Guide to Taipei 101: A Brief History of Taiwan’s Tallest Skyscraper

The Taipei 101 tower (formerly called the Taipei Financial Center or Taipei World Financial Center) is an office building in Taipei, Taiwan. The skyscraper is located on prime real estate on Xinyi Road, a major thoroughfare in the Xinyi District in Taipei City. C.Y. Lee & Partners designed the skyscraper, which has 101 stories and is 1,667 (that height includes the spire above its top floor). The tower celebrated its formal opening on New Year's Eve in two thousand four with a festive fireworks display. It is one of the most notable tall buildings in the world for its structural design.

Though not currently the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101 held that title when it opened in 2004. Prior to that, Malaysia's Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur was considered the world’s tallest building. Taipei 101 also captured another record as the building with the highest inhabited floor. Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower) previously held that title.

Taipei 101 remains the tallest building in Taipei, but worldwide is surpassed by Abraj Al-Bait Clock Tower in Mecca; One World Trade Center in New York City; Lotte World Tower in Seoul; Burj Khalifa building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and others.

Taipei 101’s height is not the only thing that makes the skyscraper a noteworthy landmark. Here are six significant qualities of the tower:

1. 1. Advanced structural system: The structural system features outrigger trusses (reinforced concrete walls) with several super columns for additional support. The columns are filled with concrete. The mega-columns provide additional structural engineering support against strong winds.
2. 2. High-speed elevators: Taipei 101 has sixty-one elevators inside the tower. Two of those elevators are high-speed, capable of traveling at more than thirty-seven miles per hour. When the tower opened, they were the world’s fastest elevators, before being surpassed by elevators in the Shanghai Tower, in Shanghai, China, and the Guangzhou Chow Tai Fook Finance Centre in Guangzhou, China, able to travel over forty-five miles per hour.
3. 3. No forty-fourth floor: The number four is considered unlucky in Chinese culture; therefore, there is no forty-fourth floor. Instead, you’ll find floor “forty-two A” and floor forty-three.
4. 4. Resists strong winds: Taipei is located in an earthquake and tropical storm zone, and the Taipei 101 building is close to a fault line. The architect and structural engineers designed the building to withstand typhoon-strength winds and earthquakes. The building was built to be flexible and sway in strong winds. To do so, it contains a giant steel pendulum (wind damper) as a wind control system. The wind damper is suspended from the eighty-seventh floor up to the ninety-second floor and acts as a counterbalance to strong winds. The ball of the pendulum is the world’s largest tuned mass damper (TMD) ball, weighing 660 metric tons.
5. 5. Sustainable building and operation: Taipei 101 is one of the world’s tallest green buildings. The skyscraper received LEED Platinum certification (in 2011). Several energy-saving design features include sustainable air-conditioning technology. It has low-flow water fixtures and a water recycling facility within the building, adding to its sustainability.
6. 6. Symbolic design: The high-rise building was designed to represent a stalk of bamboo reaching into the sky, although some say it looks like a pagoda.

The skyscraper is home to dozens of corporate offices as well as the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The public can visit several areas of the Taipei 101 tower, including the:

• Indoor observatory: The Taipei 101 Observatory is located on the eighty-ninth floor and offers a 360-degree view of Taipei.
• Outdoor observation deck: You can take the stairs from the eighty-ninth floor observatory to the ninety-first floor outdoor observation deck, which is open when the weather permits. Here you can look out over Taipei, including the hiking area that surrounds Xiangshan, or the Elephant Mountain, a natural landmark.
• Restaurants: You can eat Chinese dishes at several restaurants. In addition to the large food court located on one of the basement floors, there are several Taiwanese restaurants.
• Shopping mall: Head to the fifth floor to shop at the Taipei 101 Mall, which covers more than 828,000 square feet.

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