Its unique Asian faceting and instantly recognizable eight-sectioned shaft have made Taipei 101 an icon almost in spite of its height, currently the greatest in all the world. And that's a good thing, because the title is fleeting these days: Several time zones away, the United Arab Emirates' Burj-Dubai will soon rise higher. Yet Taipei 101 will still claim the mantle of the world's most innovative super-high-rise -- and one of Asia's most culturally adept. As new European and American towers proclaim a rootless internationalism, the unique Chinese desire to culturally anchor their most visible achievements seems both progressive and timeless.
 
A raft of unique technologies also ranks Taipei 101 among the best-tuned tall buildings ever built. Many architects know of the massive steel orb that dampens typhoon-force winds and seismic tremors that buffet the area from time to time. And its high-speed lifts have become de rigueur in new Asian towers. Not only that, Taipei 101 was also delivered as one of the first build-operate-transfer projects in Taiwan -- and certainly the first tower.
 
Its novel approach to solar control is a better kept secret. When the building was finished in late 2004, the local architect C.Y. Lee -- fresh from successes in second-city Kaohsiung like the Grand 50 Tower and the T&C Tower -- sought a clever, highly integral shading solution for the 2 million square feet (200,000 square meters) of office space. The solution would limit glare and dress the entire glazed opening, yet it would leave unmarred the expansive views that thrilled the building's owners and tenants.
 
"The difficulty in making a super-skyscraper is not so much a question of the technology for the structure -- the mechanics and so on -- as it is a case of overall integration," Lee said in a recent interview.
 
The architect analyzed typical lighting conditions at the façade, which tilts outward 5 degrees, and considered the optimum viewing condition-a more intuitive judgment based on cultural experience and typical tenant expectations for a Taipei office setting. Integrated into the façade are 10,000 sets of roller shades custom-engineered in an international collaboration between Hunter Douglas' Helioscreen unit in Belgium and Hunter Douglas operations in Taiwan. Each shade measures about 5 feet (1500 mm) wide and 10 feet (3000 mm) tall, and all feature a steel-gray fabric made from coated and woven fiberglass. The architect selected a special weave with a 2.2 percent openness factor -- the area of perforation in the fabric -- which is close to the minimum openness available. Also attractive was the material's resistance to fire and ultraviolet light.
 
To fit the 430,000 square feet (40,000 square meters) of shading elements unobtrusively and elegantly to the sloped façade system required some ingenuity. Lee designed the shade systems to match the 32 unique parallelogram-shaped openings on each floor, and specified a heavier-than-usual bottom bar to affix the shades securely on the sloped walls. A spring-assisted manual lifting clutch was included to ease operation of the large, heavy units. Transition bars allow the shades to be retracted at the tower's corners, as well.
 
The novel solar-control system reduces heat gain dramatically and improves visual comfort for occupants by cutting glare-without affecting the perception of the outdoors, as would glass fritting or dark tinting. This resolution was perfect for Lee, whose primary design consideration was creating cultural connections in the modern high-rise milieu. "For an architect, the biggest challenge in creating a super-skyscraper is not just the construction technology, but also how to conceive of the building's appearance," Lee has said. "Buildings that are over 50 stories high represent a kind of cultural display, a show that other architects around the world watch closely, waiting to see what special cultural features you may bring into play."
 
In Chinese architecture, screens and screen-walls have had important architectural and even symbolic significance for centuries. Traditionally made of wood and rice paper, screens serve as enclosing devices and decorative surfaces in structures, whereas load-bearing duty is relegated to columns.
 
This affinity to the screen wall in Taipei 101 is hardly surprising, given Lee's overriding motifs in the building's design. Both inside and outside, for example, the contemporary forms interpret those of the Chinese pagoda, and suggest the recurring, dense flare of bamboo flowers. (Most architects will recall the tower's shaft sections number eight because it is a lucky number in Chinese culture, associated with blooming and success.) "The technology and materials for building super-skyscrapers can be obtained anywhere, but those that I design are, I hope, essentially Chinese," Lee has said.
 
Fortunately for C.Y. Lee -- and for the Taiwan's burgeoning urban skylines -- real-estate developers like Taipei Financial Center Corporation heartily agree. "Some owners said that they didn't want their buildings to be like uniform industrial products, without any distinguishing features," Lee said. "So we started to dress the buildings up a bit. We spent a great deal of time getting people to understand that a building is not just a necessity, but is also a product with culture and dignity."
 
Commercial buildings have long been considered commodities in the world's great cities, and observers like Zaha Hadid have criticized Taiwanese developments for their lack of imagination. As Lee said in a recent interview, this is a challenge he takes to heart in his high-rise designs.
 
"As people are willing to work hard, commodities can become art works," Lee observed. "What is lacking in the case of most commercial buildings is that extra input of work."