Taipei 101 Tower in Taiwan

- Built in 2004, 101 stories, height 509 meters.
- Taipei 101 Tower is currently the world’s tallest building â€" if you count its massive 60-foot spire. Its design borrows heavily from Chinese culture. Both the building’s interior and exterior incorporate the Chinese pagoda form and the shape of bamboo flowers.
- Taipei 101 became the world’s tallest building to be constructed in the new millennium and the first to cross the half-kilometer mark. The construction costed $1.76 billion and was completed in 2004. This multiuse steel-and-glass skyscraper was designed by C.Y. Lee & Partners and has 61 elevators. It reflects the traditional Chinese pagoda, with a soaring podium base, eight tiers of eight storeys (eight is considered to be a number for prosperous growth in China), narrow pinnacle tower and a spire. The building has an 18 ft, 882-ton ball-shaped damper at the top that counteracts swaying during typhoons and earthquakes. Although, CTBUH only takes into consideration the floors above the ground level, there are 5 floors underground too. The number “101� also represents the mailing code of Taipei’s international business district. It has been hailed as the Seven New Wonders of the World by Newsweek magazine in 2006 and as the Seven Wonders of Engineering by Discovery Channel in 2005.