Higher is Better? China’s Insatiable Skyscraper Craze

Higher is Better? China’s Insatiable Skyscraper Craze
Dec 10, 2014 By Danielle Martin , eChinacities.com

Skyscrapers. The word conjures images of magnificent and fantastical designs stretching up into the atmosphere thousands of feet into the air, seemingly going on for miles. In today’s world where space is at a premium, skyscrapers are seen as a perfect fit – they offset land costs by building upwards, they look elegant against the night sky completely transforming the skyline of a city and are a magnet for tourists who clamour to take ‘selfies’ with these artistic and sophisticated structures acting as a backdrop behind them.

China itself is no stranger to skyscrapers either – it currently holds the world number two spot for the Shanghai Tower at an incredible 632m tall. Vast swathes of the country are uninhabitable due to so many mountainous regions and valleys, which has directly led to the mass urbanisation of the big cities as we know them today, meaning skyscrapers are a prominent feature in every city as developers build upwards, not outwards, to counteract the increasing number of people living in them.

As China becomes a heavyweight contender on the world stage, let’s take a look at the skyscrapers it is famous for, its plans for building more in the future as well as some health and safety issues this may present.

Top 5 highest skyscrapers in China

China has seven skyscrapers on the world’s Top 20 list, which is quite an architectural feat. The top five include, in descending order:

1) Shanghai Tower, Shanghai – ranked second tallest
At a height of 632m, it is the tallest building in China with construction only completed in August 2014.  It will be open to the public early 2015. It sits adjacent to the Shanghai World Finance Center and the Jin Mao Tower (421m), completing the planned models - dating from 1993 - of 3 super tall skyscrapers grouped together in the Lujiazui district of Shanghai.

2) CTF Finance Center, Guangzhou – No. 5
Set to overlook the Pearl River this building is still under construction, however it was topped out on 10th July 2014 at 530m with an expected completion date in early 2016. Hitachi have announced that they are supplying the rapid ascension elevators which will be the world’s fastest, climbing 95 floors in just 43 seconds. The current holder of the world’s fastest elevators is the Taipei 101 in Taipei.

3) Shanghai World Finance Center, Shanghai – No. 7
At 492m, this mixed use skyscraper was named the year’s best completed skyscraper in 2008 and forms one side of the world’s first adjacent group of three skyscrapers.

4) Zifeng Tower – No. 11
Located in Nanjing at a height of 450m, the building was completed in 2010 as a mixed use skyscraper.

5) KK100 – No. 13
This 442m office includes the St Regis Hotel occupying floors 75 – 98 and is located in Shenzhen’s business district, close to the border with Hong Kong.

It is important to note that towers are not considered to be included in the list of tallest skyscrapers as their definition excludes “a continuously habitable building,” (aside from maintenance) however we won’t overlook Guangzhou’s Canton Tower at 600m and Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower at 468m, listed at numbers 2 and 5 respectively on the list of world’s tallest towers.

China to build world’s tallest skyscraper?

Meet the man who built a 30-story building in just 15 days: Zhang Yue, founder and chairman of Broad Sustainable Building. Zhang, a successful businessman built the T30, overlooking Hunan’s Xiang River in 2011.  He has now proposed to build the world’s tallest building in the fastest time possible – Sky City in Changsha – using similar methods to those he employed to erect the T30.

But will his plans work? His company, Broad Sustainable Building, plan to build a metropolis reaching 838m, which would make Sky City the tallest building in the world, surpassing Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which stands at 829.8m. What would make this an even more incredible feat of engineering is that he plans to do it in just 90 days. At this point in time building has been halted on Sky City pending further government approval checks. Ground was broken on July 20 2013 with building expected to begin the following August. However, just five days later the government cited that inadequate permission had been gained and it came to a standstill. We shall have to wait and see what the future holds for that project.

Another blueprint in the pipeline is the plan for Phoenix Towers in Wuhan – a pair of pink buildings developed by British firm Chetwoods Architects.  They have submitted plans to build futuristic, environmentally friendly towers at an astronomical height of 1 km (0.6m), making them 172m higher than the current record. The colour is designed to reflect the “spectacular colours of the sunsets in the region” according to Laurie Chetwood, developer at the company. The project is still awaiting government approval but if plans go ahead, they aim for completion in 2017/2018. 

Land creation

At the present rate of growth in China, how safe are these skyscrapers and what does the future look like? Well, put simply, previously uninhabitable parts of China are being forced into land creation.  The government are taking the tops off mountains to fill in valleys, thereby ‘creating’ land to be built on as well as flattening hills. There is no scientific proof to support claims that this is safe though and the environmental impacts have not been carefully considered.

Research suggests that interfering with nature and the earth’s natural state has resulted in an increase in landslides whilst building on soft soils can cause massive subsidence and damaged watercourses. For example, in Lanzhou 700 mountains are being flattened to create 250 square kilometers of flat land to build on and in Yan’an, the largest project ever attempted to build on loess (a loosely compacted deposit of wind-blown sediment) is currently taking place. These unprecedented programmes are full of inexperience with technical delays hampering efforts. According to Song Q., author of China Construction, “Land creation by cutting off hilltops and moving massive quantities of dirt is like performing major surgery on Earth's crust.”

Health and safety

As mentioned above, China is no stranger to building upwards but this also means that catastrophic mistakes have often been made. Not a day goes by without another story hitting the headlines about unsupported building foundations, excavation work causing landslides or developers working side by side on simultaneous projects without adequate communication. Corruption is rife with architects and developers paying off various departments in order to obtain the necessary building permits.

In June 2009, the Lotus Riverside complex was under construction in Shanghai’s Minhang District. As you can see from the images below, Building 7 collapsed one night after a deluge of rain the day before.  As it turned out, an underground car park was being built on the south side of the building and the excavated dirt being piled on the north side created uneven lateral pressure.  After very heavy rain one day caused water to seep into the ground, the building simply gave way and toppled over in a southerly direction remaining completely intact.  


The Lotus Riverside Block 7 building in Minhang District, Shanghai, which collapsed in 2009

In May this year, a petrol station collapsed into a sinkhole in the ground in Hangzhou after construction workers digging nearby had weakened the area surrounding it. Quite succinctly, the pump attendant was quoted as saying, “There has been so much construction in this area the place underground is riddled like a honeycomb. One set of workers in one building has no clue what their counterparts just yards away are doing. They dig ancillary road and sewage tunnels, tunnels for electric cabling and pipes, caverns for underground car parks and then they wonder why buildings above don't stay put!"

 
Meanwhile in Wuhan, this five year old boy was filmed driving a digger around a construction site, which just about sums up China’s construction efforts of late …

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Keywords: highest skyscrapers in China China’s skyscraper craze skyscrapers in China

2 Comments

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mrkianersi

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Feb 18, 2015 01:35 Report Abuse

Chairman_Cow

Agree. The quality standards here are quite poor. I can't even take a crap without my toilet clogging up!

Dec 11, 2014 00:01 Report Abuse