Ping An Finance Centre, Shenzhen

At 599 m, China’s second-tallest building, with eight stainless-steel mega-columns running up its corners.

It holds offices, a hotel, shops and a conference centre, and it is the headquarters of the insurance company Ping An, which gave the building its name. It was designed by the American firm Kohn Pedersen Fox. Its observation deck, Free Sky, set a record as the highest in any building, and a second tower, the South Tower, with a five-star hotel, belongs to the same project.

A shining steel tower

The tower is covered with a stainless-steel facade weighing about 1,700 tonnes. Eight main columns form its superstructure, ranging from about 6 by 3.2 metres at the bottom to 2.9 by 1.4 metres at the top. The whole tower weighs around 620,000 tonnes. It is very slim, with a width-to-height ratio of 1 to 10, and it sits on an 11-storey podium.

Sky-high views

Its observation deck, named Free Sky, is on the 116th floor at 562.5 metres, which set a record for the highest observation deck in a building. There are 33 double-deck elevators in the tower. A shorter second tower, the South Tower, was added to the project, and the tower is one of the biggest skyscrapers in the world by floor area, at about 378,600 square metres of gross floor area.

On the globe

The model shows the tall slim tower with eight stainless-steel columns running up its corners.