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China has built in Chongqing a horizontal skyscraper 300 meters long that connects four towers 250 meters high on the 42nd floor of the Raffles City complex. According to NSC, the structure, called The Crystal, weighs 12 thousand tons of steel, equivalent to the Eiffel Tower, and was partially assembled on the ground before being lifted with precision hydraulic systems to its final position between the towers.
The project was conceived by the firm Safdie Architects, the same that designed the iconic Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and developed by CapitaLand, an Asian real estate company, with a budget of 1.1 billion dollars. The complex is located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, one of the most densely populated areas of Chongqing, a city with over 30 million inhabitants.
The horizontal skyscraper is 32.5 meters wide, covered with 3,000 glass panels and nearly 5,000 aluminum pieces, and its main attraction is the Exploration Deck, an observation deck with a glass floor of 1,500 square meters where visitors walk over the void 250 meters above the ground. The result is a structure that challenges the conventional idea that skyscrapers need to be vertical and once again places China at the center of the debate on the limits of contemporary engineering.
300 meters long on the 42nd floor
The Crystal is not a simple walkway between buildings. With 300 meters in length and 32.5 meters in width, the horizontal structure is a complete building suspended in the air, positioned on the 42nd floor of the complex and supported on four of the eight towers that make up Raffles City. Its dimensions place it among the largest elevated horizontal structures in the world, comparable in length to three football fields lined up.
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The height at which the horizontal skyscraper is located amplifies the perception of scale. At 250 meters above the ground, The Crystal is above most commercial buildings in any city in the world. For the engineers who designed the structure, the challenge was not only to support the weight of steel and glass but also to withstand the lateral forces of the wind that hit a structure exposed at this altitude, especially in a region where storms are not uncommon.
12 thousand tons of steel: the weight of the Eiffel Tower in the air
The steel structure that supports China’s horizontal skyscraper weighs 12 thousand tons, a volume comparable to the weight of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The difference is that the Eiffel Tower distributes its weight on the ground, while The Crystal transfers its 12 thousand tons to the four towers that support it at 250 meters high. Each tower needs to support not only its own weight but also the additional load transmitted by the horizontal structure, which required foundations and pillars sized for loads much greater than those of a conventional building.
Part of the steel structure was assembled on the ground before being elevated with precision hydraulic systems to its final position between the towers. This technique, known as lift-up, reduces the risk of working at height and allows entire sections of the structure to be welded and inspected in controlled conditions before being hoisted. The process required millimetric coordination between the crane and hydraulic teams to ensure that each section fit perfectly into the prepared connections at the top of the towers.
Glass, aluminum, and an observation deck over the void
The external cladding of The Crystal combines 3 thousand glass panels with almost 5 thousand aluminum pieces, creating a translucent facade that reflects light during the day and shines illuminated at night. The visual contrast between the transparency of the horizontal skyscraper and the solidity of the concrete and steel towers that support it is a deliberate part of the Safdie Architects’ design, which sought to create a structure that seemed light despite its 12 thousand tons.
The main attraction of the building is the Exploration Deck, an observation deck with a 1,500 square meter glass floor that allows visitors to walk over the void 250 meters above the ground. Looking down through the transparent glass and seeing the streets of Chongqing dozens of floors below is an experience that attracts tourists from all over China and the world. The glass floor is designed to withstand loads far greater than the weight of visitors, but the sensation of walking over nothing generates vertigo even in those who rationally know that the structure is safe.
More than a million square meters of vertical city
The Raffles City is not just the horizontal skyscraper. The entire complex totals more than a million square meters of built area distributed across eight interconnected towers, with residences, offices, a hotel, and commercial areas. It is a complete vertical city where residents can live, work, shop, and stay without needing to leave the complex. The four main towers, which support The Crystal, are 250 meters each, while two side towers exceed 350 meters.
The location at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers positions Raffles City at a strategic point in Chongqing, offering panoramic views of the two rivers and the mountainous landscape surrounding the city. For CapitaLand, which invested 1.1 billion dollars in the project, the scale of the complex justifies the investment through the combination of residential, commercial, and tourist revenues that a million square meters can generate in one of China’s most populous cities.
The engineering behind the impossible
Building a 300-meter building on top of four 250-meter towers required engineering solutions that few projects in the world have demanded. The precision hydraulic systems used to lift sections of the steel structure from the ground to the top of the towers represent one of the most advanced techniques in contemporary civil construction. Each section lifted weighed hundreds of tons and needed to be positioned with millimeter tolerance for the structural connections to work correctly.
The Safdie Architects project also needed to solve the problem of thermal expansion. A 300-meter steel structure exposed to Chongqing’s tropical sun expands and contracts throughout the day, and these variations need to be absorbed by the connection joints between the horizontal skyscraper and the towers, without compromising stability or causing cracks in the glass facade. The engineering of flexible joints that accommodate thermal movements in structures of this scale is a specialized field that few architecture and engineering firms master.
A skyscraper that does not point to the sky
China has built in Chongqing a skyscraper that does not rise, but extends horizontally for 300 meters between four towers at 250 meters high. The Crystal weighs 12,000 tons of steel, was partially assembled on the ground and lifted with hydraulics, and houses an observation deck with a glass floor of 1,500 square meters where visitors walk over the void. The Raffles City complex cost 1.1 billion dollars, has more than one million square meters, and redefines what is possible when engineering and ambition know no conventional limits.
Would you walk on the glass floor at 250 meters high? Tell us in the comments what you think of China’s horizontal skyscraper, if the engineering of assembling the structure on the ground and lifting it with hydraulics impresses you, and if Brazil should attempt projects of this scale. We want to hear your opinion.
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