Taiwan finishing world’s tallest building

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire” doesn’t sound like the best place to put up a skyscraper, and certainly not the world’s tallest.

In addition to the earthquakes that give this zone its name, Taiwan is visited several times a year by typhoons and winds 100 mph.

“It’s probably the worst situation to build a tall building,” architect C.P. Wang said.

Yet Mr. Wang’s Taipei 101, a sleek pagoda-shaped high-rise, has surpassed the Petronas Towers in Malaysia to become the world’s tallest building. Standing 1,671 feet tall, with the upper floors often jutting above the cloud cover, it has transformed Taipei’s skyline and holds hopes to do the same for Taiwan’s economy and identity.

Just as the Empire State Building and the Jin Mao Tower symbolized the economic prowess of New York in the 1930s and Shanghai in the 1990s, respectively, Taiwan hopes this new architectural marvel will mark its coming out to the world.

More than one superlative applies to Taipei 101. According to Emporis.com, a comprehensive database on tall buildings, it is the world’s only “supertall” in a highly active seismic zone. Besides having the tallest structural height in the world, the standard measure used to determine “world’s tallest,” it also has the tallest roof and the world’s highest occupied floor. (The building with the tallest tip is the CN Tower in Toronto which, with its antenna, stands at 1,815 feet.)

Taipei 101 uses the world’s fastest elevators, zooming up at 38 mph — 3,313 feet per minute — and whisking visitors to the 89th floor observation deck in 39 seconds. The ride down is a slower 22 mph. According to Emporis.com, each elevator cost more than $2 million.

Only two of the building’s 63 elevators will offer nonstop service to the top. Moreover, Taipei 101 will be one of the few buildings in the world with double-deck elevators.

Groundbreaking for the $1.7 billion project was in 1998, and the building was topped out last October. The five-story shopping mall adjacent to it opened last fall, but Taipei 101 itself will not be completed until late this year.

During a media tour last month, workers were still fixing interiors and installing windows. One worker sat on the edge of the 72nd floor, helping to put a window in place. His feet dangled outside with nothing to prevent him from dropping a quarter-mile to the ground except a piece of rope around his waist.

Based on the Chinese lucky number eight, the jade-green building rises in eight slanted sections of eight floors each. Its shape is inspired by bamboo, which connotes sturdiness and vigor in Chinese culture.

While the design may be Eastern, it is Western technology that makes Taipei 101 sturdy, strong enough even to withstand a direct hit by a jumbo jet, Mr. Wang said.

“After September 11, we simulated the situation,” he said. “We didn’t have to change it greatly. We have very big, strong columns. If an airplane runs into it, it’ll probably be stopped. Or at least people [in the building] would have a few more hours to get out.”

Eight columns form the backbone of the high-rise. Each column, about 8 feet by 10 feet thick at the base, is filled with high-density concrete and holds crisscrossed 3-inch thick steel plates.

Even before the September 11 terrorist attacks, architects had planned two fireproof refuge rooms every eight floors, with emergency supplies and communications.

The building exceeds Taiwan’s stringent seismic standards by five times to withstand the type of earthquake that comes only once every 2,500 years. But temblors are not the biggest worry.

“A building of this proportion is more flexible,” said Mr. Wang, who was born in Beijing and educated in Taiwan and the United States. “An earthquake is not the controlling factor. Wind is.”

As in most skyscrapers, a device called a tuned-mass damper — usually a heavy concrete block — is mounted in the building to help stabilize it against winds and quakes. Taipei 101 features the world’s largest tuned-mass damper, and in a bold design decision, architects decided to leave it exposed, allowing visitors to view the 730-ton ball, painted gold.

Although the damper reduces swaying, the top of the building will still swing up to five feet in each direction.

Mr. Wang thinks there’s nothing stopping someone from building a skyscraper twice as tall as Taipei 101. “The technology exists,” he said. “It’s the cost.”

Roughly half of Taipei 101’s $1.7 billion price tag went to paying the city government for the land-use rights, which will go to the developer, Taipei Financial Center Corp., for 70 years. The company is a consortium of 14 of Taiwan’s leading banks and insurance companies and the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

The site is in the city’s Hsinyi district — which was not much more than rice paddies and tenement buildings a few decades ago, but is now billed as the “Manhattan of Taipei.”

Taiwan’s economy has boomed since the Nationalist Party fled to this island in late 1949 after losing a war with the Communist Party on mainland China that followed the overthrow of the Ch’ing Dynasty in 1911.

The island was one of the original “Asian tigers,” and now has the 16th-largest economy in the world and the third-largest foreign reserves.

However, it is hardly considered a financial or marketing capital of Asia. The island’s population of 23 million offers limited growth and the lack of direct transportation links with China hinders business.

Taipei 101 was approved by Chen Shui-bian when he was mayor of Taipei. Now that he is president, the business community has become increasingly frustrated by his reluctance to allow direct air and shipping links with the mainland.

“Direct flight links is the key to developing Taiwan’s position as a gateway to China,” said Matthew Shaw of Jones Lang LaSalle, the lead leasing agent. “Taiwan has a role to play.”

About 20 percent of the space has been rented already, according to Mr. Shaw, but mostly to the building’s investors or businesses related to them. With 76 floors devoted to office space, Taipei 101 can hold 15,000 office workers.

Mr. Shaw said he is still optimistic, despite a soft market with a 15 percent vacancy rate in top-grade office space.

The race to be highest is thriving in Asia, which already has eight of the 10 tallest buildings in the world.

Construction of the postmodern Shanghai World Financial Center, suspended partly by the Asian financial crisis in 1997, restarted last year after it was redesigned to add seven stories. It will challenge Taipei 101 for some of its titles, but might not be able to lay claim to “world’s tallest.”

Mr. Wang is pragmatic about the competition.

“We never wanted to be the tallest forever,” he said. “We think representing the city — that’s enough.”

Of course, Westerners are not immune from height envy. New York’s Freedom Tower, projected to be completed in 2009 at the site of the World Trade Center, will dwarf Taipei 101 at 1,776 feet.