Published on: Mar 27, 2017

As the third tower in the trio of super tall buildings at the heart of Shanghai’s new Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, Shanghai Tower embodies a new confidence across China as it acquires the spotlight in the shift in global balance of economic power. At 632m (2,073 feet), the Shanghai Tower is the tallest building in China, towering above the city of Shanghai, the largest in China with 24 million people. At present, it is the second tallest building the world, behind the Burj Khalifa in Dubai although this ranking will change by 2020 when four other buildings in different parts of the world will ascend higher up in the sky to compete for the top spot.

The largest ever concrete pouring work

The 128 stories of Shanghai Tower have nine vertical zones, which includes retail at the base, offices in the middle and hotels and observation decks at the top. It takes a little less than a minute to travel from the base of this giant skyscraper to the top, a distance of 580m (1,900 feet) in a double-decker elevator making it the longest single elevator journey in the world. Shanghai Tower is the first single building in the world with a weight of 850,000 tons constructed on soft ground. The building’s foundation surface required the largest ever concrete pouring work – 60,000 cubic meters of concrete within 63 hours at one time and use of 450 concrete mixer trucks, along with 8 pump stations of 4 districts of the city.

One third of the building is Green

Shanghai Tower has round-shaped, self-bearing, continuous walls as tower bearings with a diameter of 123.544 meters, said to be the largest found anywhere. The project involved the largest construction cranes in China – four M1280D tower cranes to ensure efficient work. A curtain wall with the highest construction precision supported the steel structure system along with the most professional curtain wall sliding bearings that offer accuracy of up to 2 mm. The building used about 35% less structural materials (concrete and steel) than any other conventional buildings which brought down the cost considerably. One third of the building is dedicated to greenery while energy consumption of the building 35-40% less than any other building.