Shanghai Tower - Year's Best Skyscraper

Life

oi-Staff

By Staff

Thursday, December 4, 2008, 14:34

The Shanghai World Financial Center has been declared the world's the best skyscraper. Other than being the world's second-tallest building, it also also nicknamed as an elegant bottle opener.

"The simplicity of its form as well as its size dramatizes the idea of the skyscraper," said Carol Willis of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an international group of architects and engineers.

The building's innovative design was cited by Architect Tim Johnson, who led the council's selection committee. Steel trusses gird against the forces of wind and earthquake and "made the building lighter, made it use less steel, and contributed to its sustainability," he said and added that the tower's tapered form creates the impression it is dissolving into the heavens, he added.

The Council on Tall Buildings is the body that determines the world's tallest building a designation that seems to jump around the globe and will soon shift to Dubai.

The Shangai towers was designed by architectural firm Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, which was founded in New York and has offices worldwide, according to the Xinhua news agency.