Anyone looking for the capital of Taiwan will see him rising like a beacon from the fog that often hangs over the north of the island once known as Formosa. The Taipei World Financial Center, known by everyone here as just Taipei 101 (Chinese 台北101), is the city's sky-high lighthouse, a skyscraper that the small island nation once built to draw attention to itself. In 2004, when Taipei 101 was completed, the glass building was truly the tallest house in the world, an incredible sign of Taiwan.
At the time, it was the first building to rise higher than the Sears Tower in Chicago, which is only 507 meters tall, excluding its antennas. For a country that call himself the Republic of China, but is still not recognized by many countries around the world because their have fear of the other china, a grwat victory.
At 508 meters, the gigantic structure is still just as tall today as it was then, but ten other newly constructed buildings have surpassed Taipei 101, so named for its 101 stories. But in Taipei, a city that is by no means made up entirely of giant skyscrapers, the 101 still towers over the city skyline by a wide margin. For visitors to Taiwan, the 101 is of course a must-see, even if the glass tower is now only the eleventh tallest building in the world.
Conveniently, Taiwan's largest shopping center is located directly at the foot of the skyscraper. Shopping and sightseeing can thus be combined in the finest way, because thanks to the metro station located right next to the building, Taipei 101 is well connected to the rest of the city and easily accessible from everywhere.
It is best to be free of giddiness if you want to enter one of the elevators that take visitors up to the 89th level, where the viewing floor is located. The worlds fastest elevator loads you up to "the journey that will change your life..." Two floors above, there is also an outdoor observation deck that can be reached by stairs. Not always, however, because access depends on the weather; if there is too much wind, the door remains closed.
Even inside, however, one thinks one can feel the tower swaying. Taiwan lies between the Eurasian and Philippine continental plates, a highly active earthquake zone, so the builders did everything they could from the start to make the building safer in case of an event.
Anyone looking around the building, which also appears to be made almost entirely of glass on the inside, can immediately see how they tackled this task: Between the 88th and 92nd floors, there is a 660-ton gold-plated steel bullet made of a bunch of discs with a diameter of 5.5 meters that hangs freely from the ceiling.
It's a fantastic idea because the hydraulically suspended damping elements specifically counteract the building's sway, which occurs even on days when there are no earthquakes and measures about 1.30 meters back and forth. If the house sways to the right, the sphere swings to the left like a counterweight, and vice versa.
As a result, as you can read on the information boards, the maximum acceleration during storms is halved, because the gold sphere on its arm-thick steel cables - the only pendulum construction of this kind in the world that is open to the public - in practice keeps what its builders promised.
However, the government did not want to put all its trust in it; after all, Taiwan had the building built at a cost of 1.6 billion euros. To be on the safe side, large Chinese lucky coins were glued to the facade to ward off evil spirits.
The rest of the giant, designed by architect Chang Yong Lee, is also far less modern than it appears. The exterior design, for example, is said to be reminiscent of a traditional Chinese pagoda. Moreover, the building was constructed according to the doctrine of feng shui, to which the Taiwanese attribute the power to protect tenants from all negative influences. If that doesn't help, there's still the 8: this lucky number was placed wherever there was just enough room.
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