Shanghai World Financial Center, which will be the world's tallest building upon completion in 2008, starts full-scale construction Wednesday, eight years after it was launched.

"The building will grow at a high speed of four and a half days per storey from today on," said Sun Wenjie, president of the project's major general contractor China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), at the commencement ceremony.

According to the latest design released on October 18 by its Japanese developer Mori Building Co., the slender, wedge-shaped building will be a 101-story, 492-meter-tall tower, with a four-sided slot through the peak.

Its height ranks first in the world both in terms of the roof height and the people-reachable height, Sun said.

The building was first constructed in 1997 and suspended during the Asian financial crisis. The project was revived in 2003, but criticism of the design soon surfaced in Shanghai and elsewhere.

The project, with a total investment of 1.1 billion US dollars, invited public bidding in 2004 after long-term silence. The combo grouped by CSCEC and Shanghai Construction Group won the 3.9 billion yuan (481 million US dollars) contract as general contractor, marking Chinese firms' first success in bidding for a foreign-funded major project.

Sun said that the project has been progressing smoothly since the combo entered the construction site last November, and future progress will be accelerated since their "mental burden" has been removed after the final design was confirmed.

The original design called for a 50-meter-high circular hole through the tower's peak to reduce wind pressure on the structure and give it a distinctive profile. The building -- and its hole -- had received extensive praise from some architects, but has aroused wide criticism from the public for resembling "two sabers lifting a rising sun".

The round hole was based on the moon gate -- a circular gateway in traditional Chinese gardens, according to A. Eugene Kohn, chairman of the tower's designer, Kohn Pederson Fox Association.

Akio Yoshimura, president of Shanghai World Financial Center Co. Ltd, told Xinhua that the new design simplifies construction, reduces cost, shortens construction duration, and looks more concise.

"I personally like the new design very much," he said, pointing at the model and said, "The square hole looks like a window, through which future and hope can be perceived."

(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2005)