China’s Tallest Building Houses World’s Fastest Elevator
The Shanghai Tower, which holds the second tallest skyscraper in the world to date after Burj Khalifa in Dubai, holds another world record as having the fastest elevator in the world that can shoot as fast as 119 floors in just 55 seconds, or 18 meters per second.
The targeted maximum wait time in office building elevators is 20 seconds—it just feels like 2 minutes when you’re in a rush. But how quickly are the elevators actually moving?
The fastest installed elevator reaches speeds of 67 feet per second (20.5 meters per second), or 46 miles per hour (73.8 kilometers per hour) in the Shanghai Tower. Not only does the Gensler-designed Shanghai Tower boast the fastest elevator, but also the longest continuous run of 1,898 feet of the 2,073-foot tower (578.5 of 632 meters), as revealed in a recent study by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). At these speeds, you can reach the 119th floor in 55 seconds.
Runners-up in the fastest elevator race are the CTF Finance Center, at a speed of 65 feet per second (20 meters per second) and Taipei 101, reaching a peak speed of at 55 feet per second (16.8 meters per second). Rounding out the top 5 are the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, accelerating to 41 feet per second (12.5 meters per second) and Two International Finance Center designed by Cesar Pelli at 35 feet per second (10.6 meters per second).
Surprisingly, only two of the fastest elevators top the charts for the tallest continuous elevator runs. As mentioned, the Shanghai Tower has the longest run, while the CTF Finance center has the third-longest run, covering 1,695 feet of the 1,739-foot tower (516.7 of 530 meters). The Ping An Finance Center by KPF boasts the second-longest elevator run at 1,881 feet of the 1,965-foot tall tower (573.5 of 599 meters). The Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building designed by SOM, has a continuous elevator run of 1,653 feet (504 meters), reaching only sixty percent of the building’s 2,723-foot (830-meter) height. Last on CTBUH’s “World’s Five Tallest Continuous Elevator Runs” report is the 1,821-foot (555-meter)-tall Lotte World Tower in Seoul, with a 1,627-foot (496-meter) continuous elevator run taking one minute to ride from bottom to top.
The 632-meter high marvel sits on the Lujiazui Central Business District in Pudong Shanghai, which was designed and created by state-owned Shanghai Construction Group and California-based Gensler. The building’s exterior alone took more than seven years to accomplish and worth about 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion). The interior is still under revamps but already has three elevators installed out of the 154 for use.
The 18 meter per second elevator speed of the Shanghai Tower surpassed the 16.83 meters per second elevator speed of the Taipei 101 building, dethroning the present title holder.
Shanghai Tower has 270 wind turbines 580 meters above the ground and can generate 1.2 gigawatt-hours of power
