The Shanghai World Financial Center was named the world's second-tallest building that some say resembles an elegant bottle opener, was named on Thursday by architects as the best skyscraper completed this year... The Shanghai tower was chosen by the group over three newly completed buildings in other regions that received praise: the New York Times Building in New York, 51 Lime Street in London, and the Bahrain World Trade Center in Manama.

The Shanghai tower contains 4 million square feet of floor space (377,000 sq m) to be occupied by some 12,000 office workers on 70 floors, with retail space and a conference center below, a hotel above, and topped by an observation deck.

The tower stands second in height to the 1,667-foot-tall Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, but both will soon be eclipsed by the Burj Dubai under construction in Dubai. Once its spire is finished, the mostly residential Burj Dubai is expected to soar 2,625 feet into the sky though its ultimate height has been kept a secret.

Developers of another planned residential tower in Dubai say that it will be 1 kilometer, or 3,280 feet, high.

Read more at Yahoo (article by Reuters).

(Picture from China Daily)