SHANGHAI TOWER

Shanghai Tower is in Lujiazui Finance and Trade District of Pudong, with

Shanghai World Financial Center to the east and Jin Mao Tower to the north.
On August 3rd, 2013, its silhouette stands at a height of 580 meters (about
1,903 feet). When finished in 2015, it will stand 632 meters (about 2,073 feet)
high, and will rank as China's tallest and second only to the world at large. The
foot print takes up 30,368 square meters (about 326,878 square feet) with floor
space of about 576,000 square meters (about 6,200,012 square feet), with 5
basement levels, 121 floors above ground and 5 podium floors.
A repetitive slip-forming process was used to construct the tower's core floor-
by-floor. By late April 2011, the tower's steel reinforcement had risen to the
18th floor, while its concrete core had reached the 15th floor, and floor framing
had been completed up to the fourth floor. By late December 2011, the tower's
foundations had been completed, and its steel construction had risen above the
30th floor. By early February 2012, the tower's concrete core had risen to a
height of 230 metres (750 ft), with around fifty floors completed In the first
months of 2012, cracks began appearing in the roads near the tower's
construction site. These were blamed on ground subsidence, which was likely
caused by excessive groundwater extraction in the Shanghai area, rather than by
the weight of the Shanghai Tower.
By May 2012, the tower's core stood 250 metres (820 ft) high, while floors had
been framed to a height of 200 metres (660 ft). By early September 2012, the
core had reached a height of 338 metres (1,109 ft). By the end of 2012, the
tower had reached the 90th floor, standing approximately 425 metres (1,394 ft)
tall. By 11 April 2013, the tower had reached 108 stories, standing over 500
metres (1,600 ft) tall and exceeding the heights of its two neighbouring supertall
skyscrapers, the Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center.
Construction crews laid the final structural beam of the tower 3 August 2013,
thus topping out the tower as the world's second-tallest building. A topping-out
ceremony was held at the site of the last beam During the ceremony, Gensler
co-founder Art Gensler stated that:
The Shanghai Tower represents a new way of defining and creating
cities. By incorporating best practices in sustainability and high-
performance design, by weaving the building into the urban fabric of
Shanghai and drawing community life into the building, Shanghai
Tower redefines the role of tall buildings in contemporary cities and
raises the bar for the next generation of super-highrises
The principal architect of the project, Jun Xia, was quoted as saying, With the
topping out of Shanghai Tower, the Lujiazui trio will serve as a stunning
representation of our past, our present and Chinas boundless future." Gu
Jianping, general manager of the Shanghai Tower Construction Company,
expressed the firm's wish "to provide higher quality office and shopping space,
as well as contribute to the completeness of the city skyline's and the entire
region's functionality". Jianping also hinted at the future possibility of a public
museum in the building.
In January 2014, the tower's crown structure passed the 600-metre (2,000 ft)
mark, as its construction entered its final phase. In February 2014, two Russian
urban explorers, Vadim Makhorov and Vitaly Raskalov, climbed the Shanghai
Tower and released video footage taken from a crane at the tower's top.The
tower's crown structure was finally completed in August 2014, and its faade
was completed shortly after
.
The tower's interior construction and electrical
fitting-out is scheduled for completion in late 2014, and it will open to the
public in 2015.
As Shanghai is on a seismic belt and the construction site is in a river basin, a
firm foundation for this skyscraper is very important. To firm up the ground,
engineers first put 980 foundation piles underground to a depth of 282 feet, and
then poured 2.15 million cube feet of concrete to set a 20-feet-thick baseboard
for anchoring the main building.
The exterior of the building spirals upward like a snake. It twists about one
degree per floor to offset the wind effect on higher altitude. This is very
important to a super tall building in Shanghai to withstand frequent typhoons.
The tower sports two glass facades, an inner one and an outer one, like
overlapping "tubes". The space between the two "tubes" varies from 3 to 33 feet
wide, providing more public space inside the building. At the mean time, the
space functions as a heat insulation layer like in a thermos flask. This is
environment-friendly and costing less.
As a complex super tall building, Shanghai Tower is subdivided into five
main functional areas: 24-hour offices for multinational companies and
financial services; super five-star hotels and support facilities, offering
personalized service and amenities; high end retail shops etc; recreation zone,
forming a new business and cultural center in Shanghai, a clear departure from
ghost town image of Lujiazui after working hours; conference facilities,
including sightseeing rooms in upper floors, and a multifunction conference
center measuring over 2,000 square meters (about 21,528 square feet) and a
multifunction banquet hall measuring more than 1,000 square meters (about
10,764 square feet) in podium building.
The building will be serviced by 149 elevators, of which 108 are lifts.
Three of the lifts can send passengers up to the 500-meter (about 1,640 feet)-
high sightseeing platform from street level within one minute, which is a world
record holder.






ONE WORD TRADE CENTER
Many of Daniel Libeskind's concepts from the 2002 competition were later
discarded from the tower's design. One World Trade Center's final design
consisted of simple symmetries and a more traditional profile, intended to bear
comparison with selected elements of the contemporary New York skyline. The
tower's central spire draws from precedents such as the Empire State Building
and the Chrysler Building, and is also visually reminiscent of the original World
Trade Center twin towers, rather than being an off-center spire intended to echo
the Statue of Liberty.
Preliminary site plans for the World Trade Center's reconstruction. Orange: new
buildings (WTC One is the square at upper left), Blue: memorial for old WTC.
The building's footprint is a 200-foot (61 m) square with an area of 40,000
square feet (3,700 m
2
), nearly identical to the footprints of the original Twin
Towers. The tower rises from a 185-foot (56 m) windowless concrete base,
designed to protect it against truck bombs and other ground-level terror threats.
Originally, the base was intended to be clad in decorative prismatic glass, but a
simpler glass-and-steel faade was adopted when this proved unworkable. The
current base cladding design consists of angled glass fins protruding from
stainless steel panels, similar to those on 7 World Trade Center. LED lights
behind the panels will illuminate the base at night. Cable-net glass faades on
all four sides of the building for the higher floors, designed by Schlaich
Bergermann, will be consistent with the other buildings in the complex. They
measure 60 feet (18 m) high and range in width from 30 feet (9.1 m) on the east
and west sides (for access to the observation deck) to 50 feet (15 m) on the
north side, and 70 feet (21 m) on the south for primary tenant access. The
curtain wall was manufactured and assembled in Portland, Oregon, by Benson
Industries, using glass made in Minnesota by Viracon.
From the 20th floor upwards, the square edges of the tower's cubic base are
chamfered back, transforming the building's shape into eight tall isosceles
triangles, or an elongated square antiprism. Near its middle, the tower forms a
perfect octagon in-plan, and then culminates in a glass parapet whose shape is a
square oriented 45 degrees from the base. A 408-foot (124 m) sculpted mast
containing the broadcasting antenna designed in a collaboration between
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), artist Kenneth Snelson (who invented
the tensegrity structure), lighting designers and engineers is secured by a
system of cables, and rises from a circular support ring which will contain
additional broadcasting and maintenance equipment. At night, an intense beam
of light will be projected above the spire, being visible over 1,000 feet (300 m)
into the air above the tower.
David Childs of SOM, the architect of One World Trade Center, said the
following regarding the tower's design:
We really wanted our design to be grounded in something that was very
real, not just in sculptural sketches. We explored the infrastructural
challenges because the proper solution would have to be compelling, not
just beautiful. The design does have great sculptural implications, and we
fully understand the iconic importance of the tower, but it also has to be a
highly efficient building. The discourse about Freedom Tower has often
been limited to the symbolic, formal and aesthetic aspects but we
recognize that if this building doesn't function well, if people don't want
to work and visit there, then we will have failed as architects.

PETRONAS TOWER
The towers were designed by Argentine American architect Csar Pelli. They
chose a distinctive postmodern style to create a 21st-century icon for Kuala
Lumpur. Planning on the Petronas Towers started on 1 January 1992 and
included rigorous tests and simulations of wind and structural loads on the
design. Seven years of construction followed, beginning on 1 March 1993 with
the excavation, which involved moving 500 truckloads of earth every night to
dig down 30 metres (98 ft) below the surface.
The construction of the superstructure commenced on 1 April 1994. Interiors
with furniture were completed on 1 January 1996, the spires of Tower 1 and
Tower 2 were completed on 1 March 1996, and the first batch of Petronas
personnel moved into the building on 1 January 1997. The building was
officially opened by the Prime Minister of Malaysia's Tun Dr. Mahathir bin
Mohamad on 1 August 1999. The twin towers were built on the site of Kuala
Lumpur's race track. Test boreholes found that the original construction site
effectively sat on the edge of a cliff. One half of the site was decayed limestone
while the other half was soft rock. The entire site was moved 61 metres (200 ft)
to allow the buildings to sit entirely on the soft rock. Because of the depth of the
bedrock, the buildings were built on the world's deepest foundations. 104
concrete piles, ranging from 60 to 114 metres (197 to 374 ft) deep, were bored
into the ground. The concrete raft foundation, comprising 13,200 cubic metres
(470,000 cu ft) of concrete was continuously poured through a period of 54
hours for each tower. The raft is 4.6 metres (15 ft) thick, weighs 32,500 tonnes
(35,800 tons) and held the world record for the largest concrete pour until 2007.
The foundations were completed within 12 months by Bachy Soletanche and
required massive amounts of concrete. Its engineering designs on structural
framework were contributed by Haitian engineer Domo Obiasse and colleagues
Aris Battista and Princess D Battista. The Petronas Towers' structural system is
a tube in tube design, invented by Fazlur Rahman Khan Applying a tube-
structure for extreme tall buildings is a common phenomenon.
The 88-floor towers are constructed largely of reinforced concrete, with a steel
and glass facade designed to resemble motifs found in Islamic art, a reflection
of Malaysia's Muslim religion. Another Islamic influence on the design is that
the cross section of the towers is based on a Rub el Hizb, albeit with circular
sectors added to meet office space requirements.
As a result of the Malaysian government specifying that the buildings be
completed in six years, two construction consortiums were hired to meet the
deadline, one for each tower. Tower 1, the west tower (right in the top-right
photograph) was built by a Japanese consortium led by the Hazama Corporation
(JA Jones Construction Co., MMC Engineering Services Sdn Bhd, Ho Hup
Construction Co. Bhd and Mitsubishi Corp) while Tower 2, the east tower (left
in the top-right photograph) was built by a South Korean consortium led by the
Samsung C&T Corporation (Kukdong Engineering & Construction and Syarikat
Jasatera Sdn Bhd). Early into construction a batch of concrete failed a routine
strength test causing construction to come to a complete halt. All the completed
floors were tested but it was found that only one had used a bad batch and it was
demolished. As a result of the concrete failure, each new batch was tested
before being poured. The halt in construction had cost US$700,000 per day and
led to three separate concrete plants being set up on the site to ensure that if one
produced a bad batch, the other two could continue to supply concrete. The sky
bridge contract was completed by Kukdong Engineering & Construction. Tower
2 became the first to reach the world's tallest building at the time. Though as a
result of rushing to build this tower, tower 2 ran into problems when they
discovered the structure was leaning 25 millimetres (0.98 in) off from vertical.
To correct the lean, the next 16 floors were slanted back 20 millimetres (0.79 in)
with specialist surveyors hired to check verticality twice a day until the
building's completion.
Due to the huge cost of importing steel, the towers were constructed on a
cheaper radical design of super high-strength reinforced concrete. High-strength
concrete is a material familiar to Asian contractors and twice as effective as
steel in sway reduction; however, it makes the building twice as heavy on its
foundation as a comparable steel building. Supported by 23-by-23 metre
concrete cores and an outer ring of widely spaced super columns, the towers use
a sophisticated structural system that accommodates its slender profile and
provides 560,000 square metres of column-free office space. Below the twin
towers is Suria KLCC, a shopping mall, and Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, the
home of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.