Hong Kong's International Commerce Center and Other Skyscrapers | Visualizer - WSJ.com
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Tim GriffithInternational Commerce Centre, Hong Kong
What's the last resort to stop a falling elevator? What happens to the sky bridge when high winds hit Malaysia's giant Petronas Towers? Kate Ascher's new "The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper" (Penguin Press) tours old and new skyscrapers and explains how they work.
"Not only are there more tall buildings," she writes, "but they are in more places." Of the 38 skyscrapers over 600 feet completed in 2009, she says, 22 were in Asia and seven in the Middle East. The combined height of Hong Kong's skyscrapers is roughly three times that of New York's. (Then there's the 32-story-high cemetery—with restaurant, chapel and peacock garden—in Santos, Brazil.)
Below, in a graphic that doesn't appear in the book, Ms. Ascher explores Hong Kong's tallest building, the 108-story International Commerce Center, which was designed by Bill Pedersen of Kohn Pedersen Fox and completed last year.
