Photo of the Day: Shanghai Twist

Our Photo of the Day series this week shares photos of impressive modern megastructures in China.

Shanghai Tower, located in Shanghai, obviously, is the tallest part of the Lujiazui financial district’s kind of crazy skyline.

Construction on the Shanghai Tower started shortly after the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and took 8 years to complete. It’s got the world’s tallest indoor observation deck, and is the tallest building in China, standing at 632 meters (2,073 feet). That’s about 2 Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other.

The tower contains 149 elevators, and three of them can travel at a speed of 73.8km/h. The fastest elevator in Burj Khalifa only goes half the speed.

The tower’s owners also play up its green credentials: it collects rainwater and recycles waste water to flush toilets and irrigate its green spaces. The tower’s wind turbines can also provide 350,000 kWh of supplementary electricity per year. That’s a lot.

Photos: Shanghai Tower

More megastructures:

Photo of the Day: Capital Mega Airport

Photo of the Day: World’s Fastest Maglev Train