Photo: Taipei 101 © Sean Pavone | Dreamstime.com
On an ascent to the top of the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower or Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, it’s the outside vista that is the payoff. Of course, the views are spectacular, too, from Taipei 101, Taiwan’s tallest building, the world’s first skyscraper to break the half-kilometer mark in height and briefly the tallest building on Earth. But once you’re whisked up 89 floors at 37 mph in one of the world’s fastest elevators, it’s not only the cityscape stretching below toward the distant mountains that is magnificent. The sights from the observation deck are stunning, but the building’s inner core is what will take your breath away.
Entering a smaller interior viewing space, visitors can see a secret of the building’s stability. Made of 41 staggered layers of gold-painted steel plates, a colossal 660-ton sphere, 18 feet in diameter, hangs from the 92nd to the 87th floors. Imperceptibly moving like a giant pendulum, the mammoth damper counterbalances gusts of wind sweeping the exterior, reducing sway by up to 40 percent. Combined with the structure’s strong and flexible foundation, this amazing orb, an engineering marvel, helps make Taipei 101 one of the most stable buildings ever constructed.