Shanghai World Financial Center

Shanghai

Famous around the world for its sweeping curves and the huge open trapezoid at the top, the Shanghai World Financial Center is both visually stunning and an engineering triumph. Its complex aerodynamics created a challenge for Otis engineers. The solution only seems simple.

Locals and visitors alike fondly refer to this graceful, supertall building as the bottle opener, given its obvious resemblance to a giant bottle opener. For their part, the architects say their design joins two opposing elements, the heavens and the earth, represented by the curving sides and the portal at the top.

The portal also serves a functional purpose, to relieve the enormous wind pressure on the 492-metre building, located in Pudong, the bustling financial district of Shanghai.

In another structural innovation, engineers abandoned use of a concrete frame in favor of a diagonally braced frame with outrigger trusses attached to the building’s columns. The technique reduced the building’s overall weight by 10 percent while creating a more transparent design.

Otis engineers worked closely with the customer to overcome what is known as stack effect, created as wind flows through a building's lobby and up the lift shafts. Stack effect can cause noise, vibration and lift doors to malfunction. Using advanced computer modelling, we came up with a solution: Entrance vestibules act as air locks when people enter and leave the building – and keep the wind out.