Jin Mao Tower
The Jin Mao Tower (), also known as the or , is a , 88-story (93 if counting the floors in the spire) landmark skyscraper in Lujiazui, Pudong, Shanghai, China. It contains a shopping mall, offices and the Grand Hyatt Shanghai hotel which starts from the 53rd floor, which at the time of completion was the highest hotel in the world. Along with the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Shanghai Tower it is part of the Lujiazui skyline seen from the Bund. It was the tallest building in China from its completion in 1999  until 2007, when it was surpassed by the Shanghai World Financial Center which is located close by. The Shanghai Tower, a 128-story building located next to these two buildings, surpassed the height of both these buildings in 2015, creating the world's first trio of adjacent supertall skyscrapers. Structure. The building is located on a plot of land near the Lujiazui metro station and was built at an estimated cost of US$530 million. It was designed by the Chicago firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Its postmodern form, whose complexity rises as it ascends, draws on traditional Chinese  architecture such as the tiered pagoda, gently stepping back to create a rhythmic pattern as it rises. Like the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the building's proportions revolve around the number 8, associated with prosperity in Chinese culture. The 88 floors (93 if the spire floors are counted) are divided into 16 segments, each of which is 1/8 shorter than the 16-story base. The tower is built around an octagon-shaped concrete shear wall core surrounded by 8 exterior composite supercolumns and 8 exterior steel columns. Three sets of 8 two-story high outrigger trusses connect the columns to  the core at six of the floors to provide additional support. The foundations rest on 1,062 high-capacity steel piles driven deep in the ground to compensate for poor upper-strata soil conditions. At the time of construction, these were the longest steel piles ever used for a land-based building. The piles are capped by a 4 m-thick concrete raft underground. The basement's surrounding slurry wall is thick, high and long. It is composed of of reinforced concrete. The building employs an advanced structural engineering system of wind and earthquake engineering which fortify it against typhoon winds  of up to 200 km/h (with the top swaying by a maximum of ) and earthquakes of up to 7 on the Richter scale. The steel shafts have shear joints that act as shock absorbers to cushion the lateral forces imposed by winds and quakes. The swimming pool on the 57th floor is also said to act as a passive damper. The exterior curtain wall is made of glass, stainless steel, aluminum, and granite and is criss-crossed by complex latticework cladding made of aluminum alloy pipes. Operations. Official dedication was August 28, 1998, a date also chosen with the  number 8 in mind. The building was fully operational in 1999. The Jin Mao Tower is owned by the China Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd (formerly "China Shanghai Foreign Trade Center Co. Ltd"). It reportedly has a daily maintenance cost of 1 million RMB (US$121,000). The building has 3 main entrances to the lobby: two for the office portion and one for the hotel. The basement has express elevators to the observation deck and a parking area for 600 vehicles and 7,500 bicycles. In total, 61 Mitsubishi elevators and 19 escalators carry visitors throughout the building. Levels 51, 52 , and 89–93 are mechanical floors, accessible only by service elevators. Occupants. The 3-level basement has a food court, while the first two floors include the Hyatt's conference and banquet facilities. The first six floors include a shopping mall, restaurants, and nightclubs, include Pu-J's. The lower 50 floors (in the first 4 segments of the tower) are made up of of offices, divided into 5 elevator zones (3-6, 7-17, 18-29, 30-40, and 41-50). Office spaces are open-plan (column-free), with a floor-to-floor gross height of and net height of  . Grand Hyatt Shanghai. The building's anchor tenant is the five-star 555-room Grand Hyatt Shanghai hotel which occupies floors 53 to 87. It is one of the highest hotels in the world, second in Shanghai only to its sister property, the Shanghai Park Hyatt, occupying the 79th to 93rd floors of the immediately adjacent Shanghai World Financial Center. These have since been surpassed by The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong, which occupies floors 102 to 118 of the International Commerce Center in Hong Kong. However, the tallest building to be used exclusively as a hotel is the JW Marriott  Marquis Dubai. Additionally, the world's longest laundry chute runs down the full length of the tower to the basement, incorporating buffers to slow the laundry during its descent. The Hyatt's famous barrel-vaulted atrium starts at the 56th floor and extends upwards to the 87th. Lined with 28 annular corridors and staircases arrayed in a spiral, it is in diameter with a clear height of approximately . It is one of the tallest atria in the world, the tallest being the Burj Al Arab's. The hotel floors also feature: Skywalk. The Skywalk, a indoor observation deck with a  capacity of 1,000+ people, occupies the 88th floor of the building. In addition to the panoramic views of Shanghai, it offers a topside view of the hotel atrium below. It also includes a small post office. Access is through two express elevators from the basement that travel at 9.1 m/s and take 45 seconds to reach the top. As of 2009, admission to the 88th floor costs 88 RMB for adults and 45 RMB for children.