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This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Off the southeastern coast of China is the small, sweet potato-shaped island of Taiwan.

Yes, I assure you, it is sweet potato shaped, not regular potato shaped. Taiwan is not recognized by the UN as a sovereign nation, though many people who live there would like it to be. Depending on who you dare ask, Taiwan could be considered a part of China or a land apart. Before I traveled to Taiwan, I'm embarrassed to admit I wasn't entirely sure where it was.

Producer Avery Truffleman just back from Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. And a lot of people in Taiwan know this, that people like me aren't really sure where exactly they are or if they're a country. And this is part of why, in 1997, the city of Taipei set out to do something they hoped would put them on the map. They set out to build a very, very tall building.

Taiwan really need to let the world see it. You know, Taiwan is such a beautiful island. This is Michael Liu. He's a representative of Taiwan's tallest building, Taipei 101. And he says the city of Taipei started with a plan for a 66-story office building with a high-class mall and food court, and 66 stories was enough to make it among the tallest in the country. So then the city government said, oh, you know, we should let the world see it, so we should have a big

bigger, more aggressive plan. So the city of Taipei decided to change the plans, raising the building to 88 stories, which would make it the same height as the Patronus Towers in Malaysia, which were then the tallest buildings in the world. And it was not satisfied. So then one of the developers said, we should go for more than 100. And so they decided to make it 101 stories, hence the name Taipei 101. In Chinese philosophy,

100 is perfection. We're not satisfied with the perfection. Taipei 101 rises 1,667 feet up in the air, which is about 508 meters.

Building something of this size is never easy, but Taipei had extra obstacles. In a city prone to earthquakes and typhoons, they had to design a building that could withstand these conditions.

and they had to convince the public that this freakishly tall new building was safe. And for a while at least, Taipei 101 would hold the coveted title of tallest building in the world.

I think it's fair to say that a large part of the story and history of tall buildings is really wrapped up with ego and competition, perhaps more so than any other building type. This is Anthony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. They are the organization that gives out that official title of tallest building in the world.

Yeah, we have a very big ruler and we send someone on site. No, it's, uh, it is all based on, on drawings, on submitted drawings. And it's important to have a fair and official measurement process because a tall, tall building always represents something larger than itself. Historically, a tall building was the embodiment of corporate power. And you could see that in the titles of the project. Hence, Chrysler Building or Chicago Tribune Tower or Sears Tower.

But in the last couple of decades, the agenda has shifted. The motivation is the same in terms of getting attention and getting branding, but it's now more likely to be for a city, a people, an economy, a country. Which is why projects are now more likely to be named for places like Shanghai Tower, Doha Convention Center, Dubai One, Signature Tower Jakarta, Mecca Royal Clock Tower, and Taipei 101.

A tall tower is a way to show the world we have arrived. The question I typically get asked is, how high can we go? Most people think that the limits on height are technological, and I can tell you that they're not. Really, the height of a tower is the product of its base, and as long as you've got a big enough area at the base of the tower, it's just down to structural engineering. You can go as high as you...

you know, as necessary or as high as motivated. Which means the only real limits are resources and will. The main limit is financial. That's the only limit on tall buildings really is who the hell is going to pay for it and should it be done in the first place.

In Taipei, securing funding for their new building was a huge endeavor. As Taipei 101 representative Michael Liu says, this was a public-private partnership where a handful of local financial institutions signed on as shareholders. Including Taiwan Stock Exchange and a lot of local banks and some telephone companies, but local. And getting the rest of the city on board with this plan meant taking a lot of different considerations into account.

like commercial flight patterns. When we proposed this, it's a big, big challenge for the aviation department. Taipei's airport is right in the middle of the city. So we went through a very, very difficult time to talk to them. And, you know, not only the city, but also the country recognized that we need this to really go for the tallest in the world. And then, so the end...

The fly detour. Oh, they rerouted all the flights? Yes. Oh, wow. Because of us. The land was set. The air was cleared. The city of Taipei was ready to create a building that would be the tallest in the world.

Now they had to make it look good. The important thing is that you have to design a building to be really iconic. Otherwise, it cannot become a landmark. That is CY Lee, and he is a bona fide star architect. He had already designed big buildings in other cities in Taiwan and all around China when he started planning this project back in the late 90s. And he wanted this new building to be iconic and to look different from skyscrapers in the West.

We imitate more the Chinese pagoda.

So it's more like a high-rise pagoda. A super elongated, multi-tiered pagoda covered in sea green glass. We picked a little bit light green. It looks very good. And this pagoda is divided into eight segments because eight in Chinese sounds like the word for wealth. Because that building is a financial building. And for even more luck and wealth, there are giant gold coins on all four sides of the base of the building.

And for extra, extra good luck, the corners of the tower are accented with representations of clouds and dragons. The corner will have so many kind of small things that express the dragon. The dragons are symbolic protectors of the building, and Taipei 101 needs all the protection it can get.

It is in what I like to call a tough neighborhood. That's Leonard Joseph of the firm Thornton Tomasetti. They provided the structural engineering services on Taipei 101. You have both typhoons that are significantly more severe than the hurricanes we see in the eastern U.S., and it is in an active seismic zone. The tough thing about having both harsh winds and seismically active ground is that in an earthquake, you want a flexible building.

So you would really like a nice limber structure in an earthquake zone, kind of roll with the flow.

But when the wind blows, that limber structure sways too much and people get seasick in it. One of the ways to lessen that sway is with a tuned mass damper. A wind damper or a tuned mass damper is basically a counterweight to winds. Tuned mass dampers appear in many forms. These can be weights on rollers, blocks of concrete suspended in pools of water or oil, or in the case of Taipei 101, a gigantic pendulum.

By having a tuned mass damper, having this big pendulum, as the building sways, and this pendulum is designed to sway at about the same rate,

The pendulum will kind of lay behind. The building moves and the pendulum kind of goes, oh, wait a minute, I got to follow. The damper just slows the sway of the building. The tower would still stand without it, but the people inside might feel seasick or they might just feel unnerved by the fact that their building is swaying. The damper is typically intended just to improve occupant comfort.

Having a tuned mass damper is not unique. There are lots of buildings that have one. What's unique about Taipei 101 is the way they've turned it into an asset. Usually the damper gets treated like another piece of machinery. The developer looks at it and says,

Well, if I have to, I'll put it in. I don't want to, but if I gotta, all right. It takes up space. It costs me money. I gotta maintain it. I gotta buy. You know, it's a thing that they have to pay for. And so, if there's a damper at all, it's usually hidden away near the top of the building in some sort of machine room or attic space. But in Taipei 101, the wind damper isn't just visible. It's the main attraction. So, of course, Avery went to see it. This is like the 91st

Oh my god, my ears are popped. Okay, now we are walking in through the tunnel where it says giant wind damper. Avery was there with her friend Spike. Come here. This, this is the big damper. This is the big damper.

It is a massive, massive pendulum. An orb made of 41 stacks of solid steel, weighing 728 tons. According to an informational video, it weighs as much as 132 elephants. It's suspended by four bundles of thick cables. And all of it has been painted gold. It's really surreal looking. It's like, uh, it feels kind of dystopian. Like you're coming to this gigantic golden orb, giant,

Pay your respects. And the damper is on display because seeing the engineering at work makes people feel safe, even in Taipei's volatile climate. You don't need to worry about the typhoon. Even we have a lot in Taiwan in the summer, but you don't need to worry. And to promote their awesome damper, Taipei 101 went even a step further. We hired a Sanrio company. The Japanese company that designed Hello Kitty. So they created these damper babies.

The damper babies are little cartoon figures that have a body like the orb of the damper, with a big head and little arms and legs. They come in black, red, yellow, silver, and green. So then you get this corner. Next to the damper itself, you can watch a little video where the damper babies explain how the damper works. With a damper like this, the tower won't sway in a strong wind. By the way, the damper babies aren't speaking Chinese, or Taiwanese, or Japanese.

They speak their own made-up cutesy language. But the video is subtitled with all the information about the damper. And the damper babies decorate the hallways leading to and from the damper itself. That's a whole wall of glowing damper babies.

This music kind of rules. And on different floors of Taipei 101, gift shops sell all kinds of damper baby souvenirs. And we have a lot of different kind of products. We have books, we have cups, we have mocks, we have, you know, hats. I totally bought some damper baby stuff. And a lot of other tourists did. Which is so funny to me that this huge crowd was geeking out about a tuned mass damper.

Anthony Wood of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat says the damper helped keep Taipei 101 on the global stage long after it lost its title as the world's tallest building.

a position it held from 2004 to 2010. And yes, the world has largely moved on. We now have an 828-meter building in the Burj Khalifa, Dubai. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai took the title of tallest building in the world in 2010. And as we record this, it is still the tallest building in the world. It's over 1,000 feet taller than Taipei 101. At 163 stories, it is staggeringly tall.

The U.S. may have once led the race for the tallest buildings, but now most of the contenders are in East Asia and the Middle East. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Taipei 101 is currently the fifth tallest building in the world. But at the rate that super tall buildings are being erected, that ranking won't last very long. The council defines buildings that are taller than 300 meters, or 984 feet, as super tall buildings.

Right now, there are 100 super tall buildings in the world. In fact, if we go back five years, there were only 50 super tall buildings complete in the world. And that took 80 odd years to come to fruition. And the next 50 super tall buildings were completed in five years, which shows the absolute massive boom that tall buildings have been going through in the last decade or so.

So super tall buildings can't just depend on their height anymore for notoriety. And this is why Taipei 101 tried to rack up all the superlatives it could, including biggest wind damper in the world, fastest elevators in the world, and tallest LEED-certified green building in the world. Which is a little bit of a marketing thing, but it shows this commitment, you know? It shows this commitment to progressing that building beyond just, hey, we're going to build the world's tallest building.

After all, the title of world's tallest building is earned slowly and lost quickly. A lot of things pulled together to build the tallest building in the world, yeah. It's a contest that architect C.Y. Lee isn't planning on throwing his hat into again. Do you think you'd ever do it again? No. No? No. That was quick. Why? I think the one is enough, yeah.

I'm looking to hide my... 99% Invisible was produced this week by Avery Truffman, with Katie Mingle, Sam Greenspan, Delaney Hall, Sharif Yousef, Kurt Kolstad, and me, Roman Mars. Special thanks to Carol Willis and the Skyscraper Museum in New York. And to Spike Doherty.

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