TIMELY TALLEST TALLY
What is the tallest building in the world?
Are you sure about that? . There's a new title holder this week of January 19, 2005 – so if you said that honor belonged to Petronas Tower No. 1.in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia you get to join the rest of those people who don't keep up with important world happenings such as this.
The new champion is a glittering tower called ”Taipei 101” at new Financial area centerpiece structure in Taipei, Taiwan. It is 1,671 feet high (509 m) and it has one- hundred-and-one floors - which shows where that clever name came from. It is a multiple purpose building, as you might expect it to be, and it has a host of the latest construction advancements built-in which included, I was told, the “world largest tuned mass drum dissembler”. That one stopped me cold, so I had to Google-ize the mysterious set of words and I find it is a six hundred ton unit inserted in the 89th floor of the new building to help cut down on the natural tendencies of such tall, slender structures to sway in high winds. The gadget, now common to all such new structures, I find, will cut such swaying by about forty-percent. They're building an “Observation Platform” on the 91st floor. It is not yet completed but will be shortly if all goes well. There is some question as to including a telescope of any size, because it can't be focused if the base on which you place it is wiggling about. A great many of the tallest buildings already sway enough to pop window glass from frames but, thus far, steel and other materials are holding fast.
The United States is holding right in there with the “Sears Tower” ,In Chicago, as next in line. It was the top one from 1973-1990 when the “Petronas Towers” took over with their 37,000 windows. If you like to quibble, you will find others who do so pointing out that the “Sears Tower” actually has a top floor which is “occupied” that is 33- feet higher than any at PT No1.or No.2. Some critic take special joy in roiling stew of discussion by measuring TV towers on top of all of these buildings which are counted on our but not on”theirs”.
Number 5 on the latest list I have come across credits the “Jin Mao Building” in Shanghai, China as Number 5, and it is also spoken of as the tallest hotel in the world because it has a hotel atrium up at about the 47th floor. When that happens you hear rumbles from North Korea where the monster mansion called the “Ryugyong Hotel” claims that designation insisting that the Shanghai contender houses only a portion of a hotel among many other functions, whereas they are all hotel - full time. The owner's tags all read “Made in China” for the rest of the top ten, except for Number 9 - our grand old Empire State Building in New York. Two of the Chinese buildings are in Hong Kong ,one in Gaungzhou and the other in Shenzen, China.
Some lists go on to as many as twenty tall ones which pulls a few more up from the United States. As far as I know, I think “the tallest man made structure in the world” can still be claimed by Toronto, Canada with their “National Tower.”
Year-after-year, I watch for even just a mention of how many such structures which have been built have ever proved to be profitable and really worth building from a business standpoint. Look at the night time photographs of any of them to see for yourself how much of the interior has never been finished-off and is not occupied even by floors. So often, they appear to be giant floodlit, non-occupied and unprofitable shells.
A.L.M. January 17, 2005 [c656wds]
