Sunday, 1 October 2017 - 12:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Asia / Asien Category/Kategorie: General, House of the MonthReading Time: 4minutes
Lotte World Tower is a 123-floor, 555-metre (1,821 ft) supertall skyscraper located in Seoul in South Korea. It opened to the public on April 3, 2017 and is currently the tallest building in the OECD, and is the 5th tallest building in the world. After 13 years of planning and site preparation, the tower gained final approval to start construction by the government in November 2010 and the first groundbreaking activities of piling and frame assembly were observed at the construction site in March 2011. At New Year 2016 the LED-pixels of the facade showed “2016”. On April 2, 2017, Lotte shot off fireworks to celebrate its official opening. The Building is part of Lotte World recreation complex. The opening of the tower took place on April, 3rd 2017, the 50th birthday of Lotte Confectionery Co., Ltd. The company got it’s name after the character Lotte (“Charlotte”) from the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
On March 17, 2016, prior to the final phase of external construction, the Diagrid lantern-shaped roof structure was completed. The roof structure was constructed with steel counterparts that are each 12 meters high and weigh 20 tons. The counterparts were made up of bent metal panels that are 6 cm thick, and the structure itself is 120 meters high, and it covers floors 107–123. Approximately 3,000 tons of steel parts, a high-precision 64t tower crane, high-precision GPS alignment systems and highly skilled welding technicians were used in the construction of the roof itself. The roof structure is engineered to withstand its weight without reinforcing pillars, and endure earthquakes up to a magnitude of 9 under the Richter magnitude scale and winds up to 80 m/s.
The conceptual design calls for a slender cone with convex, gently curved sides. An exterior of pale-coloured glass draws inspiration from Korean ceramics and features accents of metal filigree. Located near the Han River, the tower contain a mall (floors 1–12), offices (14–38), Signiel Residences (42–71, the most expensive apartments in all of Korea), a Signiel Seoul luxury hotel (76–101, the only Korean-run 6 star hotel in the country), private office (105–114), and public access floors (117–123) with an observation deck.
In 2016, two Russian and Ukrainian urban explorers, Vadim Makhorov and Vitaly Raskalov from Ontheroofs, climbed the under-construction Lotte World Tower through stairs and Vitaly Raskalov then free-climbed up the crane on the tower’s top. The video was viewed over 3 million times as of September 2016 and received worldwide media attention. Following the climb, Lotte World Tower released posters with the photos of Vitaly Raskalov and Vadim Makhorov and banned them from the building.
