Tag: Taipei 101

Taipei 101 revisited

On By Laura MorganIn Buildings, Other cities1 Comment

There was a programme on BBC2 this evening about Taipei 101, the counterweighted skyscraper I wrote about a few months ago.  If you can endure Richard Hammond (who, separated from the others, is fairly inoffensive, though I prefer the wild-haired one and have no time at all for Clarkson), it’s worth checking out on the iPlayer.  The show focuses on the various feats of engineering which went into the building’s construction, and I was pleased to discover that the story of the building is just as fascinating as the finished product.

It also has the world’s fastest elevator, which travels at the unlikely speed of 1010 metres per minute.  I’ve had my ears pop in Japan’s fastest elevator, in the Yokohama Landmark Tower, but at a piffling 750 metres a minute it barely compares.  (Though looking it up now I discover that it’s also the world’s second-fastest elevator.)

Anyway, I’ve never been to Taiwan, though I’d like to,  so I don’t have any photos of Taipei 101.  Instead, here’s a photo of the view from the top of the Yokohama Landmark Tower, reflected in a mirror inside the viewing gallery:

landmark

Earthquake ball

On By Laura MorganIn Buildings, Other cities

I’m mesmerised by this YouTube video, which shows a massive counterweight suspended inside Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building (for now) acting against the tremors felt from the Sichuan earthquake on May 12. I don’t quite understand the physics behind it, but the weight, which more or less stays still as the building sways around it, apparently dampens the effect of the movement. You’ll find an explanation from someone who knows what they’re talking about over at BLDGBLOG:

As earthquake waves pass up through the structure, the ball remains all but stationary; its inertia helps to counteract the movements of the building around it, thus “dampening” the earthquake.