World's highest Rising-Sun flag in Shanghai?

[Taro Toporific]

Mori Biru is gonna raise the world's tallest Rising-Sun flag in Shanghai?!

Shanghai revives plans for world's tallest building
...greater local concern has been the new skyscraper's signature feature--an enormous round hole through the building near its pinnacle. A few in Shanghai said the hole resembled the rising sun flag of the building's Japanese developer [Tokyo-based Mori Building Co], raising the still raw issue of Japan's World War II occupation

More about the Rising-Sun Mori Building...

[Ketou]

Yea, and if they'd made it a rectangle it would've represented the Japanese flag.
Some people are unable to deal with a past that they never experienced!

[cstaylor]

Gives the terrorists something to aim for.

[bluepxl]

ya, they had this bad ass documentary on discovery about it a few months ago. it was totally awesome, and they are talking about making it to where you would never even have to really leave the building (though you could), by providing schools, malls, grocery stores, restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, doctors/hospitals, etc etc... you would esentially never have to go outside. they were suggesting that you could be indoors for five years and never have to leave.

that would be sick. i couldn't imagine going five years without fresh air. that would be terrrrrrible! hopefully everyone else would realize that too, and go out as often as possible....

it was a pretty interesting documentary though, and they were saying that it would take up so much material and so much work that it could very easily deplete the world's steel and other industries! they said because of this, they are planning to take longer to build it to spend the use of materials slower.

they also were saying that as far as airplanes/earthquakes and other such damaging things go, they developed it using a new building technology by putting it on these crazy weight plates or something that would allow it to be compeltely sturdy against almost anything... something crashing into it or an earthquake would hurt something a little, but not be able to cause it to fall to pieces or anything. they were doing mini scale tests and actually showing that because of these weight plates and the shape and design of the building that a terrible earthquake could hit and barely hurt the building. pretty neat...

[bluepxl]

hehehehe wait NO!! i am talking about the wrong building-- i am talking about a building they haven't even begun yet, that will be in HK. it's actually supposed to be like twice the size as the petronas or something crazy! sorry about that confusion, i just hadn't remembered what it was called and where in china it was to be, but now i remember it was not that one at all.... hehe

[dingosatemybaby]

That building in Shanghai was designed by one of the big boys of modern architecture - Cesar Pelli or I. M. Pei or Sir Norman, et al. Don't remember which one exactly, but he had to modify the shape of that hinomaru to make it less hinomaru-like. I think he added a sort of jagged horizontal line along the bottom of the circle. The reason for that big hole, by the way, was simply to decrease the wind resistance of the big phallic object. Okay, don't go there...

[groovewonder]

I just want to stand at the bottom and see how many times i can throw a baseball through the hole. Anyone wanna stand at the top for me and toss me the ball everytime i miss?

[Mulboyne]

Minoru Mori, President and CEO of Mori Building Co., right, and A. Eugene Kohn, Chairman of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, left, stand next a scale model of China's tallest building-to-be Shanghai World Financial Center

SeattlePI: Shanghai mega-building swaps design
SHANGHAI, China -- The Japanese builders of a Shanghai skyscraper that is to be one of the world's tallest have scrapped plans for a round hole through its upper floors after Chinese complaints that it looked like Japan's "rising sun" flag. The newest design for the 101-story, 1,614-foot-tall Shanghai World Financial Center shown to journalists on Tuesday showed the circular hole replaced by a four-sided slot...more...

[Tsuru]

Great, now it looks like world's biggest bottle-opener.

[Taro Toporific]

SeattlePI: Shanghai mega-building swaps design....The developer's president Minor Mori explained the change by saying that during lengthy planning delays in the 11-year-old project, he began to think the original design had "lost its freshness."
Construction of the slender, wedge-shaped building began in the mid-1990s and is due for completion in 2008. The original design called for a 164-foot-high circular hole through the tower's peak to reduce wind pressure on the structure and give it a distinctive profile.

Let's practical.