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Shanghai World Financial Center Newsroom

The tallest building in the world!

(This section of The High Rise Pages was made in 1997 and remains on this website by means of nostalgia. By now it is the end of 2005 end the Shanghai World Financial Center is still not completed!)

On august 27, 1997 the ground breaking ceremony of the Shanghai World Financial Center was held. When completed in 2001, this 94-story tower will be the tallest building in the world. The SWFC will have its rooftop at a height of no less than 460 meters (1509 ft.). If the SWFC will be completed as planned, both Sears and Petronas can stop their debate about who of them is the tallest. The SWFC will break all their height-records!

Will the SWFC have a mystery spire? Finally, The High-Rise Pages will investigate some interesting questions about the SWFC. One of them is: Will there be a spire or antenna on the rooftop of the SWFC? Building a spire or antenna on a building is often used as a trick to make it taller. This is how the wonderful Chrysler Building won its title of the world's tallest building in 1930. Even today this method is used: the Petronas headquarters in Kuala Lumpur can call itself the tallest building in the world thanks to its spires. The artist's impressions of the Shanghai World Financial Center do not show any spire or antenna at all. As we all know the competition for building the tallest building in the world is rather stiff. So why is there no spire on the SWFC? Or is there something going on we should know about?