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Soaring 632 meters above the financial heart of China, Shanghai Tower is the second tallest building in the world.
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The striking structure features incredibly fast elevators, is home to our planet’s highest observation deck and claims to be the world’s most sustainable mega-tall skyscraper.
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But despite its status as one of modern China’s most iconic mega projects and its ambition to be a crowning symbol of the country’s economic growth,
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Shanghai Tower has been plagued with challenges.
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This is how one of the world’s tallest and most important skyscrapers failed.
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Plans for Shanghai Tower date back to 1993.
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When economic reforms were introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the cityscape of Shanghai began to rapidly transform.
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To accommodate the demand for office space—and to put the city on the world stage as China’s financial capital—a cluster of three eye-catching supertall skyscrapers were planned.
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The Jin Mao Building, the first of this trio, was completed in 1999 and was followed nearly a decade later by the Shanghai World Financial Center.
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But Shanghai Tower was always intended to be the jewel in the crown.
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Backed by a consortium of state-owned developers and primarily funded by Shanghai’s municipal government, work on the $2.4 billion tower first commenced in 2008.
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Eight years and 128 stories later, the twisting structure completed, stunning the world with its scale and unusual form
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while making the skyscraper superblock one of the densest places on Earth—with more than a million square meters of real estate on offer.
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Sitting so close together, these towers invite comparison.
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Each one sets a monumental record, only to be dramatically outdone by its successor.
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But since its opening in 2016, Shanghai Tower has faced a myriad of problems—most notably an astonishingly low occupancy rate.
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Until as recently as 2018, the building was half empty.
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The spaces that were leased were let to domestic corporations—and only 30 percent of those had actually been able to move in.
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The much sought-after multinationals were even more reluctant to sign leases.
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There were several reasons for this.
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Firstly, bureaucratic red tape and safety concerns from the local fire authorities, who were concerned at the building’s immense height,
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meant that it took several years for the tower to gain its full fire certifications.
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With operating losses soaring, the tower ran more than $1.5 billion into debt.
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Secondly, the building’s twisting glass façade—ideal for offsetting wind loads—created an impractical floorplate, forcing tenants to pay for large areas of unusable floor space.
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Site inspectors found that, on most levels, just 50 percent of the floor space was used efficiently.
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Shanghai Tower’s low occupancy rate is painfully obvious at night, when half the tower fails to light up.
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This is partly due to extended delays around the luxury J-Hotel that has been due to open on the tower’s upper floors for many years.
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Shanghai Tower’s world-class sustainability credentials, which earned it LEED Platinum certification, were in fact a key part of its commercial strategy.
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Investors are always looking for ways to lower the maintenance and energy costs of supertall buildings,
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while rent for LEED certified structures can be up to 30 percent higher because of their desirable green-status.
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As such, the tower boasts over 40 energy-saving techniques, including 200 wind turbines at its summit providing 10 percent of its power,
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a dual-layered glass skin that naturally cools and ventilates the building interior, and a rainwater recycling system.
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But these measures did little to attract tenants in the tower’s early years, and in addition to the problems outlined earlier,
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Shanghai Tower found itself completing at an unsettling time for the Chinese economy.
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With commercial occupancy rates across the city falling, the tower was asking tenants to pay expensive rents when they were looking for bargains.
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Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted the lack of competent commercial decision making from China in its construction projects.
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No private company in the world could build a tower this wildly expensive but lease so little of it.
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Despite pushing the very limits of engineering and being widely praised for its design that has undoubtedly made it an iconic symbol of China,
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Shanghai Tower has seemingly fallen short of becoming a monument to the country’s economic success, standing instead as quite the opposite.
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