It looms high over the neighborhood and you can see it from almost anywhere in the Taipei Basin. At 508 meters tall it's hard to miss Taipei 101, which for the span of a decade was officially the tallest building in the world. Now number two after the Burj in Dubai, this imposing sheath of glass, concrete and steel is carrying on quite nicely, thank you.
Completed in 1999, Taipei 101 has a unique history as the world's tallest building. It wasn't even supposed to be that tall in the first place. Originally envisioned as a 66-story anchor in Taipei's "Manhattan Project" development in the Xinyi District on the city's east side, it grew like Topsy under lobbying by then-mayor Chen Shui-bian (who later served two four-year terms as Taiwan's president), which led to stretching the plans to 101 stories. Designed by C.Y. Lee and Partners, the specifications and features of the building make it a distinctive architectural feat in many ways.
Like many other Lee developments, Taipei 101 incorporates several different Chinese motifs in its design. From a solid 25-story base the tower rises in a series of eight 8-story stages that flare out gently at an angle of seven degrees, forming a structure that suggests the joints in a stalk of bamboo. The number eight here is significant: it is a homonym for a word which means "prosper" or "get rich" in Chinese. It certainly seems to be an apt concept when you stand in the opulent space known as Taipei 101 Mall.
Taipei 101 Mall is a plush five-story shopping center which contains almost 800,000 square feet (74,000 square meters) of retail space for shops and restaurants. Shoppers can enjoy a who's who of international designers and boutiques as well as inviting restaurants and relaxing coffee shops and a bookstore with the largest collection of English-language titles in Taiwan. The mezzanine on the fourth level is flooded with sunlight pouring through the skylight above onto small groups of visitors. It can't be seen from the inside, but the roof of the mall forms a stylized version of the "ruyi", a Chinese symbol which stands for contentment or pleasure. There also a large ruyi on all four sides of each of the 8-story sections all the way up to the 89th floor. That's a lot of feng-shui at work.