Taipei 101

A 508 m skyscraper shaped like stacked bamboo segments, once the tallest building in the world.

The tower was designed to look Asian and modern at the same time. Its main section is made of eight stacked segments, each eight floors tall, which remind people of a stalk of bamboo growing upward, a pagoda and a pile of old Chinese money boxes. Inside are offices, shops, restaurants and observation decks, and every New Year's Eve the building lights up with a famous fireworks show.

Why the design is special

In Chinese-speaking cultures the number eight stands for plenty and good luck, so the designers repeated it: eight segments of eight floors each. Bamboo is a symbol of learning and growing, and the green-tinted glass helps the tower look like a slender bamboo stalk. The number four is thought to be unlucky, so the 44th floor is called the 43rd. A large shopping mall next to the tower carries a giant ruyi, a traditional good-luck symbol.

Standing up to wind and earthquakes

Taiwan has many earthquakes and typhoons, and the tower stands only about 200 metres from a major fault line. To keep it steady, engineers hung a 660-tonne steel ball, called a tuned mass damper, near the top. When wind pushes the building one way, the giant ball swings the other way and calms the shaking. Visitors can see it from the 88th to the 92nd floor. In 2015, during Typhoon Soudelor, the ball swung about one metre, its biggest movement ever recorded.

Building the tower

Planning began in 1997 and the first column went up in 2001. In March 2002 a strong earthquake knocked two cranes off the 56th floor, a sad accident in which five people died, but the building itself was not damaged. The roof was finished in July 2003, and the tower opened at the end of 2004. In 2011 it earned a top green-building award for saving energy.

On the globe

The model shows the tall tower made of stacked segments that widen slightly upward, like joints of bamboo, topped by a slim spire. Count the repeated segments as you zoom in on Taipei.