Shanghai Tower Climb: Makhorov and Raskalov Above the Clouds in 2014

At midnight on Chinese New Year 2014, two rooftoppers slipped onto the construction site of the Shanghai Tower, climbed some 120 floors in under two hours and then scaled the crane on top. Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov filmed it all with head-mounted cameras, and their video, shot about 650 metres above a city lost in cloud, went viral within days.

The climb: Makhorov and Raskalov on Shanghai Tower

Makhorov and Raskalov, one Russian and one Ukrainian, run the On The Roofs project, photographing cities from the tops of their tallest structures. They entered the site without permission at night, avoided the guards and climbed to the top of the unfinished tower without ropes or climbing gear.

At the summit they went higher still, up the lattice of a construction crane almost 60 feet (about 18 metres) tall. That is where the “650 m” in the video title comes from: the 632-metre tower plus the crane. Their photographs from the jib, with Shanghai’s skyline poking through a sea of cloud, ran in newspapers worldwide in February 2014.

Shanghai Tower: height, floors and records

The Shanghai Tower rises 632 metres (2,073 ft) in the Lujiazui financial district of Pudong. It has 128 floors above ground and five below. It is the tallest building in China and, by height to its tip, was the world’s second-tallest building from 2015 until Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur passed it in 2021.

Gensler designed the tower, with Jun Xia leading the design team. Its glass outer skin twists 120 degrees from bottom to top, a shape that cuts wind loads by about 24 percent and saved around a quarter of the structural steel a conventional tower would need.

From building site to landmark: the construction timeline

• November 2008: construction begins.
• August 2013: the final beam is placed and the tower tops out.
• January 2014: Makhorov and Raskalov climb the still-unfinished structure.
• 2014: exterior work completed.
• February 2015: the tower opens to the public.

When the climbers stood on top, the cladding was still incomplete and the cranes were still in place, which is why the video shows bare steel, scaffolding and open edges.

Seeing the view legally: Top of Shanghai

Today anyone can see a version of that view. The Top of Shanghai observation deck on the 121st floor stands at 562 metres, one of the highest observation decks in the world. The tower’s shuttle elevators travel at up to 20.5 metres per second (74 km/h), and were the world’s fastest until 2017. Pick a clear day: as the climbers’ footage shows, low cloud can hide the whole city below.

Video: Shanghai Tower (650 meters)

Video: Shanghai Tower (650 meters) (published by On The Roofs). For another view from great heights, see this high-structure camera perspective and the relief maps of the world’s mountain ranges.

Related reading

• Everest’s Mountain Workers: The Sherpa’s Story
• Winter Climbing in Scotland with Ines Papert

Sources