The Jin Mao Building or Jin Mao Tower (金茂大厦 pinyin: Jīn Mào Dàshà, lit. "Gold Luxuriance Building") is an 88-story landmark 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. As of 2005, it is 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 renowned Pudong skyline.

Structure

The building is located on a 24,000m² plot of land near the Lujiazui metro station.

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 Twin 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 17 visible "segments" (13 flaring setbacks and 4 receding ones), 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 83.5m 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 4m-thick concrete raft 19.6m underground. The basement's surrounding slurry wall is 1m thick, 36m high and 568m long, and composed of 20,500 m³ of reinforced concrete.

The building employs an advanced structural engineering system which fortifies it against typhoon winds of up to 200 km/h (with the top swaying by a maximum of 75cm) 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. Coincidentially Deng Xiaoping, China's legendary leader who initiated the reforms that made Pudong's development possible, was 88 at that time. The building was fully operational in 1999.

Jin Mao Building 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) (Shanghai Star).

Occupants

The building has 3 main entrances to the lobby, two for the office portion and one for the hotel. Additionaly, 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 4.0m, net height 2.7m. Levels 51 and 52 are mechanical floors, accessible only by service elevators.

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 is not 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 27m in diameter with a clear height of approximately 115m.(1) It is one of the tallest atriums in the world, the tallest being Burj Al Arab's.

The hotel floors also feature:

• 53/F: The Piano Bar, a jazz club.
• 54/F: The hotel lobby and Grand Cafe, 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 Pati which is inside the atrium base.
• 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 110 minimum charge to clients present after 8 PM.

The 88th floor (not part of the hotel) houses the Skywalk, a 1,520m² 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 2005 admission costs RMB 50 (approx. US$6), 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

• On February 18, 2001 Han Qizhi, a 31-year old shoe salesman from Anhui province "struck by a rash impulse", climbed the building barehanded. This occurred a mere week after well-known urban climber Alain "Spiderman" Robert had given up 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. (Climbing News, Independent Online)
• On October 5, 2003 during Chinese National Day Holiday, a multi-national group of BASE jumpers (invited by the Shanghai Sports Bureau) lept 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. (CRI Online, Blog of Death)
• The tower and the hotel inside, including the famous atrium, were featured in the futuristic film Code 46 (2003).

Notes

(1) Commonly quoted atrium height of 152m is due to a faulty assumption of 38 floors of 4m each; it is actually 32 floors of 3.5m each, the last few being taller.

See also

• List of skyscrapers
• List of the world's tallest structures
• List of famous hotels

External links

• China Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd.
• Shanghai Grand Hyatt
• Emporis datasheet
• SkyscraperPage datasheet
• CTBUH datasheet
• Analysis by Joseph Londt
• The Jin Mao Building on SH.com
• Jinmao Building on China Guides