Structure of China Shanghai Tower

Double-glass façade will greatly reduce the structure’s carbon footprint, say its architects. The last metal panel is raised into position during the ‘topping out’ ceremony in August for the 632-metre Shanghai Tower©Nicky Almasy. The last China tours metal panel is raised into position during the ‘topping out’ ceremony in August for the 632-metre Shanghai Tower.

China likes everything tall: tall buildings, tall people – there are even special summer camps aimed at growing taller children. These days the country also has an obsession with greenness Yangtze River cruises (running parallel to its increasingly dire pollution problems). And soon these two cults – the cult of the tall and the cult of the green – will meet at Shanghai’s newest skyscraper, the 632-metre Shanghai Tower, billed by its makers as the world’s greenest tall building.

Skyscrapers are nothing new in China, where municipal gigantism has become such a fad that the country accounts for 13 of the 20 tallest buildings under construction in the world, China tour according to figures from the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

At the time of writing, the Shanghai Tower, although still being built, is widely considered the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world after the 828-metre Burj Khalifa in Dubai. However, a company in the central Chinese city of Changsha has announced plans to build the world’s tallest skyscraper, at 838 metres, in just three months. And Chengdu, another Shanghai tour hinterland Chinese city, recently completed the world’s largest building by area, a scheme that included its own artificial sun.