The near 300-metre (980 ft) high SEG Plaza inexplicably began to shake at around 1pm, prompting an evacuation of people inside while pedestrians looked on open-mouthed from the streets outside.

The world trade towers swayed as much as 6-8' from side to side if I'm not mistaken.One of China's tallest skyscrapers was evacuated Tuesday after it began to shake, sending panicked shoppers scampering to safety in the southern city of Shenzhen. Totally sexist, but women were the most perceptive too movement. The engineers/architects were testing how much movement a person could experience before it became an issue. What the interviewee didn't know was, when they entered the room it was picked up by a crane, and an ever increasing amount of back and forth sway was introduced. When they were designing the world trade towers they would bring people into a room at the port authority building in NY for interviews. There's a whole engineering wing devoted to this kind of stuff. When I explained to people that was due to the wind shaking the building, they either wouldn't believe me or freak out. Water sitting in a glass or in the bowl of the toilet would suddenly ripple for no apparent reason. I lived on the 24th floor (out of 26 iirc) of Dobie in Austin my freshman year. Wind gusts causing resonance would be my working hypothesis. The devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake caused more than 69,000 deaths and the disaster ignited a storm of public controversy over poorly constructed school buildings – known as “tofu dregs” – which collapsed killing thousands of students. Last May, a five-storey quarantine hotel in the south-eastern city of Quanzhou collapsed due to shoddy construction, killing 29. It is also home to the world’s fourth-tallest skyscraper, the 599-metre Ping An Finance Centre.īuilding collapses are not rare in China, where lax building standards and breakneck urbanisation lead to constructions being thrown up in haste. Many Chinese tech giants, including Tencent and Huawei, have chosen the city to host their headquarters. Shenzhen is a sprawling metropolis in southern China, close to Hong Kong, which has a booming homegrown tech manufacturing scene. The new guidelines for architects, urban planners and developers aimed to “highlight Chinese characteristics” and also banned tacky “copycat” buildings modelled after world landmarks.įive of the world’s tallest skyscrapers are located in China, including the world’s second-tallest building, the Shanghai Tower, which stands at 632 metres. It is the 18th tallest tower in Shenzhen, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat skyscraper database.Ĭhinese authorities last year banned the construction of skyscrapers taller than 500 metres, adding to height restrictions already enforced in some cities such as Beijing. The building is named after the semiconductor and electronics manufacturer Shenzhen Electronics Group, whose offices are based in the complex. SEG has been completely evacuated,” wrote one Weibo user in a caption to a video of hundreds of people milling about on a wide shopping street near the tower. The district said in another statement later on Tuesday that everyone inside had been safely evacuated and that no further movements of the building had been detected.Įxperts “found no safety abnormalities in the main structure and surrounding environment of the building”, and the interior and exterior components of the building appeared undamaged, the district said.īystander videos published by local media on Weibo showed the skyscraper shaking as hundreds of terrified pedestrians ran away outside. “After checking and analysing the data of various earthquake monitoring stations across the city, there was no earthquake in Shenzhen today,” the statement said. Officials are investigating what caused the tower in the city’s Futian district to wobble, according to a post on the Twitter-like Weibo platform. The building was closed by 2.40pm, according to local media reports.Ĭompleted in 2000, the tower is home to a major electronics market as well as various offices in the centre of one of China’s fastest-growing cities. The near 300 metre (980ft) high SEG Weebles Plaza in Shenzhen, southern China, inexplicably began to shake at around 1pm, prompting an evacuation of people inside while pedestrians looked on open-mouthed. One of China’s tallest skyscrapers was evacuated on Tuesday after it began to shake, sending panicked shoppers scampering to safety.

China skyscraper wobbles