SHANGHAI

TOWER

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What is Shanghai Tower? Shanghai Tower is the new symbol of Shanghai—a gateway to China and Asia.
The 121-story tower speaks to Shanghai’s place in the world order and to its
transformation as a global metropolis. Yet its impact extends beyond its role as an
icon for a global financial capital. Shanghai Tower’s location in China, the leader
in construction of supertall buildings, places it at the center of discussions about
the future of cities.

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Urban Context

Shanghai Tower is the most forward-looking of the three towers that anchor the
Lujiazui commercial district. Designed by a local team to embody the city’s rich
culture, the 632-meter-high (2,073 feet) mixed-use building completes the super-
highrise precinct that includes the Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial
Center. Shanghai Tower’s rounded triangular footprint is derived from its relationship
to the two towers. It’s also a response to the bend in the nearby Huangpu River.

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Then and Now

Shanghai Tower embodies the dramatic transformation of the city’s Pudong district.
In little more than a quarter-century, a low-rise district of prosaic factories, warehouses
and rice fields has developed into a high-powered global financial center, with
Shanghai Tower as the unifying landmark. The tower is a community in itself, able to
accommodate a population of 30,000 people at a time. It engages the city through
the connective tissue of parks, plazas, streets, sidewalks and transit.

1990 2005

2016

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design strategy

Vertical Urbanism

Shanghai Tower takes inspiration from the city’s tradition of small-scale courtyards
and neighborhood parks, recasting them in high-density urban form. The tower
is designed to embrace and stimulate the life of the city. It draws on the Chinese
people’s affinity for indoor-outdoor living, a lifestyle reflected in the city houses
known as shikumen, whose narrow alleys and courtyards are a canvas for social life.
Shanghai Tower embodies this same planning concept, but applies it vertically
rather than horizontally. Its gathering spaces are the 21 sky gardens that set the
building apart from any highrise ever built.

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design strategy

Form and Function

During the design process, the architects anticipated that three key strategies—
the tower’s asymmetrical form, its tapering profile and its rounded corners—would
allow the building to withstand typhoon-force winds that are common in Shanghai.
Using wind tunnel tests, the architects and structural engineers refined the tower’s
form, examining its proportions and studying the optimum rotation for deflecting
the wind. The ultimate solution, which reduced building wind loads by 24 percent,
resulted in a lighter structure that saved $58 million in costly materials.

210° 180° 150° 120° 90° 60°

Wind tunnel study rotation models (left)

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design strategy

Structural Features

The tower highlights technologies that raise the bar for the next generation of super-
highrise buildings. Shanghai Tower’s structural design responds to many challenges
presented by its location: a windy climate, an active earthquake zone and clay-based
soils. The heart of the structural system is a concrete core. The core acts in concert
with a system of steel outriggers and supercolumns, with double-belt trusses that
support the base of each vertical neighborhood. The refuge and mechanical floors that
extend outward at the base of each zone mark the divisions of the building.

Main structure and building systems

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design strategy

Building Program

Shanghai Tower is a city within a city

comprising nine vertical zones, essen-
tially nine smaller buildings stacked on
Zone 9 one another. Each zone is 12 to 15 stories
Observation / Cultural facilities
Zone 8 tall. These divisions help to organize the
Hotel / Boutique office
building’s mixed-use program, while sim-
plifying its heating, cooling and vertical
circulation. The mixed-use tower meets
Zone 7
Hotel
the ground with a six-level retail podium.
Next are five zones (70 floors) of Class A
commercial office space. Above that are
two zones that house a luxury hotel.
Zone 6
Office At the very top are indoor observation
floors and, on floor 121, an open-air
observation deck. A high-speed elevator
Zone 5 takes visitors from the base of the build-
Office
ing to the summit in under two minutes.

Zone 4
Office

Zone 3
Office

Zone 2
Office

Zone 1
Retail

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design strategy

Retail Podium

The tower meets the ground with a six-level retail podium that houses shops,
cafés, restaurants and parking. In addition, the podium houses a conference center
whose multifunction hall—the largest gathering space in the zone east of the
Huangpu River—will attract audiences to concerts, performances, art exhibits and
social events. An underground walkway connects the tower to the adjacent supertall
buildings and a transit station that serves the site.

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design strategy

Sky Gardens

Level
68

Level
52

Level
37

Level
22 The design incorporates two independent curtain walls: the outer skin that is cam-
shaped in plan and the inner one that is circular. These two wall systems created the
possibility for Shanghai Tower’s one-of-a-kind sky gardens that are spaced throughout
the building. The light-filled atria serve much as plazas and squares do, bringing
people together in places that everyone shares. The shops and restaurants on these
Level levels offer destinations where people mix every day. The gardens provide a spatial
08
and social experience that distinguishes Shanghai Tower from any other highrise.

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design strategy

Commercial Office Space / Luxury Hotel

Rising above the retail podium, five zones of the building (about 70 floors) are
dedicated to Class A commercial office space. Above that, the next two zones will
accommodate a luxury hotel.

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design strategy

Observation Levels

Topping off the tower are the observation levels for tourists, with amenities including
a restaurant, café, gift shop and, on the 121st floor, an open-air observation deck
where visitors walk among the wind turbines that are integrated in the building’s
crown. On a platform above, people can view the massive tuned mass damper—
a 1,000-metric-ton (1,100-ton) assembly of steel plates suspended by thick cables.
The focal point of this gallery is a contemporary sculpture that glides with the
back-and-forth movements of the counterweight.

1,000-metric-ton tuned mass damper near the top of the tower

improves occupant comfort

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design strategy

Curtain Wall

The complex shape had design implications for the building’s outer skin. Designed
with 20,000+ curtain wall panels—including more than 7,000 unique shapes—the
façade would have been challenging to envision using traditional computer-aided
design tools. With parametric software, however, the team was able to study many
alternatives and create a system that balances performance, constructability,
maintenance and design.

Curtain wall support system

Typical atrium top & bottom curtain wall connections

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design strategy

A Construction Challenge

Unlike a more conventional building, in which the walls are built from the ground
up, the outer curtain wall of Shanghai Tower was most efficiently constructed from
the top down within each zone. A system of rods and cables suspended from above
solved a difficult design challenge. On the exterior, a deep V-notch in the façade
makes the spiraling geometry readily apparent, while confusing the winds that swirl
around the building.

Reinforced concrete core, super composite column,

and steel outrigger truss

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Sustainability

Transparent skin

Shanghai Tower is one of the most advanced sustainable tall buildings in the world,
designed to achieve both LEED Platinum certification and a China Green Building
Three Star rating. A central aspect of the design is the transparent second skin that
acts like an insulating blanket, reducing energy use for heating and cooling. Both
the inner and outer curtain walls have a spectrally selective low-E coating that also
reduces cooling loads.

Atrium energy performance: winter concept Atrium energy performance: summer concept

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Sustainability

Water conservation practices

The tower employs state-of-the-art water conservation practices. This includes

water harvesting in the crown and on the podium terrace. The water is repurposed
for landscape irrigation and other uses.

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Sustainability

High-efficiency building systems and power generation

Shanghai Tower incorporates intelligent building controls that lower energy costs
by monitoring and adjusting systems such as lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation
and self-generated power. Lighting controls alone are calculated to save more than
$556,000 each year in energy costs. Two-hundred seventy wind turbines at the top
of the building provide power for exterior lighting of the building, while a 2,130-kW
natural gas-fired cogeneration system provides electricity and heat energy to the
low-zone areas.

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A Game Changer Overall, the design team’s comprehensive approach addresses key issues of resilience
and urban design that challenge cities today. By housing a mix of uses, conserving
resources, meshing with regional mass transit and providing human-scaled spaces
that add delight to daily experience, Shanghai Tower presents new ideas for how tall
buildings can be sustainable and people-centered.

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