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Shanghai Journal: In World Skyscraper Race, It Isn’t Lonely at the Top
May 10, 2007 10:25 PM
Copyright The New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: May 8, 2007
SHANGHAI — When work began on the Shanghai World Financial Center in 1997, in the headiest days of China’s economic takeoff, Shanghai was already a city that was hard to impress.
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Ryan Pyle for The New York Times
When completed the Shanghai World Financial Center will be taller than the Jin Mao tower nearby, but not quite as tall as a skyscraper that went up recently in Taiwan.
Even then, the erstwhile farmlands of Pudong District boasted two icons: the Oriental Pearl Tower, looking like a science fiction movie prop with its rocket-on-the-launching-pad trunk and glittering, spacestation-like orbs, and the nearby Jin Mao tower, a bejeweled spire of stacked pagodas that boasted the world’s highest hotel lobby.
With competition like that, the man behind the project — one of Japan’s foremost real estate developers, Minoru Mori — knew he had to aim high to make his mark. By the time of the groundbreaking it seemed as if his team had struck on the right plan.
Mr. Mori, who has a Trump-like three dozen or so buildings in Tokyo that bear his name, would offer Shanghai the world’s tallest building, at 1,614 feet. For extra effect the roof of his new building would be formed by a giant enclosed circle that would house specially outfitted cars, a sort of Ferris wheel at the top of the world.
If skyscrapers can be said to have journeys, what has happened since has been one long, strange trip indeed. These days workers are racing to complete the 101-floor building on schedule, mounting skyward floor by floor toward a hitherto unaccustomed view that looks down on the neighboring landmarks.
But in truth, neither the schedule nor the building itself bears much resemblance to the original plans, which for many of the people involved must by now seem like a lifetime ago.
Record-breaking skyscrapers have a long and uncanny history of association with economic crisis — the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, for example, were both conceived in the 1920s and completed during the Depression years — and Mr. Mori’s gaudy Shanghai dream would be no exception. Within months of the groundbreaking a financial crash struck Asia, ripping the bottom out of stock markets and real estate markets throughout this region.
Work was halted on the Finance Center, partly out of fears of a shortage of tenants and partly out of doubts over the unspoken premise that lay behind the project: that China’s economy was set to lead the world. For five long years the huge work site sat idle, with nothing reaching skyward save for overgrown grass behind a plain cement wall.
A holding pattern like that would have been enough to sink many developers, but not Mr. Mori, for whom completing the project appears to be a point of pride.
“We are not a listed company, so we are able to control our costs very carefully,” said Michiho Kishi, a spokesman for the company. “If we had been a listed company, our C.E.O. would have been forced to resign, very simply. That’s what makes us unique.”
What Mr. Mori was unable to control was what happened while his project was frozen. Five years, it turns out, is an eternity in the record-breaking-skyscraper business, with countries all over Asia throwing their hats into the ring with new structures, each taller than the last.
For Shanghai’s would-be title holder, the delay resulted in the building being surpassed even before it could be built, with the additional indignity that the new champion, Taipei 101, a 1,671-foot structure, is in the capital of Taiwan, the diplomatic rival that China considers a renegade province.
But that was not the only setback. With anti-Japanese sentiment swelling in China, questions began to be asked about the Shanghai building’s design. Some said the large hole at the summit was suspiciously reminiscent of the sun that sits at the center of the Japanese flag. That was a sore point for many Chinese, who still harbor resentments over Japan’s military invasion of the country in the 1930s.
Mr. Mori’s representatives gamely protested that the circle with the sky ride was based on a traditional Chinese symbol, the moon gate, but in the end they quietly backed down, replacing the hole with a squarish slot and ditching the Ferris wheel concept altogether.
Posted at 10:25 PM