Shanghai World Financial Center 上海环球金融中心

I’m a huge fan of very tall buildings. Coming to Shanghai is like a dream come true to me. It has been said that Shanghai has more skyscrapers than Manhattan in New York, that could be true. As the city of Shanghai has the huge Pudong area to build their new financial center. As a result, over the course of two decades virtually a new city emerged from this area, and it is still emerging. It is currently home to two of the world’s tallest buildings. I visited the taller one first, the Shanghai World Financial Center 上海环球金融中心.

The Shanghai World Financial Center or SWFC, is currently the tallest building in China and the third tallest in the world. This tower is a full 101 floors high and it an interesting piece of architecture. Imagine a square base which gently tapers off to its diagonal, that is the SWFC. Probably the most distinctive and maybe controversial feature of the building is the “hole” on top. The original design called for a circular hole with the purpose of alleviating wind pressure. However, someone too nationalistic saw the circular hole as similar to the “rising sun” of Japan. The project was quickly revised to its current trapezoidal hole shape, which turned out to be a blessing in disquise as it would be cheaper to produce the trapezoid than the circle.

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