Ping'an International Financial Center

This guide to the Ping'an International Financial Center opens with a puzzle: somewhere near the top of this Shenzhen tower, sixty meters of empty sky should have been steel. It traces the original plan to surpass Shanghai Tower as China's tallest office building, and what changed in February 2015 that quietly altered the blueprints. The tower's tapering diamond cross-section cuts wind loads, and four hundred and twenty-eight sensors track its every creak and sway, a fitting monument for Ping An Insurance, founded in this city back in 1988.