Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower

Shanghai

With its space-age vibe, the Oriental Pearl Tower stands out even among the iconic buildings of Shanghai’s bustling Pudong District. And what better way to travel through space than the tower’s network of advanced Otis^® elevators?

The tower features 11 steel spheres of different sizes, linked along three columns. The tower is supported at its base by three diagonal columns. At night, a 3-D light show illuminates the tower against the district’s celebrated skyline.

The tower draws an estimated 2.8 million visitors a year with attractions like a revolving restaurant, shopping center, a hotel, even a roller coaster.

The names of the spheres suggest interplanetary travel, befitting its futuristic architecture: The highest observation deck is the Space Module; the lowest, Space City. The hotel that occupies the five smaller spheres is the Space Hotel.

To reach Space City, the lowest observation level at 295 ft, visitors ride a circular glass Otis elevator traveling at 2.5 meters per second, a speed that gives them time to enjoy the view.

Upon opening, the tower featured China's first double-deck elevator, technology invented by Otis to increase a building’s passenger capacity using fewer hoistways to free valuable core space.

We’ve since added four elevators. As part of a modernization project, we’re converting two single-deck elevators to double decks to boost passenger capacity by nearly a third.