See what’s ahead for design in 2013 with our newest publication, the Gensler Design Forecast 2013 (PDF).
Xiaomei Lee 
Photo credit: Gensler
At 425 meters and 90 floors, Shanghai Tower has just surpassed the neighboring Jinmao Tower, the first of the trio of supertalls in Pudong.
Dan Winey 
Photo credit: Gensler
The curtain wall is being installed on the Shanghai Tower, and so far I am very impressed with the way that fabrication and installation are progressing. The hard work of our project team, in particular Michael Peng and Ben Tranel, is the reason we have been able to streamline this complicated process. Ben and Michael have worked with Yuanda, the curtain wall contractor, to simplify the design and to ensure the integrity of construction.
Jay Shen 
Once construction is completed, Shanghai Tower (pictured on the right) will be the tallest building in Shanghai's Lujiazui Finance and Trade district and the second tallest building in the world.
There is perhaps nothing more symbolic of contemporary China’s rapid development than the mega projects being built in this country. To that point, China Central TV (CCTV) just aired a five-episode documentary series titled “China’s Mega Projects” to showcase the building process behind several of China’s mega projects, all of which rank among the biggest in the world today. Among the five mega projects in this series is the Shanghai Tower designed by Gensler. Almost three years into construction, the Tower stands at a height of 390 meters with 80 stories completed as of the end of September. The hour-long episode featuring the Shanghai Tower has attracted much attention across China, so I sat down with Jun Xia, the project’s Design Director, to discuss the documentary and the project itself.
Dan Winey 
When I first went to China in the mid-1990s, I was surprised by the very poor quality of commercial construction. As I crossed the border at Shenzen, I felt as if I had stepped back in time. Most of the buildings were of the post-World War II vintage and most had gone through many years of deferred maintenance. From my perspective, the finest buildings in the country were those built from the mid-1800s to the early turn of the century. Most everything else was poorly designed, poorly constructed, and not worth saving.
Dan Winey 
One of the questions I constantly ask myself is whether a building that has the scale and magnitude of Shanghai Tower can really be considered sustainable in terms of design. From a personal viewpoint, I do not believe the answer to the question of sustainable design is one that is solved by achieving some level of LEED or other certification by an outside agency. I do believe that having these measures forces us to think more clearly about design solutions and provides goals for the design and engineering community. These goals, however, tend to be at a level that rarely challenges us in a significant way.
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