Titanium La Portada

Titanium La Portada is an office tower in Santiago, the capital of Chile. It stands in El Golf, the city's polished financial district, and it was finished in January 2010. For a short time it was the tallest building in Chile, until the Gran Torre Santiago rose above it later that same year.

The tower has 55 floors above ground and seven more underground, most of them used for parking. Its glass and metal skin catches the sky, and two helipads sit on the roof. Santiago sits in a region where earthquakes are common, so the tower was built to be tough. It became a famous example of a modern skyscraper that can stand up to strong shaking.

Built to survive earthquakes

Chile has some of the strongest earthquakes on Earth, so engineers anchored the tower about 50 metres deep using 65 concrete and steel pylons. The design was meant to resist a magnitude 9.0 quake. In February 2010, just after the tower opened, a huge earthquake shook the country. The building came through without damage, although one decorative piece on the outside fell. That test made people proud of how well Santiago's modern towers were designed.

Inside and around the tower

The tower has about 129,500 square metres of floor space, mostly offices, served by 20 fast elevators that travel at 6.6 metres per second. It was also the first project in South America to earn the green LEED label from the US Green Building Council. The ground floor was planned to stay open to people walking by, with green space around it, on the site of an older shopping mall.

On the globe

The model shows a slender glass tower with a slanted crown, as in the card. Look for the blue-green glass and the sloping top.