of 1,200m (*gasp*)! With these feats in mind, Shanghaiist has two questions: will the Shanghai Center be able to top those erections, and is it possible to write about architecture without sexual innuendo?
Photo from Shanghai Daily.