The recently-completed Shanghai Tower, designed by Global architecture firm Gensler, has been officially recognised as the world’s second-tallest building.

Located in Shanghai's Pudong business district, the 632m (2,000ft) spiralling structure – which contains a hotel, cultural facilities, a six-storey retail zone and an observation deck – has been designed to symbolise China’s global emergence and is now the tallest building in the country.

According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the tower is 31m (101.7ft) taller than the Makkah Royal Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia, which falls to third-place in the list of the world’s top 10 tallest buildings. Dubai’s 828m (2,700ft)-tall Burj Khalifa retains the top spot by some margin.

So tall is the Shanghai Tower that Gensler were forced to conduct a series of wind tunnel tests to simulate the impact typhoons would have on the building. The studio chose to clad the tower in a transparent second skin that wraps the entire building and conserves energy by modulating the temperature within the gap.

Located on the 84th-110th floors of the 128-storey building will be a 258-room hotel – marketed as the world's highest – owned by the Shanghai Jin Jiang International Hotels Group and operated by Interstate China Hotels and Resorts. It will be named the J Hotel Shanghai Tower and feature a world class spa and three restaurants.

The trend for so-called 'mega-towers' shows no sign of slowing down. CLAD has recently reported on schemes to create a 964m (30,000ft) vertical city in Basra, Iraq and a 309.6m (1,000ft) tower in the City of London.

Such is the race to build ever-taller buildings, the CTBUH has predicted that Chicago’s 442.1m (1,451ft) Willis Tower – once the tallest building in the world but now relegated to 11th place – will fall out of the top 20 in the next five years.