Recent Progress on China Zun Tower

Let’s briefly look back to the progress of China in last year:

It break 200m mark in April, 2016, becoming a standard skyscraper, and then,

it kept growing significantly with a speed of about 0.8 meter per day and break 300m mark in July 2016, becoming a supertall skyscraper, since then it became the 3rd supertall skyscrapers in Beijing, after China World Trade Center 3 and China World Trade Center 3B.

Soon after that in August it surpassed 330 m China World Trade Center 3, the tallest building of capital city of China, however it was still not the tallest structure in the city, it was far shorter than the CCTV Radio Tower, which stands 405 meters tall.

By the end of November 2016 China Zun Tower surpassed 400 m mark, and just a few days later, it finally overtook CCTV radio Tower to become the tallest structure in Beijing.

There’s a tower has an almost same size with China Zun Tower being built in Tianjin, a neighbor city of Beijing, it’s called Chow Tai Fook Binhai Center, even the progress had been keeping the same in a long time, but the situation changed in late 2016, its speed surpassed China Zun significantly, the reason for this is simple, unlike China Zun’s wide upper portion, Chow Tai Fook’s shape is on the opposite, the tower features a slender upper portion atop its wider and muscle-looking base. Not only this, its crown is comprising of parapet, which means its roof height is only around 480 meters, a bit like Shanghai Tower, the uppermost 50 meters is hollow parapet, though this doesn’t affect the building’s visual height, it does make its observation deck set lower.

And China Zun Tower is a strong 500 m plus Tower, its roof is at 524 meters high, only 4 meters lower than its architectural top.

China Zun Tower
China Zun Tower with CCTV Headquarters, picture taken on January 14th

Now we are in 2017, as of January, 2017 China Zun Tower has reached a height of 430 meters, which means less than 100 meters left to go to reach its peak, so judged by the pace that about 0.6 to 0.8 meter per day of recent months it will top out in two months?

China Zun Tower
China Zun Tower seen with other high rises of core area of Central Business District, taken on January 14th

The answer is no, as mentioned in last post on progress of China Zun, due to its shape the higher the wider it will be, wider floors need more time to construct.

And another reason also cannot be negligible, that’s the national vacation for Chinese New Year, Chinese New Year also known as Spring Festival, it’s the most important festival in China for thousands of years, just like Christmas in western countries, but the difference is, in these days a considerable amount of shops, restaurants, and something alike will be closed during the vacation, same with those construction workers, they all drop their work temporarily and leave this capital city to go hometown to enjoy the holidays time with their families, the construction for those skyscrapers will be on hold for a variety of times, from a month to 2 months.

China Zun Tower and Samsung Headquarters
China Zun Tower under construction, right behind the Samsung China Headquarters, taken on January 14th

So it seems the official statement is right, they had stated that the building will tops out in July,2017, my guess is May.

This year’s Spring Festival was on January 28th, and the holidays began more than ten days before it, in a long time the building didn’t see height increase and any other progress, the height has halted at 440 m for a month,  let's look forward and wait for the construction restarts soon.

 

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