Taiwan opens world's tallest building

TAIPEI : Taiwan has opened the world's tallest building, Taipei 101, after six years of construction and hailed the 508-meter (1,676 feet) skyscraper for already resisting several powerful earthquakes.

"Taipei 101 has been through the challenges of the September 21 and March 31 quakes," said President Chen Shui-bian at the opening ceremony.

"The glory and success of Taipei didn't belong to one single mayor but all of the citizens," he added.

Chen oversaw the start of Taiwan's largest engineering project when he was mayor of Taipei in 1998.

Taiwan's worst tremor, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck in September 1999, leaving some 2,400 people dead. Another strong quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit on March 31 2002, killing at least four.

The light green building, the brainchild of Taiwan's noted architect C.Y. Lee, looks like petals of a flower unfolding or sections of a bamboo rising from the ground.

Its structure is based on steel with reinforced concrete. The exterior wall is a glass curtain with double glazed heat reduction clear glass.

Construction cost 58 billion Taiwan dollars (1.8 billion US) and was financed by the Taipei Financial Center Corp.

Last year a five-storey shopping mall opened at the base of the building, which also features the world's fastest passenger elevators capable of travelling at 1,014 meters (3,346 feet) per minute.

It takes just 37 seconds from the fifth floor to the observatory on the 89th floor.

Tourism officials hailed Taipei 101 as the capital city's new landmark and said it would prove to be a must-see for tourists traveling to the island.

Currently 33 percent of the building's 198,000 square meters office space has been contracted, largely by multinational and leading domestic enterprises.

Eventually there will be some 12,000 people working in the building, which is located in Taipei's bustling Hsinyi district.

During the first 90 years of this century, the USA dominated the race for the title of the tallest building in the world, and constructed a range of famous buildings that, sometimes only for a few months, and sometimes for many years, were widely recognized as being the 'tallest building' in the world. In 1974 Chicago's Sears Tower was completed, and generally seen as the 'tallest building' in the world. Sears held on to that title for over 20 years.

But since the ninetees the USA gets some stiff competition from Asia. In 1996 this resulted in the completion of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. From that moment on a sort of media clash was unleashed. All over the world people debated about the question wich one was the tallest; Sears or Petronas. To make things more complicated; in 2004 Taipei 101 was finished. It is widely known to be the tallest building in the world. Now the answer to the 'tallest' question seems so easy. Just measure the buildings from bottom to top, and the tallest one gets the title.
Question answered, case closed, no more debate needed? Forget it!

As usual, life is not that simple. One could consider how to measure these buildings. For example, do we take in account spires and antennas? To end this discussion, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat made a compromise. They defined 4 categories for measuring tall buildings;

- Height to the structural or architectural top.
- Height to the highest occupied floor.
- Height to the top of the roof.
- Height to the top of antenna.

Now, since they finished Taipei 101, the Petronas Towers are not leading anymore in any of the categories above. As we believe Taipei 101 is leading in the categories 1 and 3. Category 2 is unsure, and Sears Tower definitely still leading in the fourth category! (By the way, the former WTC was even taller to the top of its antennas!). So this means there is not one 'tallest building in the world', but there are two of them!
Question answered, case closed, no more debate needed? Forget it!
Cause this is the point where some folks from Canada get a bit upset.

And of course they should be. Cause Toronto is home to the famous CN Tower! Not only is this a tower of remarkable beauty and grandeur, it is also very, very tall! In fact, Its top is no less than 1816 ft. up in the skies! So it is by far taller than the buildings as mentioned before. So the people from CN Tower themselfs claim that their tower is the 'world's tallest building'.

But then why do so many people not recognize CN Tower as the 'worlds tallest building'? Because, so they say, CN Tower is not a building. Constructors and architects argue that a building is a frame structure made of walls and floors. Now CN Tower houses some occupied floors indeed, but most of the structure is no more than a concrete shaft housing elevators, and therefore it is not a building, one could argue. This is the reason why the Council on tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and many other building resources on the Internet, do not recognize CN Tower as the tallest 'building' in the world.

Source:http://www.xs4all.nl/~hnetten/tallest.html

"Taiwan's worst tremor, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck in September 1999, leaving some 2,400 people dead. Another strong quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit on March 31 2002, killing at least four."

A strange paragraph. It's a terrible event, but also it has nothing to do with the story.

At least this "tallest building" seems to have occupied space going to almost the very top. Unlike the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Petronas Towers are in fact shorter than the Sears, but have very tall spires on top to steal the title. Same problem for the new thing they are building at the WTC site - 80 stories with a very tall glass wedge. In truth, Freedom Tower will not be as tall as the WTC towers.

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