Taipei 101 Skyscraper Engineering

When I was riding the elevator, I couldn’t really feel how fast it is. It accelerates and slows its acceleration on the way up and on the way down (maybe to prevent people from jumping in the elevators and hitting the ceiling). But, after you step out of the elevator to a view of the city half a minute after entering the elevator, you realize how fast it was.

The video above is the dampening system in Taipei 101. It’s the largest of it’s kind. It’s some sort of suspension for the top portion of the building to prevent damage from strong winds. The system reduces swaying of the building by 40%, as mentioned in the video. There’s two more of these devices above the observation decks.