Shanghai Tower Update: Lighting the Building and Preparing it for Occupancy

The Shanghai Tower Image © Gensler

NOTE: This post has been updated to include more current information on the Shanghai Tower.

Despite of challenges posed by Shanghai’s unpredictable weather and the logistical hurdles inherent to building super-tall structures, the Shanghai Tower is almost complete. It’s now looking like the Tower’s tenants will start to fit out their spaces in the coming spring and summer, pending permitting approvals and other reviews. The design and construction team’s next mission: finalize the site, complete the interior finishes, and commission all of the building’s special features, such as the wind turbines, rainwater collection systems throughout the structure, and seasonal exterior lighting elements.

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Shanghai Tower: Milestones

Image © Gensler

Read this post in Mandarin here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about milestones lately with the holidays here in the U.S., and the upcoming Chinese New Year, as well as the impending opening of the Shanghai Tower this summer. Gensler’s Shanghai Tower project team has marked numerous milestones in the past twelve months, most recently the completion of the façade installation and the beginning of the sky atrium landscaping.

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The ROI of Human Experience

Image © Ben Tranel

Air quality in China has been the subject of much press over the past few years, much of it negative. In addition to concerns impacting health and wellbeing, as cities go vertical, our ability to see out and across them from newly-constructed tall buildings is a key component of the urban experience.

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Shanghai Tower: Counteracting the Sway Inherent to Supertall Buildings

The Shanghai Tower’s Eddy Current Damper uses a series of copper plates and magnets (pictured above) to help reduce building movement. Image © Noah Sheldon

With only the final scaffolding remaining on the Shanghai Tower’s crown and the upper most beam in place, we can now fully visualize the building’s complete silhouette. As visually stunning as the curved tower is, the special features hiding within the silhouette, especially in the tower’s crown, are just as exciting. The tops of most buildings only feature observation zones for tourists, while masking the less interesting but mandatory mechanical elements with opaque glazing. The Shanghai Tower’s crown will of course encourage visitors to enjoy the unparalleled views of Shanghai, but it will also direct gazes towards the inner workings of the building itself and provide glimpses of wind turbines, a rain water collection system and two types of dampening systems: a Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) with Eddy current damping applied. These last two are both near completion.

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Shanghai Tower Rising

Image © Noah Sheldon

Shanghai Tower has entered its final construction phase, and the construction team is reaching key milestones every week. The team recently began putting the final touches on the inventive double skin facade and prepared the very top of the Tower for the crown, which will hold the Tower's wind turbines and Tuned Mass Damper. The site has also become a point of interest with foreign visitors: Max Baucus, the United States Ambassador to China, toured the Tower during a recent trip to Shanghai.

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