SHANGHAI TOWER, will be CHINA'S TALLEST BUILDING

On November 29th 2008 Shanghai Tower's Groundbreaking marks start of construction of world's first double-skin, super-tall building. The slender, elegant spiraling Shanghai Tower will rise 632-meters (2070 feet), and it will be completed in 2014.

Shanghai Tower will be located in Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone which was predominantly farmland just nineteen years ago. The region is now poised to become China’s first super-tall district as the Shanghai Tower joins the two other super-tall buildings, the 421-meter (1380 feet) Jin Mao and the 492-meter (1614 feet) World Financial Center.

Shanghai Tower will be different from the others:

* Featuring a soft triangular shape, the tower rotates as it juts skyward and concludes with an open-top design. As the shape rises, a "strike" or open notch curves up and around the building which is an engineering feature to control the wind up and away from the building.

* The 120-story tower will feature office space, luxury residences, a high-end hotel, retail space, restaurants and a public observatory. The development will be separated into nine distinct bioclimatic zones, with each having its own atrium, lush gardens, indoor air controls and panoramic 360° views of China's largest and most populous metropolis.

* Green Building Design “Green Building" is the practice of improving the efficiency of how buildings use resources such as energy, materials and water, while reducing the impact that buildings have during their lifespan -- on health and the environment.

Shanghai Tower will be the world's first super-tall building with a "double-skin". It means that the building has two glass walls. So it will function much like a thermos bottle. This allows people to harvest and use daylight, reduce artificial lighting to a minimum, increase the insulation of the building's interior and life-span, dramatically reduce energy consumption and costs.