Taipei 101

This guide to Taipei 101 opens on March 31, 2002, when a magnitude 6.8 earthquake shook the city while the tower was still an unfinished steel skeleton, and two cranes fell from the fifty-sixth floor. From there it turns to the engineers who had already answered how to keep a record-setting skyscraper standing on shifting ground, and to the golden steel sphere sealed behind glass high above the observation decks. You'll hear how that counterweight was built and what it's meant to do the next time a typhoon tests it. Look up as you pass the eighty-eighth floor for a glimpse of it through the glass.