Jin Mao Tower

Jin Mao Tower 金茂大厦
Jin Mao Tower from the Oriental Pearl Tower
Information
Location	88 Century Boulevard, Pudong District, Shanghai 200121, China
Status	Complete
Constructed	1998
Use	Office, Hotel, observation, retail
Height
Antenna/Spire	421 m / 1,380 ft
Roof	370.0 m / 1,214 ft[1]
Top floor	366.0 m / 1,201 ft
Technical details
Floor count	88
Floor area	278,707 m²
Elevator count	61
Companies
Architect	Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

The Jin Mao Tower (simplified Chinese: 金茂大厦; traditional Chinese: 金茂大廈; pinyin: Jīn Mào Dàshà; literally "Golden Prosperity Building") is an 88-story landmark supertall skyscraper in the Lujiazui area of the Pudong district of Shanghai, People's Republic of China. It contains offices and the Shanghai Grand Hyatt hotel. Until 2007 it was the tallest building in the PRC, the fifth tallest in the world by roof height and the seventh tallest by pinnacle height. Along with the Oriental Pearl Tower, it is a centerpiece of the Pudong skyline. Its height was surpassed on September 14, 2007 by the Shanghai World Financial Center.^[2]

Structure

Jin Mao Tower from the base

The building is located on a 24 000 m² plot of land near the Lujiazui metro station and was built at an estimated cost of 530 million USD.

It was designed by the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. 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 1/8th 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 83.5 m deep in the ground to compensate for poor upper-strata soil conditions. At the time those were the longest steel piles ever used in a land-based building. The piles are capped by a 4 m-thick concrete raft 19.6 m underground. The basement's surrounding slurry wall is 1 m thick, 36 m high and 568 m long, and composed of 20,500 m³ 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 75 cm) 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, and the swimming pool on the 57th floor is said to act as a passive damper.

The exterior curtain wall is made of glass, stainless steel, aluminium, and granite, and is criss-crossed by complex latticework cladding made of aluminum alloy pipes.

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 Centre Co. Ltd). It reportedly has a daily maintenance cost of 1 million RMB (US$121,000).^[3]

View from the base of the Jin Mao tower at Night.

Occupants

The building has 3 main entrances to the lobby, two for the office portion and one for the hotel. Additionally, a 6-story podium at the tower base houses the Hyatt's conference and banquet facilities (first two floors) as well as a shopping mall, restaurants and nightclubs such as the hotel's "Pu-J's" on the third floor.

The 3-story basement has a food court, express elevators to the observation deck, and 600 vehicle and 7,500 bicycle parking spaces below. Above, 61 elevators (supplied by Mitsubishi) and 19 escalators carry visitors throughout the building.

The lower 50 floors (in the first 4 segments of the tower) are made up of 123,000 m² of Grade A 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 4.0 m, net height 2.7 m. Levels 51 and 52 are mechanical floors, accessible only by service elevators.

Bottom-up view of the atrium.

Top-down view of the atrium.

Shanghai Grand Hyatt

The building's anchor tenant is the five-star, 555-room Shanghai Grand Hyatt hotel which occupies floors 53 to 87. It is the highest hotel in the world in terms of distance from the ground, however the tallest building to be used exclusively as a hotel is the Burj Al Arab in Dubai (excluding the taller Ryugyong Hotel which was never in use). Additionally, the world's longest laundry chute runs down the full length of the tower to the basement, and incorporates buffers to slow down 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 27 m in diameter with a clear height of approximately 115 m.^[4] It is one of the tallest atriums in the world, the tallest being Burj Al Arab's.

Jin Mao Tower during the day

The hotel floors also feature:

• 53/F: The Piano Bar, a jazz club.
• 54/F: The hotel lobby and Grand café, served by an express elevator from the tower's ground floor.
• 55/F: Canton, a high-end Cantonese restaurant that takes up the entire floor.
• 56/F: On Fifty-Six, a collection of restaurants including The Grill, the Italian Cucina, the Japanese Kobachi, and the Patio Lounge, which is located at the base of the atrium.
• 57/F: Club Oasis, a fitness club featuring the world's highest swimming pool.
• 85/F: Highest rooms; this is also a transfer level for the elevators going to the two floors above.
• 86/F: Club Jin Mao, a Shanghainese restaurant.
• 87/F: Cloud 9, the world's highest bar (although higher restaurants exist), with a split-level mezzanine called the Sky Lounge. It is chosen by some visitors as a comfortable alternative to the observation deck above, since the lowest-priced drinks are the same price as the admission to the deck. Possibly in response to this, the hotel sets a RMB 120 (+15% service) minimum charge after 10:00 pm.

The Jin Mao Tower and the metro station

The 88th floor (not part of the hotel) houses the Skywalk, a 1,520 m² indoor observation deck with a capacity of 1,000+ people. 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 9.1m/s and take 45 seconds to reach the top. As of 2007 admission costs RMB 70 (approx. US$10), half for children.

Levels 89-93, which occupy the building's spire, are mechanical floors not accessible to the public. They are illuminated in bright white at night.

Events

The latticework cladding, made of aluminum alloy pipes, has attracted urban climbers, but spikes have also been added at ground level to deter them.

Jin Mao Tower

• On February 18, 2001 Han Qizhi, a 31-year old shoe salesman from Anhui province "struck by a rash impulse", climbed the building barehanded. Well-known urban climber France's Alain "Spiderman" Robert had earlier been trying to convince Chinese authorities to let him climb the structure. Referring to the tower's scaffold-like cladding, Robert commented that his six-year-old son could climb the building and that he himself could do it using only one arm.^[5] He faced the possibility of 15 days in a Chinese jail for an unauthorized attempt.^[6] He finally scaled the building in 2007. He was arrested and jailed for 5 days before being expelled from China.^[7]
• On October 5, 2004 during Chinese National Day Holiday, a multi-national group of BASE jumpers (invited by the Shanghai Sports Bureau) leaped from the top of the tower. 34-year old Australian jumper Roland "Slim" Simpson had a parachute malfunction and crashed on an adjacent building. He fell into a coma, and died following repatriation on October 22.^[8][9]

In film and video

• The tower and the hotel inside, including the famous atrium, were featured in the futuristic film Code 46 (2003).
• The tower and the hotel inside, including the famous atrium, are also featured in the video game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Sam Fisher, an operative of an American intelligence agency lands by helicopter on the roof of the tower and then makes his way down the side of the structure and into the Grand Hyatt hotel. This happens during Chinese New Year and fireworks can be seen exploding over the Shanghai skyline.
• In the movie Shanghai Kiss the lead Liam Liu stays in the Jin Mao Tower Hyatt hotel

See also

• List of skyscrapers
• List of tallest buildings and structures in the world
• List of tallest freestanding structures in the world

Notes and references

External links

• Shanghai
• China Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd.
• Grand Hyatt Shanghai
• Emporis datasheet
• SkyscraperPage datasheet
• Elevator Layout
• CTBUH datasheet
• The Jin Mao Tower on SH.com
• Jin Mao Tower on China Guides
• JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai
• Buildable scale paper model
• View on Google Maps - includes a short video of the building
• Alain Robert scales Jin Mao Tower
• Virtual tours at the base of the Jin Mao Tower

Skyscrapers in Shanghai over 170 metres Completed: Over 300 m Shanghai World Financial Center (492 m, 2008) · Oriental Pearl Tower (468 m, 1995) · Jin Mao Tower (421 m, 1998) · Shimao International Plaza (333 m, 2005) 200-300 m Plaza 66 Tower 1 (288 m, 2001) · Tomorrow Square (285 m, 2003) · Hong Kong New World Tower (278 m, 2002) · Bocom Financial Towers (265 m, 2002) · Grand Gateway Shanghai Towers (262 m, 2005) · Bank of Shanghai Headquarters (252 m, 2005) · Maxdo Centre (241 m, 2005) · Cloud Nine (238 m, 2006) · International Ocean Shipping Building (232 m, 2000) · Plaza 66 Tower 2 (228 m, 2006) · Oasis Skyway Garden Hotel (226 m, 2006) · Bank of China Tower (226 m, 2000) · Raffles Square (222 m, 2003) · Jasper Tower (220 m, 2008) · The Regent Shanghai (218 m, 2005) · Shanghai Dong Hai Plaza (217 m, 2004) · World Finance Tower (212 m, 2000) · King Tower (212 m, 1996) · Pudong International Information Port (211 m, 2001) · Sofitel Jin Jiang Oriental Pudong Hotel (207 m, 2002) · Nan Zheng Building (205 m, 1998) · Lippo Plaza (204 m, 1998) · Shanghai Sen Mao International Building (203 m, 1998) · Huaxia Financial Square Towers (202 m, 2003) · Golden Bell Mansion (200 m, 1998) · Radisson Hotel Shanghai New World (200 m) 170-200 m World Plaza Shanghai (199 m, 1998) · Bund Center (198 m, 2002) · Wenxin United Press Building (197 m, 1999) · Lan Sheng Building (196 m, 1997) · China Insurance Building (196 m, 1999) · The Center (196 m, 2004) · CITIC Square (193 m, 2000) · Huaneng Union Tower (188 m, 1997) · CAAC Pudong Tower (188 m, 2001) · Bao'an Tower (188 m, 1997) · Shanghai Futures Building (187 m, 1998) · China Merchants Tower (186 m, 1995) · Shanghai China Merchants Plaza Office Building (186 m, 1998) · Aurora Plaza (185 m, 2003) · Pudong Development Mansion (185 m, 2001) · Ciro's Plaza (181 m, 2002) · Union Square Towers (185 m, 2005) · Pudong Shangri La Hotel Extension (180 m, 2005) · Citigroup Tower (180 m, 2005) · Shanghai Property Information Exchange Center (180 m, 2000) · Harbour Ring Plaza (178 m, 1998) · K. Wah Center (178 m, 2005) · Four Seasons Hotel (172 m, 2002) Under construction: Shanghai Tower (632 m, 2014) · White Magnolia Plaza (320 m, 2011) · Shanghai Wheelock Square (298 m, 2008) · TIPS China Building (289 m, 2009) · Development Tower (256 m) · Albany Oasis Garden Office Tower (260 m, 2008) · Shanghai IFC North Tower (260 m, 2010) · Huamin King Tower (258 m, 2008) · Shanghai IFC South Tower (250 m, 2009) · X3-2 Office Development (200 m) · Park Place Office Tower (188 m) · Hopson International Tower (180 m, 2008) · China Merchants Bank Headquarters (180 m) · Shanghai Expo Guest Hotel (178 m) Buildings listed in order of height and with year of completion  ·  Building data source: Emporis See also: List of tallest buildings in Shanghai · Category:Buildings and structures in Shanghai ·