The Sky’s the Limit: How China Fell Out of Love With Skyscrapers

Over-construction, safety issues, and environmental concerns means China’s skyscraper boom may be ending

摩天大楼比高热消退之后

As office workers and shoppers milled around inside Shenzhen’s 356-meter-tall SEG Plaza in May of last year, they suddenly began to feel the floor swaying beneath their feet. “Everyone was scared, they were running around as if in a disaster movie,” a shaken worker from the 55th floor told Jimu News the day of the incident.

But it wasn’t an earthquake that made the world’s 222nd tallest building tremble, and water slosh around in glasses as the tower moved like a cruise liner on rolling waves. Instead, wind captured by two 50-meter antennae atop the skyscraper had led to “vortex-induced resonance,” authorities announced in July, after the building had been closed for weeks of investigation.

Though no one was harmed by the swaying, and the building formally re-opened to businesses and the public on September 8, the incident marked a symbolic end to Chinese cities’ skyward building spree that saw the country go from completing the Guangzhou Baiyun Hotel, the Chinese mainland’s first inhabitable building over 100 meters tall, in 1978, to having the most skyscrapers in the world by 2007.

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