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Shanghai World Financial Center
Shanghai World Financial Center
 


The 101-floor tower of the Shanghai World Financial Center, SWFC , symbol of commerce and culture and of the Chinese city’s emergence as a world capital, is today the world’s tallest building (492 metres, 1614 feet) and holds the record for the highest occupied floor (474 metres, 1555 feet). Its observation deck is the highest one  ever built. In its structure there are 10,000 tonnes of the special Histar® steel grade supplied by ArcelorMittal.

Standing in Shanghai’s Pudong district, a special enclave designated in the early 1990’s as the city’s business centre, the SWFC mixed-use building is truly a vertical city containing, looking at the building from top to bottom: a foyer with shopping malls and restaurants, offices and conference facilities, and the world’s highest hotel (the Park Hyatt Shanghai, between the 79th and 93rd floors).

Its simple yet contemporary design creates a stunning effect. It combines two intersecting arcs and a square prism – forms representing the ancient Chinese symbols for earth and sky – and this makes the building more efficient, from the broad base of the lower floors accommodating the office space, to the straight lines nearer the top of the skyscraper where the hotel rooms are located.

The façade of the building, its structure and its mechanical systems are seamlessly integrated and arranged in modules that are repeated every 13 floors, which has greatly facilitated the manufacture and installation of the relevant components and so cut construction times, wastage of materials and structural inefficiencies. Its most distinctive feature is the roughly 50-metre wide portal created in the topmost floors, which helps reduce the stresses of wind pressure acting on the building at its summit.

The SWFC’s sustainability strategies focussed on reducing the energy expended in the construction of the building by maximising efficiency, minimising the materials and rationalising the building's geometry.

The world’s highest observation deck

The Sky Deck is the highest public space ever to be built. Located on the 100th floor of the tower, at a height of 474 metres (1555 feet), the observation deck is set to become one of the world’s most spectacular destinations, offering incomparable views across modern-day Shanghai.

It is seven storeys high and occupies from the 94th to the 100th floor of the building to offer unparalleled views of the Shanghai skyline, the streetscape of the Pudong district and of the Huangpu River.

Structure and materials

The supporting structure of the skyscraper consists of a central reinforced concrete core and a massive framework of steel columns and girders.

For the first time in China, the steel elements making up the mighty structural skeleton were put together from special steel profiles: the Jumbo profiles (W 14”×16”), made from Histar® grade steel (ASTM A913-Grade 50), guaranteeing high strength and the possibility of using smaller sections equal in performance to the traditional grade of steel. The total tonnage used for this project was in excess of 13,000, of which 10,000 tonnes was the special Histar® steel supplied by ArcelorMittal.

The relationship between earth and sky that the skyscraper evokes includes a special study of the materials used, which pursues the idea of the contrast, even if a harmonious one, between the elements. The base of the tower, clad in rough granite to a height of 24 metres, reinforces the sense of stability and anchors the tower to the ground. By contrast, the main body of the tower is clad in a glazed curtain wall that reflects the sky and gives the building a sense of lightness. The architects, KPF, used glazing units with a special high-performance coating designed to meet the very highest aesthetic, ergonomic and environmental standards.

The safety of the building was a factor taken into account right from the very earliest stages of design. About every 12 floors there is an escape floor in which users of the building can take shelter in case of necessity.

As regards fire safety, the exits and fire and smoke propagation were studied using a service approach (which guaranteed a level of safety in excess of legal requirements), with computer simulations that led to some modifications in design (width of stairs, location of exits) to improve building evacuation times.

The Shanghai World Financial Center being a mixed steel-and-concrete structure, it was found possible, through the use of appropriate design features, to ensure optimal fire protection and impact resistance for the entire steel structure.

Pictures:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8a,9,10,11,12,13a,14a,14b © Mori Building Co. Ltd.
8b,13b © Johnny Marsch.
Piante, sezioni, prospetti e dettagli © KPF
Modelli: da sinistra a destra, alto: 1©KPF; 2©Richard Tengurian; 3©Keisuke Hiei/KPF
            da sinistra a destra, basso: 1©Mori Building Co. Ltd.; 2©KPF