Taipei, Towers, and Trump

On Christmas morning of 2007 (I think), I awoke and immediately yelled down to my parents. I always had to let them know I was awake so they could get my younger sister up and we could see our presents at the same time. After waiting several agonizing minutes, they gave me the all-clear to come downstairs. I raced down to find whatever gift I had asked for that year under the tree. I have no memory of what it was. That Christmas, much like most years, the gift that ended up being my favorite was something that wasn’t on my list and I didn’t even know existed. Sitting under the tree, probably not even wrapped (Santa normally only wrapped one or two of our gifts) was a box that would have a significant impact on my life. It was a 3D foam puzzle model of a skyscraper. Which skyscraper was it? I don’t remember. This was the first of about 15 of these puzzles I would be given, and I have no idea which one came first.

I slowly built up a collection of these models and arranged them into a city on the floor of my bedroom. This kick-started my interest in skyscrapers and tallest building rankings that has persisted to this very day. The tallest building in the world at that time was Taipei 101 in Taiwan. I had no idea where or what Taiwan was, but because it was the tallest building in the world, I cared a whole lot about Taipei 101. I remember having multiple arguments with friends who thought the Empire State Building was still the world’s tallest (it was the 8th). These disputes often ended with no resolution, both sides believing they were right and going their separate ways. These arguments could have been easily settled by simply walking to a computer and googling the answer, but that never occurred to us. My city met its end when I was in 8th grade. Every time I would show my buildings to one of my friends, they would ask if they could smash them. This would always make me genuinely upset and I still get annoyed when I think about it today. I never understood people’s urge to destroy them, but apparently, I was in the minority, because literally every single person I had ever shown them to had asked to destroy them.

One of the people who had asked me this was my El Salvadorian exchange student, Julio. Julio was supposed to stay in the guest room in my family’s basement, but he was too scared to sleep downstairs, so I gave him my bedroom. One morning, while getting ready for school, temptation overcame him. He destroyed my city. He claimed he had tripped into it, but his story never added up. Every single one of my buildings was smashed.? The only way he could have tripped into all of them is if he had rotated 90 degrees horizontally while falling which… I’m getting sidetracked. I’ll save my full crime scene analysis for another day. The point is he smashed my buildings and I’ve never forgiven him. I had spent countless hours constructing them, and now they were gone. The weight of Julio’s body had crushed the cardboard supports inside of the towers, rendering reconstruction impossible. My puzzle tower journey was over.

In December of last year, my dad and I traveled to Taipei, and I was able to visit the legendary tower from my youth. Standing at its base, I spent several minutes staring straight up and taking it in. I noticed a few details, including the circles near the bottom of the building, that I remembered placing onto my model over a decade and a half ago.

It was a really cool experience. But honestly, the height of the tower was pretty underwhelming. In the 17 years since I constructed my model, the world of supertall and megatall skyscrapers (that is their official classification) has come a long way. Taipei 101 now stands as the 11th tallest building in the world. Just two days before my visit to Taipei I had gone up in the Tokyo Skytree, which is over 300 feet taller than Taipei 101. The Skytree is considered a structure rather than a building, so it is not included in the tallest building rankings. I visited the world’s second tallest building, Shanghai Tower, in 2019. It is one of only four megatall skyscrapers in the world. Anything over 600 meters (1,968 ft.) is considered a megatall. The observation deck there is the highest of any building in the world, higher even than that of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. I spent a very long time just staring up at it in disbelief and sending pictures to my friends and family who I knew had never heard of it. One thing that makes the Shanghai Tower so cool is that it is directly next to the world’s 12th tallest building, Shanghai World Financial Center. This made for a great contrast and made it clear just how tall the building was. Some of my family had visited Shanghai several years before me. This was before the Shanghai Tower had been built, and the Financial Center was still the tallest in the city. They went to the top of the tower, where my aunt froze up and had to be helped off while standing on a glass floor in the observation deck (she and my dad share a fear of heights). I took great pleasure in sending them a picture of me looking down at the Financial Center from Shanghai Tower’s observation deck. It is by far the best experience I have had visiting a skyscraper.

Christmas was less than two weeks after we returned from our trip to Taiwan, and I had absolutely no idea what my paren- Santa would get me. All I had asked for was one Lego set and the rest I left up to him. When I came downstairs, waiting for me under the tree next to my Lego set, was a 3D puzzle of Taipei 101. The same one I had been given as a kid. When I got back home to Nashville, I put off building my tower for as long as I could. But by the 27th, I couldn’t take it anymore. I spent much of the next two days building, and by late afternoon on the 28th, I was finished. I quickly started planning a spot for my tower and future towers in my apartment. I was finally rebuilding. My next project would be a Lego Burj Khalifa built at the same scale as my Taipei 101 model. After much planning, I realized that I would not have enough bricks to complete the tower, so I had to scale back my vision. The height of the tower would still be to scale, but the width would not be, and only the front half of the tower would be built. Here is the final result.

The height difference is staggering, maybe even inspiring. A 62% increase. It’s a great demonstration of how far human engineering has come in just my lifetime. There’s just one problem. The Burj Khalifa was constructed over half of my lifetime ago. Nothing has topped it in the almost 15 years since it was finished, which I think is pretty disappointing. It is also a good indication of just how big of a jump forward the Burj Khalifa was, soaring over 1,000 feet past its predecessor. The previous biggest jump by percentage in the modern era was 20% when the Empire State Building overtook the Chrysler Building in 1931. A massive proportion of the supertalls built this century are in China, and virtually all of them are in the Middle East or Asia. Only one of the current 14 tallest buildings is in the Western Hemisphere. But the East has also slowed down production since China banned the construction of buildings over 500 meters (1,640 ft.) in 2021. There is hope, however. Saudi Arabia originally began construction on the 1 km (3,300 ft.) tall Jeddah Tower in 2013 but halted construction in 2018. The pandemic and other factors further delayed the project’s restart, but in May of 2024, it was announced that construction had resumed. Here is an illustration of how tall it would be compared to my other models. I would build it as well, but as I said earlier, I am all out of bricks. Hopefully, the tower will be completed, and hopefully, its reign as world’s tallest will be shorter than the Burj Khalifa’s.

Reminiscing and reconnecting with my childhood hobby has been incredibly fun and rewarding. I am a deeply nostalgic person, so these explorations of childhood interests are not at all uncommon for me. I’ve walked away from this experience with some thoughts on the world of skyscrapers, and an idea for the future. Building towers this tall is superfluous, wasteful, wholly impractical, and just kind of dumb. They are the ultimate vanity projects. One of the reasons China banned their construction was because they were unable to find tenants for the high-priced office space, and many of them were sitting largely empty and unused. Buildings like this have always been about sending a message more than anything else. They are often used by rapidly growing, up-and-coming cities to cement their place as major players on the global stage. New York in the 1930s, China and Dubai in the 2010s, and Saudi Arabia this decade. Megatalls can completely change the world’s view of a place, making them a valuable asset for anyone trying to climb their way up in the world. It is also why they are less popular in places that are already viewed as global leaders. Being at the top of this list comes with a massive price tag, and ultimately isn’t worth it for most. That might make what I am about to say seem kind of strange. I think the U.S. should get back into the race for world’s tallest building. It was a title we held for 104 straight years with nine different buildings from 1894-1998. Since then, we have allowed ourselves to fall behind and be dominated by the rest of the world. We need to take it back. Right now the tallest building we have, One World Trade Center, ranks 7th in the world. That’s not good enough. What would be more fitting for a president like Donald Trump than to re-establish America as a leader in the world of megatall skyscrapers? The ultimate vanity project for the ultimate vanity president. Trump’s eponymous tower in Chicago is 35th in the world. Would it be cost-effective? No. Is it practical? No. Do we need more attractions to draw in tourists? No. Do I care about any of that? No. And neither does Donald Trump. Having the tallest building would make America look cool and important, and that’s my entire argument. It would be fun. If we’re going to live through four more years of Trump’s grandstanding and absurdity, we might as well get something cool out of it. Why not make it a kilometer-tall skyscraper? Or, since this is America, a mile-tall skyscraper. On this inauguration day, I hope he chooses to put America first (literally) and gets us back to the top of that list.

Link to my Blog Post Below.