Jin Mao Building
Encyclopedia
The Jin Mao Tower is an 88-story landmark
supertall skyscraper
in the Lujiazui
area of the Pudong
district of Shanghai
, People's Republic of China
. It contains office
s and the Shanghai Grand Hyatt
hotel
. Until 2007 it was the tallest building in the PRC, the fifth tallest in the world by roof height and the seventh tallest by pinnacle
height. Along with the Oriental Pearl Tower
, it is a centerpiece of the Pudong skyline
. Its height was surpassed on September 14, 2007 by the Shanghai World Financial Center
which is next to the building. The Shanghai Tower, a 128-story building located next to these two buildings and now under construction, will be even taller.
station and was built at an estimated cost of 530 million USD.
It was designed by the Chicago
office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Its postmodern
form, whose complexity rises as it ascends, draws on traditional Chinese architecture
such as the tiered pagoda
, gently stepping back to create a rhythmic pattern as it rises. Like the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the building's proportions revolve around the number 8, associated with prosperity in Chinese culture. The 88
floors (93 if the spire floors are counted) are divided into 16 segments, each of which is 1/8 shorter than the 16-storey base. The tower is built around an octagon-shaped concrete
shear wall core surrounded by 8 exterior composite
supercolumns and 8 exterior steel
columns. Three sets of 8 two-story high outrigger
truss
es connect the columns to the core at six of the floors to provide additional support.
The foundation
s rest on 1,062 high-capacity steel piles driven 83.5 m deep in the ground to compensate for poor upper-strata soil
conditions. At the time those were the longest steel piles ever used in a land-based building. The piles are capped by a 4 m-thick concrete raft
19.6 m underground. The basement
's surrounding slurry wall
is 1 m thick, 36 m high and 568 m long, and composed of 20,500 m³ of reinforced concrete
.
The building employs an advanced structural engineering
system of wind
and earthquake engineering
which fortify it against typhoon winds of up to 200 km/h (with the top swaying
by a maximum of 75 cm) and earthquake
s of up to 7 on the Richter scale
. The steel shafts have shear
joints that act as shock absorber
s to cushion the lateral forces imposed by winds and quakes, and the swimming pool on the 57th floor is said to act as a passive damper
.
The exterior curtain wall
is made of glass, stainless steel
, aluminium
, and granite
, and is criss-crossed by complex latticework
cladding
made of aluminum alloy pipes.
Official dedication was August 28, 1998, a date also chosen with the number 8 in mind. The building was fully operational in 1999.
The Jin Mao Tower is owned by the China Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd (formerly China Shanghai Foreign Trade Centre Co. Ltd). It reportedly has a daily maintenance cost of 1 million RMB
(US$121,000).
The building has 3 main entrances to the lobby
, two for the office portion and one for the hotel. Additionally, a 6-story podium
at the tower base houses the Hyatt's conference and banquet
facilities (first two floors) as well as a shopping mall
, restaurants and nightclub
s such as the hotel's "Pu-J's" on the third floor.
The 3-story basement has a food court
, express elevators to the observation deck, and 600 vehicle and 7,500 bicycle parking spaces below. Above, 61 elevator
s (supplied by Mitsubishi
) and 19 escalator
s carry visitors throughout the building.
The lower 50 floors (in the first 4 segments of the tower) are made up of 123,000 m² of Grade A offices, divided into 5 elevator zones (3-6, 7-17, 18-29, 30-40, and 41-50). Office spaces are open-plan (column
-free) with a floor-to-floor gross height of 4.0 m, net height 2.7 m. Levels 51 and 52 are mechanical floor
s, accessible only by service elevators.
The building's anchor tenant is the five-star
, 555-room Shanghai Grand Hyatt hotel which occupies floors 53 to 87. It is one of the highest hotels in the world, second only to its sister property, the Shanghai Park Hyatt, occupying the 79th to 93rd floors of the immediately adjacent Shanghai World Financial Center
. However, the tallest building to be used exclusively as a hotel is the Burj Al Arab in Dubai
(excluding the taller Ryugyong Hotel
which was never in use). Additionally, the world's longest laundry
chute runs down the full length of the tower to the basement, and incorporates buffers to slow down the laundry during its descent.
The Hyatt's famous barrel-vaulted
atrium
starts at the 56th floor and extends upwards to the 87th. Lined with 28 annular corridors and staircases arrayed in a spiral, it is 27 m in diameter with a clear height of approximately 115 m. It is one of the tallest atriums in the world, the tallest being Burj Al Arab's.
The hotel floors also feature:
The 88th floor (not part of the hotel) houses the Skywalk, a 1,520 m2 indoor observation deck
with a capacity of 1,000+ people. In addition to the panoramic views of Shanghai, it offers a topside view of the hotel atrium below. It also includes a small post office
. Access is through two express elevators from the basement that travel at 9.1m/s and take 45 seconds to reach the top. As of 2009 admission to the 88th floor costs RMB
88, or RMB 45 for children.
Levels 89-93, which occupy the building's spire, are mechanical floor
s not accessible to the public. They are illuminated in bright light at night.
Landmark
This is a list of landmarks around the world.Landmarks may be split into two categories - natural phenomena and man-made features, like buildings, bridges, statues, public squares and so forth...
supertall skyscraper
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
in the Lujiazui
Lujiazui
Lujiazui is an important financial district in Pudong, Shanghai. In 2005 the State Council reaffirmed the positioning of the 31.78 km² Lujiazui area, as the only finance and trade zone among the 185 state-level development zones in mainland China.-Economy:...
area of the Pudong
Pudong
Pudong |Bank]]") is an area of Shanghai, China, located along the east side of the Huangpu River, across from the historic city center of Shanghai in Puxi. Formerly a little-developed agricultural area linked only by ferries, Pudong has grown rapidly since the 1990s and emerged as China's financial...
district of Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. It contains office
Office
An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...
s and the Shanghai Grand Hyatt
Hyatt
Hyatt Hotels Corporation , is an international operator of hotels.Hyatt Center is the headquarters for Hyatt corporation...
hotel
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
. Until 2007 it was the tallest building in the PRC, the fifth tallest in the world by roof height and the seventh tallest by pinnacle
Pinnacle
A pinnacle is an architectural ornament originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire...
height. Along with the Oriental Pearl Tower
Oriental Pearl Tower
The Oriental Pearl Tower is a TV tower in Shanghai, China. The Oriental Pearl Tower is located at the tip of Lujiazui in the Pudong district, by the side of Huangpu River, opposite of The Bund....
, it is a centerpiece of the Pudong skyline
Skyline
A skyline is the overall or partial view of a city's tall buildings and structures consisting of many skyscrapers in front of the sky in the background. It can also be described as the artificial horizon that a city's overall structure creates. Skylines serve as a kind of fingerprint of a city, as...
. Its height was surpassed on September 14, 2007 by the Shanghai World Financial Center
Shanghai World Financial Center
The most distinctive feature in the design of the building is an aperture at the peak. The original design specified a circular aperture, in diameter, to reduce the stresses of wind pressure, as well as serve as a subtext for the design, since "Chinese mythology represents the earth with a square...
which is next to the building. The Shanghai Tower, a 128-story building located next to these two buildings and now under construction, will be even taller.
Structure
The building is located on a 24 000 m² plot of land near the Lujiazui metroShanghai Metro
The Shanghai Metro is the urban rapid transit system of China's largest city, Shanghai. The system incorporates both subway and light rail lines. It opened in 1995, making Shanghai the third city in Mainland China, after Beijing and Tianjin, to have a rapid transit system...
station and was built at an estimated cost of 530 million USD.
It was designed by the Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Its postmodern
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture began as an international style the first examples of which are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture...
form, whose complexity rises as it ascends, draws on traditional Chinese architecture
Chinese architecture
Chinese architecture refers to a style of architecture that has taken shape in East Asia over many centuries. The structural principles of Chinese architecture have remained largely unchanged, the main changes being only the decorative details...
such as the tiered pagoda
Pagoda
A pagoda is the general term in the English language for a tiered tower with multiple eaves common in Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and other parts of Asia. Some pagodas are used as Taoist houses of worship. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most commonly Buddhist,...
, gently stepping back to create a rhythmic pattern as it rises. Like the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the building's proportions revolve around the number 8, associated with prosperity in Chinese culture. The 88
88 (number)
88 is the natural number following 87 and preceding 89.- In mathematics :Eighty-Eight is a refactorable number, a primitive semiperfect number and an untouchable number...
floors (93 if the spire floors are counted) are divided into 16 segments, each of which is 1/8 shorter than the 16-storey base. The tower is built around an octagon-shaped concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
shear wall core surrounded by 8 exterior composite
Composite material
Composite materials, often shortened to composites or called composition materials, are engineered or naturally occurring materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties which remain separate and distinct at the macroscopic or...
supercolumns and 8 exterior steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
columns. Three sets of 8 two-story high outrigger
Outrigger
An outrigger is a part of a boat's rigging which is rigid and extends beyond the side or gunwale of a boat.In an outrigger canoe and in sailboats such as the proa, an outrigger is a thin, long, solid, hull used to stabilise an inherently unstable main hull. The outrigger is positioned rigidly and...
truss
Truss
In architecture and structural engineering, a truss is a structure comprising one or more triangular units constructed with straight members whose ends are connected at joints referred to as nodes. External forces and reactions to those forces are considered to act only at the nodes and result in...
es connect the columns to the core at six of the floors to provide additional support.
The foundation
Foundation (architecture)
A foundation is the lowest and supporting layer of a structure. Foundations are generally divided into two categories: shallow foundations and deep foundations.-Shallow foundations:...
s rest on 1,062 high-capacity steel piles driven 83.5 m deep in the ground to compensate for poor upper-strata soil
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
conditions. At the time those were the longest steel piles ever used in a land-based building. The piles are capped by a 4 m-thick concrete raft
Floating raft system
Floating raft is type of land-based foundation that protects against settlement and the liquefaction of soft soil due to seismic activity. It was a necessary innovation in the development of tall buildings in the wet soil of Chicago in the 19th century, where it was developed by John Wellborn Root...
19.6 m underground. The basement
Basement
__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...
's surrounding slurry wall
Slurry wall
A slurry wall is a technique used to build reinforced-concrete walls in areas of soft earth close to open water or with a high ground water table. This technique is typically used to build diaphragm walls surrounding tunnels and open cuts, and to lay foundations.A trench is excavated to create a...
is 1 m thick, 36 m high and 568 m long, and composed of 20,500 m³ of reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
.
The building employs an advanced structural engineering
Structural engineering
Structural engineering is a field of engineering dealing with the analysis and design of structures that support or resist loads. Structural engineering is usually considered a specialty within civil engineering, but it can also be studied in its own right....
system of wind
Wind engineering
Wind engineering analyzes effects of wind in the natural and the built environment and studies the possible damage, inconvenience or benefits which may result from wind. In the field of structural engineering it includes strong winds, which may cause discomfort, as well as extreme winds, such as in...
and earthquake engineering
Earthquake engineering
Earthquake engineering is the scientific field concerned with protecting society, the natural and the man-made environment from earthquakes by limiting the seismic risk to socio-economically acceptable levels...
which fortify it against typhoon winds of up to 200 km/h (with the top swaying
Oscillation
Oscillation is the repetitive variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value or between two or more different states. Familiar examples include a swinging pendulum and AC power. The term vibration is sometimes used more narrowly to mean a mechanical oscillation but sometimes...
by a maximum of 75 cm) and earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
s of up to 7 on the Richter scale
Richter magnitude scale
The expression Richter magnitude scale refers to a number of ways to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake....
. The steel shafts have shear
Shear stress
A shear stress, denoted \tau\, , is defined as the component of stress coplanar with a material cross section. Shear stress arises from the force vector component parallel to the cross section...
joints that act as shock absorber
Shock absorber
A shock absorber is a mechanical device designed to smooth out or damp shock impulse, and dissipate kinetic energy. It is a type of dashpot.-Nomenclature:...
s to cushion the lateral forces imposed by winds and quakes, and the swimming pool on the 57th floor is said to act as a passive damper
Damping
In physics, damping is any effect that tends to reduce the amplitude of oscillations in an oscillatory system, particularly the harmonic oscillator.In mechanics, friction is one such damping effect...
.
The exterior curtain wall
Curtain wall
A curtain wall is an outer covering of a building in which the outer walls are non-structural, but merely keep out the weather. As the curtain wall is non-structural it can be made of a lightweight material reducing construction costs. When glass is used as the curtain wall, a great advantage is...
is made of glass, stainless steel
Stainless steel
In metallurgy, stainless steel, also known as inox steel or inox from French "inoxydable", is defined as a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5 or 11% chromium content by mass....
, aluminium
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
, and granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
, and is criss-crossed by complex latticework
Latticework
Latticework is a framework consisting of a criss-crossed pattern of strips of building material, typically wood or metal. The design is created by crossing the strips to form a network...
cladding
Cladding (construction)
Cladding is the application of one material over another to provide a skin or layer intended to control the infiltration of weather elements, or for aesthetic purposes....
made of aluminum alloy pipes.
Official dedication was August 28, 1998, a date also chosen with the number 8 in mind. The building was fully operational in 1999.
The Jin Mao Tower is owned by the China Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd (formerly China Shanghai Foreign Trade Centre Co. Ltd). It reportedly has a daily maintenance cost of 1 million RMB
Renminbi
The Renminbi is the official currency of the People's Republic of China . Renminbi is legal tender in mainland China, but not in Hong Kong or Macau. It is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of the PRC...
(US$121,000).
Occupants
Lobby (room)
A lobby is a room in a building which is used for entry from the outside. Sometimes referred to as a foyer or an entrance hall.Many office buildings, hotels and skyscrapers go to great lengths to decorate their lobbies to create the right impression....
, two for the office portion and one for the hotel. Additionally, a 6-story podium
Podium
A podium is a platform that is used to raise something to a short distance above its surroundings. It derives from the Greek πόδι In architecture a building can rest on a large podium. Podia can also be used to raise people, for instance the conductor of an orchestra stands on a podium as do many...
at the tower base houses the Hyatt's conference and banquet
Banquet
A banquet is a large meal or feast, complete with main courses and desserts. It usually serves a purpose such as a charitable gathering, a ceremony, or a celebration, and is often preceded or followed by speeches in honour of someone....
facilities (first two floors) as well as a shopping mall
Shopping mall
A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...
, restaurants and nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
s such as the hotel's "Pu-J's" on the third floor.
The 3-story basement has a food court
Food court
A food court is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dining. Food courts may be found in shopping malls and airports, and in various regions may be a standalone development...
, express elevators to the observation deck, and 600 vehicle and 7,500 bicycle parking spaces below. Above, 61 elevator
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...
s (supplied by Mitsubishi
Mitsubishi
The Mitsubishi Group , Mitsubishi Group of Companies, or Mitsubishi Companies is a Japanese multinational conglomerate company that consists of a range of autonomous businesses which share the Mitsubishi brand, trademark and legacy...
) and 19 escalator
Escalator
An escalator is a moving staircase – a conveyor transport device for carrying people between floors of a building. The device consists of a motor-driven chain of individual, linked steps that move up or down on tracks, allowing the step treads to remain horizontal.Escalators are used around the...
s carry visitors throughout the building.
The lower 50 floors (in the first 4 segments of the tower) are made up of 123,000 m² of Grade A offices, divided into 5 elevator zones (3-6, 7-17, 18-29, 30-40, and 41-50). Office spaces are open-plan (column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
-free) with a floor-to-floor gross height of 4.0 m, net height 2.7 m. Levels 51 and 52 are mechanical floor
Mechanical floor
A mechanical floor, mechanical penthouse, or mechanical level is a storey of a high-rise building that is dedicated to mechanical and electronics equipment. "Mechanical" is the most commonly used term, but words such as utility, technical, service, and plant are also used...
s, accessible only by service elevators.
Shanghai Grand Hyatt
Star (classification)
Stars are often used as symbols for classification purposes. They are used by reviewers for ranking things such as movies, TV shows, restaurants, and hotels. For example, one to five stars is commonly employed to categorize hotels.-Restaurant ratings:...
, 555-room Shanghai Grand Hyatt hotel which occupies floors 53 to 87. It is one of the highest hotels in the world, second only to its sister property, the Shanghai Park Hyatt, occupying the 79th to 93rd floors of the immediately adjacent Shanghai World Financial Center
Shanghai World Financial Center
The most distinctive feature in the design of the building is an aperture at the peak. The original design specified a circular aperture, in diameter, to reduce the stresses of wind pressure, as well as serve as a subtext for the design, since "Chinese mythology represents the earth with a square...
. However, the tallest building to be used exclusively as a hotel is the Burj Al Arab in Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
(excluding the taller Ryugyong Hotel
Ryugyong Hotel
The Ryugyong Hotel is a 105-story skyscraper under construction in Pyongyang, North Korea. Its name is also one of the historic names for Pyongyang. The building is also known as the 105 Building, a reference to its number of floors...
which was never in use). Additionally, the world's longest laundry
Laundry
Laundry is a noun that refers to the act of washing clothing and linens, the place where that washing is done, and/or that which needs to be, is being, or has been laundered...
chute runs down the full length of the tower to the basement, and incorporates buffers to slow down the laundry during its descent.
The Hyatt's famous barrel-vaulted
Barrel vault
A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault or a wagon vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve along a given distance. The curves are typically circular in shape, lending a semi-cylindrical appearance to the total design...
atrium
Atrium (architecture)
In modern architecture, an atrium is a large open space, often several stories high and having a glazed roof and/or large windows, often situated within a larger multistory building and often located immediately beyond the main entrance doors...
starts at the 56th floor and extends upwards to the 87th. Lined with 28 annular corridors and staircases arrayed in a spiral, it is 27 m in diameter with a clear height of approximately 115 m. It is one of the tallest atriums in the world, the tallest being Burj Al Arab's.
The hotel floors also feature:
- 53/F: The Piano Bar, a jazzJazzJazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
club. - 54/F: The hotel lobby and Grand caféCaféA café , also spelled cafe, in most countries refers to an establishment which focuses on serving coffee, like an American coffeehouse. In the United States, it may refer to an informal restaurant, offering a range of hot meals and made-to-order sandwiches...
, served by an express elevator from the tower's ground floor. - 55/F: Canton, a high-end CantoneseCantonese cuisineCantonese cuisine comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and is one of 8 superdivisions of Chinese cuisine. Its prominence outside China is due to the great numbers of early emigrants from Guangdong. Cantonese chefs are highly sought after throughout the country...
restaurant that takes up the entire floor. - 56/F: On Fifty-Six, a collection of restaurants including The Grill, the ItalianItalian cuisineItalian cuisine has developed through centuries of social and political changes, with roots as far back as the 4th century BCE. Italian cuisine in itself takes heavy influences, including Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, Jewish and Arab cuisines...
Cucina, the JapaneseJapanese cuisineJapanese cuisine has developed over the centuries as a result of many political and social changes throughout Japan. The cuisine eventually changed with the advent of the Medieval age which ushered in a shedding of elitism with the age of shogun rule...
Kobachi, and the Patio Lounge, which is located at the base of the atrium. - 57/F: Club Oasis, a fitness clubGymThe word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, that mean a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men...
featuring the world's highest swimming poolSwimming poolA swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...
. - 85/F: Highest rooms; this is also a transfer level for the elevators going to the two floors above.
- 86/F: Club Jin Mao, a ShanghaineseShanghai cuisineShanghai cuisine , also known as Hu cai is a popular style of Chinese cuisine. The city of Shanghai itself does not have a separate and unique cuisine of its own, but modifies those of the surrounding provinces, is Jiangsu and Zhejiang coastal provinces. What can be called Shanghai cuisine is...
restaurant.
The 88th floor (not part of the hotel) houses the Skywalk, a 1,520 m2 indoor observation deck
Observation deck
__FORCETOC__ An observation deck, observation platform or viewing platform is an elevated sightseeing platform usually situated upon a tall architectural structure such as a skyscraper or observation tower...
with a capacity of 1,000+ people. In addition to the panoramic views of Shanghai, it offers a topside view of the hotel atrium below. It also includes a small post office
Post office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
. Access is through two express elevators from the basement that travel at 9.1m/s and take 45 seconds to reach the top. As of 2009 admission to the 88th floor costs RMB
Renminbi
The Renminbi is the official currency of the People's Republic of China . Renminbi is legal tender in mainland China, but not in Hong Kong or Macau. It is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of the PRC...
88, or RMB 45 for children.
Levels 89-93, which occupy the building's spire, are mechanical floor
Mechanical floor
A mechanical floor, mechanical penthouse, or mechanical level is a storey of a high-rise building that is dedicated to mechanical and electronics equipment. "Mechanical" is the most commonly used term, but words such as utility, technical, service, and plant are also used...
s not accessible to the public. They are illuminated in bright light at night.
Events
- On February 18, 2001 Han Qizhi, a 31-year old shoe salesman from AnhuiAnhuiAnhui is a province in the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny...
province "struck by a rash impulse", climbed the building barehanded. Well-known urban climberBuilderingBuildering is the act of climbing on the outside of buildings and other artificial structures. The word "buildering" is a portmanteau, combining the word "building" with the climbing term "bouldering".If done without ropes or protection far off the ground, buildering may be dangerous...
France's Alain "Spiderman" RobertAlain RobertAlain Robert , is a French rock and urban climber, from Digoin, Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne, France...
had earlier been trying to convince Chinese authorities to let him climb the structure. Referring to the tower's scaffold-like cladding, Robert commented that his six-year-old son could climb the building and that he himself could do it using only one arm. He faced the possibility of 15 days in a Chinese jail for an unauthorized attempt. He finally scaled the building in 2007. He was arrested and jailed for 5 days before being expelled from China. - On October 5, 2004 during Chinese National Day Holiday, a multi-national group of BASE jumpersBASE jumpingBASE jumping, also sometimes written as B.A.S.E jumping, is an activity that employs an initially packed parachute to jump from fixed objects...
(invited by the Shanghai Sports Bureau) leaped from the top of the tower. 34-year old Australian jumper Roland "Slim" Simpson had a parachuteParachuteA parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag, or in the case of ram-air parachutes, aerodynamic lift. Parachutes are usually made out of light, strong cloth, originally silk, now most commonly nylon...
malfunction and crashed on an adjacent building. He fell into a comaComaIn medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
, and died following repatriationRepatriationRepatriation is the process of returning a person back to one's place of origin or citizenship. This includes the process of returning refugees or soldiers to their place of origin following a war...
on October 22. - On April 3, 2009 Shanda used laser on the tower to advertise the open beta of Aion: The Tower of Eternity. The image made by the lasers could be seen from 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm and ran until April 12, 2009.
See also
- List of skyscrapers
- List of tallest buildings and structures in the world
- List of tallest freestanding structures in the world