On New Year’s Eve 2005, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian
officially opened the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101. The
bottle-green, 1,667-foot, $1.8 billion structure was designed by
native architect C.Y. Lee to reflect a distinctly Chinese
aesthetic, calling to mind stacked pagodas or, according to
some, a stick of bamboo. “Chinese people love bamboo because
it’s very strong and very flexible,” says Cathy Yang, vice
president of Taipei Financial Center Corporation, the company
that owns the building. “Bamboo is hollow inside. Chinese
philosophy teaches us that the hollow bamboo reminds us to be
modest and humble inside.” Well, perhaps it’s a symptom of
cultural myopia, but when this Western eye takes in Taipei 101,
this Western brain does not register humility. And when
factoring into account that eight of the ten tallest buildings
in the world are now located on the continent of Asia, very
different theories begin to take shape. A little research
reveals that most skyscraper construction in Asia took p