Construction started Saturday on the Shanghai Tower, Shanghai's next "tallest building". At 632m tall and with 138 floors, it checks in with a price tag of $2.2 billion USD, and will take six years to build. By comparison, its next-door neighbor, the Jinmao Tower, is 421m tall, while the still-brand-spankin' new World Financial Center is tops out at "only" 492m. The Shanghai Tower will, obviously, be the tallest building in China when it is completed.
The city's newest uber-skyscraper has been in planning since the early 1990's, but various holdups, including a corruption scandal, delayed the start of construction. In fact, bidding on the Shanghai Tower didn't even start until after the (Japanese-owned) IFC's final height was set in 2006. The tower was designed by San-Francisco-based firm Gensler, while Tongji University's design institute will be the project's local partner.
Gensler sold its design on several "green" features; the tower's twisting glass facade and double-skin exterior is expected to save on both building materials and energy usage once completed.
Financing for projects of this type has been tight in recent months, but according to Gu Jianping, manager of city-owned Shanghai Tower Construction & Development Co., "Launching construction at this time will help boost Shanghai's confidence in fighting the financial crisis."
Image from Wikipedia
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
China is feeling "building envy" due to the Burj Dubai. And Shanghai is sinking!
I love how the artist has depicted the building as 2.5 times taller than the Jinmao Tower despite the fact that it will be only 1/3 taller when completed. Yeah, perspective and angle come into play, but I can almost imagine his boss telling him to really focus on its soaring heights and on new horizons (pinkish hue in the background) or something similar.
Of course the tower looks taller. This is called perspective, you see these from photography as well. And this tower will not be taller than the Burj. Too bad America has no money to build anything nowadays.
Looks like my missus's bottle of Emporio Armani perfume.
The US doesn't have the inferiority complex needed to drive a building frenzy of "world's biggest, tallest, most expensive, must underutilized, dumbest" building projects. Unlike China.
You'll need those tall building projects to keep a full blown uprising from occurring.
None of those pictured can ever top the Pearl TV Tower for brutal honesty and psychological symbolism.
Talk about skyscraper as a symbol of male ego and power. The TV tower is a huge pink c*ck and balls erected by the great leadership.
Forget the Jinmao's fengshui, tasteful design, and bamboo/pagoda sections. If you want a real insight into the culture behind huge modern towers just take a long look at the gigantic phallus TV Tower.
The Pearl TV tower and other phallic skycrapers around town suggest an obsession with the certain part of the male body.
Of course they do. But it's not limited to China. I'm talking about the a feminist critique of architecture in general and not China specifically.
I spent a couple of years in Calgary and used to make friends laugh by referring to the downtown Calgary Tower as the Cowboy's C*ck. There's also the appropriately named Banker's Hall, one in gold and one in silver. You know, sounds a bit like W.....
From way back in '06:
Skyscraper Envy: Shanghai to whip out another big one
I wish my penis was an exact replica of the Pearl Tower- lights and all.
Lamb shashlik is sourgraping again. LOL! Just heard AIG boss Greenberg gave 2.3 million USD to his wife just a few days before the crap hit the fan. Goes on to show how corrupt and fcked up the US is but you still have folks like the lamb shashlik trying to justify his or her own stupidity. Last time I heard too, the Beijing authorities are making handsome money for so called dumb and stupid projects, like the Bird's nest, for example, where there is no shortage of folks willing to pay top yuan to see the house that stun the world in August. LOL!;)
Oops, I meant to say 2.3 Billion! Not 2.3 million! This is really obscene, meanwhile ordinary American folks have to bail out this mess with their tax dollars! Shame on America!
GO SHANGHAI!!!!!
We still have China to buy our debt in order to maintain their currency peg.
BBC, I am wondering what your rant has to do with the skyscraper. Wait a minute, you are not a troll are you? Couldn't be! Anyways, while the Chicago Spire is on hold due to the current economic situation, at 609.6 metres, it will be almost as tall as this building. Notice that nobody decided to build it specifically in order to make it the tallest in the world, suggesting a slightly lower degree of penis envy, although the tower will be the tallest in the Americas when completed.
Other skyscrapers on the drawing board in the US that are at least 300 metres tall include the American Commerce Center in Philidelphia, the Chicago Waldorf Astoria, Miami's Empire World Towers and One Bayfront Plaza, Manhattan's Madison Square Gardens Towers, the Freedom Tower or a second Twin Towers (old WTC site), and the Manhattan West Tower. Some have been proposed, several have been approved, and some are under construction.
So please tell me how the US is so in the shitter that there is just no money to build anything? Of course, if I thought you were anything but a troll, I would expect a logical response.
BBC1, please learn what LOL means. It requires something funny to be said. Not to nitpick, but there was a "shortage of folks" -- look at the hotel data!! FTW!
Is the top of this one also reminiscent of a bottle opener? Sort of looks like it from the picture.
not to mention you have to have the geology to support those big buildings. Whatever happened to the Shanghai city planners scaling back on buildings due to accelerated land subsidence?
I don't really know why you're pointing out the fallacies of this new tower, nanheyangrouchuan. I thought that one of China's grotesque, communist bitch face cities disappearing would delight you. 17 million less Chinese to worry about and all that.
Supercool! Build it! And #15, while some tall buildings still get built in the US, the regulations over airports and flightpaths makes supertalls rare if not impossible in most US cities. But who cares? Shanghai is the shizz and this tower will be the best yet!