Chief architect of Shanghai Tower draws up blueprint for Shanghai

With a fan in one hand and a bird cage in another, a graceful figure of a girl from the 1930s attracts the attention of passers-by. Named “Shanghai Girl,” it is a sculpture of late Chinese artist Chen Yifei. After more than a decade, the girl finally returned to her hometown Shanghai in 2014. And her new home is the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China with the same elegant shape as the girl.

(“Shanghai Girl” is one of the three treasures enshrined at the Shanghai Tower. The other two are the world's largest glass fresco and a pottery installation artwork crafted by 18 masters.)

On the 34th floor of the high-rise, eastday.com had an interview with its chief architect Marshall Strabala. It is the Shanghai Tower that has made him the designer behind the world's most beautiful skyscraper. Also, because of this building, his name is inseparable from Shanghai. He can now blurt out the Chinese word “Shanghai Zhongxin” easily.

(Marshall Strabala has an interview with Eastday.com.)

Design concept of Shanghai Tower

Marshall is one of the few super-tall building architects in the world. Before the Shanghai Tower, he was involved in the design of two world-famous super-high buildings: Burj Khalifa (828m) and Nanjing Zifeng Building (450m). However, the Shanghai Tower is the world’s first building with a double-skin glass façade. Using a thermos bottle, Marshall explained the design concept of the Shanghai Tower: Do more with less. “Shanghai Tower is just like this thermos bottle. So we couldn’t just do a simple straightforward building. We wanted to do a building that would save energy. When I say save energy, I mean save energy for the next hundred years. If the calculations are right, the amount of energy we will save over the next 75 years would pay for another building just like the Shanghai Tower.”

“We thought that if we created a building that uses less energy over the next hundred years, we have a significant feature to add to the skyline of Shanghai,” said Marshall when recalling the scene of the design competition for the Shanghai Tower in 2006. As the world’s highest sustainable building completed in 2016, it was conferred the LEED-CS Platinum certification - known as the Academy Awards for green buildings.

(Marshall at work in his studio)

Interestingly, there is a hidden story to tell about the Shanghai Tower, which is the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world. “At first, our design for the Shanghai Tower was 680 meters," said Marshall. The site of the Shanghai Tower is in the centre of Lujiazui, near the Jinmao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center. To form a harmonious relationship among the three skyscrapers, the final decision was to set the height at 632 meters. Shanghai World Financial Center is 71.5 meters taller than the Jinmao Tower, while the Shanghai Tower is 140 meters taller than the World Financial Center. The differences in height form a visually perfect arc. As Marshall said, “What was beautiful about the planning of Shanghai Tower is that it was not about being the tallest. It was about being the right size for Shanghai and the right building at the right time. Who knows, in 20 years Shanghai may have another satellite CBD and build a 1,000-meter tower. But for now, it was about building the right building for Shanghai at the right height.”

In Marshall’s eyes, the Shanghai Tower is a synonym for future and plays a unique role. “Jinmao is about China’s past. It is a skyscraper that takes the decoration of a pagoda and applies it to the skin. So it is a stainless steel pagoda. It represents the history of China. SWFC was built by a Japanese developer. It represents China’s present, a present that is opening up to foreign investment. And the third building of the three represents China’s future. So the three buildings - past, present and future - form what we call ‘The Three Brothers.’ The Shanghai Tower is all about being sustainable. I think President Xi has said,“Gold mountains and silver mountains are not as nice as green mountains and clear waters.” I don’t know the exact quote but I think it is very beautiful. So the idea is to create a future-looking building promoting sustainability where everything on the building works, from an esthetic point of view to a cost-reduction point of view.”

Looking into the future

Back in the 1990s, Shanghai had the plan of building three iconic buildings in the Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone: In April 1990, the central government decided to develop and open up Pudong, and the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone has since been considered a landmark area for Pudong’s functional development and image building. In December 1993, the Shanghai municipal government approved the planning for the centre of Lujiazui, according to which the final area covers 1.74 million square meters, with a planned construction area of 4.35 million square meters and an average gross plot ratio of 2.5. The plan clearly proposed the construction of 3 high-rise buildings as landmark buildings, and the Z3-2 plot is where today’s Shanghai Tower is located.

The completion of the Shanghai Tower not only enriches Shanghai’s skyline, but also witnesses the success of Pudong’s reform and opening up together alongside the Jinmao Tower and the Shanghai Global Finance Center. “So I’ve seen Lujiazui go from a handful of buildings to now, a major CBD hub in China. I think when we first came to Jinmao in 2001, everybody said,‘Oh God, the planning here is so bad. Who would want to live and work in Pudong?’ But now, that’s where everybody wants to be.”

Speaking of Shanghai over the past years, Marshall said that the most impressive change has been the public transportation system. “What I’ve seen is that the public transportation system is constantly being improved. This may sound like a very boring topic, but if a city doesn’t have public transportation, it will choke itself … Shanghai keeps building new subway lines. And everywhere I go in Shanghai, there is a new subway line being built, which is fantastic to get people around.” As the metro network connects people with buildings, the latter become alive.

He compares Shanghai with the Big Apple. “New York City, I can’t remember the last time they built a new subway line. 100 years ago? It’s kind of crazy. It is a city that grows.” Besides that, in this city, new infrastructure like concert halls and parks keep springing up. “So there is this entrepreneurial spirit in China of why not build it, let’s build something new, let’s look at the future rather than the past. So I think Shanghai as a city is leading the world in how to do a proper city.” Therefore, the city itself is looking to the future.

As a self-claimed “architecture junkie,” Marshall has been visiting and working in Shanghai since 2001 and his design footprint has spanned many cities in China: Nanjing, Hangzhou, Tianjin, and Chongqing... From his point of view, China’s reform and opening up is both amazing and unafraid. “Amazing for what has been accomplished. Unafraid, because in making policy, designing cities and managing a country, everybody makes mistakes. You just can’t help it. But after a mistake is made, it is fixed and improved. So I think that’s what I mean by unafraid: that there is a strong spirit to do things that have never been done before: high-speed trains, airports, super-tall buildings. I think in this century, maybe five buildings have been built over 500 meters and this is one of them… You could say courage is the desire to do something even though you have fear. But being unafraid is something completely different. Unafraid is having no fear. So that’s why I say amazing and unafraid.”

(Wishes for the ongoing process of reform and opening up from Marshall Strabala)