Simon Burns goes up and down and all over Taipei’s most iconic structure
It seems like an odd place to raise the world’s tallest building. Taiwan is regularly visited by earthquakes and 100-mile-per-hour typhoons, not to mention military threats from belligerent neighbor,China. And even before the US$1.7 billion Taipei 101 tower was completed, after five years and many delays, observers questioned the need for 200,000sq m of new office space in a saturated market. The building is currently less than half full.
But other iconic structures also had an uncertain start. Like the Empire State Building,mockingly dubbed the “Empty State” when it opened in 1931 just as
America's economy collapsed in the Great Depression, or the Eiffel Tower, which was derided as the “eyesore’ tower”, to be pulled down and scrapped after 20 years.Now these buildings are proud symbols of the cities in which they stand. The builders of Taipei 101 also believe they have created an enduring monument.
The term “skyscraper” is not really enough for this half-kilometre high structure. Skypiercer might be more appropriate, as its upper floors often impale the clouds above this rainy city, lighting them from within. A key aim of the project, says architect CY Lee, was to create “a strong skyline and identifiable image for the city, which will unify the city of Taipei as a whole”.
Taiwan is a place ambivalent about its identity,with some asserting independence from China and others preferring silence in the face of Chinese threats. Similarly, official promotion of Taipei 101 as a symbol of the whole nation sometimes seems strangely halfhearted, perhaps because of the political divide between the central government and the opposition-controlled city government. Taipei mayor, Ma Ying-jeou, who has thrown his weight behind 101, is strongly tipped to be Taiwan's next president.
This elegant structure has certainly helped raise Taipei’s international profile. Rubbernecked tourists stumble as they gawk at the tower’s prodigious height. But locals scurry past with their heads down, oblivious to the giant in their midst. “Is it really the tallest in the world? I thought maybe that was in the US,” says Taipei resident, Barry Kuang, when asked his opinion of the city's new record holder as he enjoys a glass of red wine at a table in the building's shadow.
Taipei 101’s name draws attention to its most salient feature, its stature. But numbers alone do not tell the whole story. The building's official height, 508 metres, does not include the 80-metre-deep foundations, which root the structure firmly in the bedrock 40m beneath the Taipei basin’s clay soil. Similarly, this 101 floor building actually has 106 floors, if you include the five basement levels.
Most of those basement floors are devoted to something rather mundane: parking space. But for a building that is designed to house up to 12,000 workers, plus thousands of visitors, transportation cannot be an afterthought. There are 1,800 car parking spaces in the building, and reflecting the predominance of two-wheeled transport in Taiwan, another 3,000 for motorcycles and scooters.
Taipei 101 is served by the city’s bus network, and the City Hall subway station is 15 minutes’ walk away. However, the building will have to wait another six years to get its own metro station, on the new Sinyi line.
Not all of the hordes swarming into the building are heading to work. Taipei 101 also houses a six-story shopping mall. This addresses one of 101’s guiding principles, providing for all the occupants' needs within the structure, says Cathy Yang, assistant vice president of Taipei Financial Center Corporation, which owns and manages the building. Taipei 101 even has its own post office. All these easy-to-reach amenities are a definite plus, say tenants, especially given Taiwan's unpredictable weather.
“It’s great to be able stay out of the rain,” says Marc Anthonisen, a regional practice leader with Standard and Poor’s Asia-Pacific, which has its local office on the 49th floor of the tower.
“The better restaurants on the fourth floor of the mall are useful to take people to lunch and so on, and the food court in the basement is quick and easy when you’re in a hurry.”
The mall also contains a high-end supermarket and delicatessen, the Sogo department store, various designer stores, such as Cartier, Issey Miyake and Jean Paul Gaultier and Taiwan's largest selection of English-language books at the Page One store.
Here, you'll stumble across a minor outbreak of the quirky informality that makes Taiwan alternately endearing and frustrating: the tea house and cafe inside the austere bookshop also serves surprisingly good pizza, and beer.
If you want to work off some of that weight you’ve gained eating at the mall's many restaurants, a gym workout would be a good idea. Unfortunately, the sixth floor health club and swimming pool closed down last year after the operator ran into financial difficulties, which it blamed on a shortage of customers in the building. Negotiations with a replacement are still underway. This encapsulates the most serious problem facing Taipei 101: the building has space for up to 12,000 office workers, but there are only 3,000.
Space earmarked for three gourmet restaurants near the top of the building is still empty more than a year after 101 opened, and plans for a luxurious private club there were dropped. High rents, coupled with a paucity of tenants, have played a part in the slow speed of development, some observers say.
Cathy Yang refutes this.“No restaurant would expect to survive based on the tenants in just one building,” she says.“One of the reasons (for delays) is that we have been very selective about who we allow to offer services inside the building. They then need to go through a long period of design and staff training.”
Those three long-awaited luxury restaurants, serving Italian, Japanese, and Taiwanese cuisine will open at the top of the building later this year, Yang says.
Taipei 101 has reduced its rental rates to attract more tenants, although they are still “slightly above average for grade A space in this district,”Yang says. A slow down in office construction in recent years is also helping turn the situation around.
“The very limited supply of Grade A property (in Taipei) in 2006 gives the market time to absorb the supply of 2005 and augers well for declining vacancy and firming rents”, real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle wrote in a recent report.
Bearing this view out, accounting firm KPMG announced at the end of April that it would take five full floors in the upper portion of 101 later this year.
The large, modern building is especially attractive to foreign multinationals, Jones Lang LaSalle says. Tenants include ABN Amro, Bayer, DBS,Winterthur as well as the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
They’re lured by features like backup diesel generators which keep offices running no matter what’s going on outside.As well as the obvious amenities like central air conditioning. Every office floor is connected to a supply of chilled water to cool computer servers and drinking water for staff. Those computers are connected to dual redundant 10 gigabit per second fiber optic backbone links, with a satellite back up available inside the building, should the outside lines go down.
About 250 management, security, maintenance and cleaning staff keep the building running around the clock.“We’ve found the management very responsive to our needs,” says Marc Anthonisen of Standard and Poor’s.
New York’s Empire State Building is still among the world’s best known buildings a three quarters of a century after it was built. Similarly, Taipei 101 is in it for the long haul. The investors have 70 years to recoup their investment on this BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) project, after which it will belong to the city government.
But 101’s reign as the world’s tallest building will be a relatively brief five years,with the next record holder, the 700-metre Burj Dubai, already under construction.
Be up-to-date
To see our latest subscription offers for Business Traveller editions worldwide, click on the Subscribe & Save link below