During a nine-course meal at a Chinese restaurant in New York City on July 10, Wang Da Sui, design master of China and part of a panel of experts approving the structural scheme for the 632-meter-tall Shanghai Tower, confirmed that the innovative architecture of the twisted and tapering skyscraper—sheathed in sheer glass like a Baccarat crystal—is a guinea pig for crafting China’s first supertall-building code. The code, for structures 300 m and taller with “serious irregularity,” requires performance-based design and extra-stiff frames and puts strict limits on building acceleration. Wang, who also heads the code committee, said the code will be published in about a year “or later.”
Sitting to Wang’s left at the restaurant Jade was the dinner’s host, Dennis C.K. Poon, managing principal for the tower’s structural designer, New York City-based Thornton Tomasetti (TT). Shanghai Tower, on deck to become China’s tallest building, the world’s second-tallest building and the world’s tallest composite structure, “already incorporates some of the spirit of the new code,” said Poon.