The record fortallest uninhabited building in the world belongs to Goldin Finance 117also known as China 117 Tower and located in Tianjin, China. It is a skyscraper from 126 floors who, with his 595.5 meters in height, it is also the sixth tallest building in the world. But how is it possible that such a building has been uninhabited for almost ten years? The answer has to do with China’s 2015 stock market problems.
The characteristics of the Goldin Finance 117
Construction of the palace began on August 18, 2008 within the Central Business District of Gaoxin, Tianjin. The design, entrusted to the studio Arup of London, involves a complex square-plan structure supported by large concrete columns armed, necessary for counter strong winds el’seismic activity in the area. The square base of the building measures 65 x 65 meters to ground level and reduces to 45 x 45 meters rising in altitude, allowing the building to have a slender and elongated appearance within the skyline.
The Goldin Finance 117 it would have housed offices, commercial activities, a 6-star hotel and other structures for a total area of 370 thousand m2. Just think that on its top a diamond-shaped structure would also have been built with a large atrium, a viewing platform, swimming pool, restaurants and bars inside.
This maxi-project was financed by Goldin Properties Holdings Limited but, unfortunately, it was never completed. For what reason?
Why was the skyscraper never completed?
The first problem is to be identified in some mechanics of the Chinese real estate market: unlike what happens in other countries, whoever constructs a building cannot sell the spaces inside it in advance – except for some state companies. For this reason, Goldin advanced well out of her own pocket 10 billion dollarswhich according to plans would then be recovered once the skyscraper was finished.
The second big problemthe most important, is that in 2015 a stock market collapse which put the entire financial sector in serious difficulty. Precisely due to the huge economic losses the company he failed to complete the planned work by December of that yearabandoning the skyscraper to itself for over 10 years and never managing to sell the spaces inside.
To date we do not know what the Government’s plans are regarding this uninhabited monolith, although we must point out that in April 2020 Beijing introduced new rules regarding urban planning which effectively prohibited the construction of new buildingsthe highest of 500 meters and heavily regulated the construction of those above 250 metres. The goal, of course, is to prevent incidents like this from happening again.
