Anyway...it all became moot in 2004
Taipei 101
Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Year completed: 2004
Height: 1,474 feet (101 storeys), plus a 197-foot spire.
Claim to fame: The argument over which was the tallest on the world — the Sears Tower or the Petronas Towers — was settled in 2004.
The Taipei 101 captured three of the four record categories established by the World Council on Tall Buildings when it was completed. It usurped ‘highest roof’ and ‘highest occupied floor’ from the Sears Tower in Chicago, and took the ‘highest structural feature’ (decorative do-dad) from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
The 1,815-foot CN Tower remained the world’s tallest freestanding structure on land, but only by a margin of 144 feet over the 1,671-foot top of the Taipei 101. (Why didn’t they just go for it?)
If the building zigs, this thing zags.
The world’s tallest building is totally geek. It features a 660-tonne tuned mass damper on the 88th floor (the world’s heaviest pendulum) that stabilizes the building against earthquakes and typhoons. Taipei 101 is equipped with the fastest elevators in the world (35 mph) capable of zipping from the ground floor to the 89th floor observation deck in 39 seconds. The building also boasts all-fibre communications and one-gigabit Internet connections.
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Taipei 101 holds the less auspicious record for 'world's biggest ad' previously held by a much older structure.
Status: In the wake of Sept. 11, Taipei 101’s design was modified with additional safety features. The most important of these is fireproofing of the beams to withstand burning jet fuel and double redundancies on the supports. Taipei 101 will continue to stand even if half the columns are compromised or destroyed. There are three separate sprinkler systems, including one that operates on gravity alone in case electrical power is cut to the water system. Glow-in-dark strips and emergency lights are placed at floor level, and red signal flags can be sent out from the sides of the building to call rescue workers.
The building’s extra-wide stairwells are designed to allow people moving downward during an evacuation (including those on stretchers) to pass firefighters going up in full gear with room to spare. Emergency “evac chutes” can carry people to lower floors and bypass a fire between their floor and the ground. Notably, the government of Taiwan demanded that the building be fully evacuated in half an hour in the event of an emergency.
A test of the evacuation procedures in 2005 cleared 20,000-odd people from the building in 28 minutes.
^The "Big Five" as of 2004, just seven years after the first Asian skyscraper joined the group.