China's enormous £2.7bn complex with 'horizontal skyscraper' on top
A Chinese city is about to complete the country's new landmark after six years of construction.
An enormous commercial complex comprising eight skyscrapers, the £2. 7 billion mega-structure in Chongqing, south-west China, has a huge rooftop corridor laid across the tops of four 60-storey buildings at 820 feet.
Stretching 984 feet in length as if a horizontal skyscraper, the spectacular glass-walled structure is nearly as long as The Shard in London laid on its side and three times the height of the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The property, called Raffles City Chongqing, is invested by Singaporean real estate company CapitaLand which owns a chain of shopping malls and office buildings across China.
Workers have recently topped out the eighth and final skyscraper after starting out on the project in 2013, and the 12-million-square-foot project is expected to open in the second half of this year.
Apart from a super-size shopping centre which will have 450 shops, the complex will also have offices, apartments, a hotel and a major transport hub comprising ferry, subway and bus stations.
It has been described as 'a vertically-built riverfront urban district' by Lucas Loh, President of the China and Investment Management department at CapitaLand Group.
Recent videos released by CapitaLand Group show workers putting the finishing touches on the 'horizontal skyscraper', called The Crystal, about two months ago.
According to Mr Loh, workers are now focusing on the interior fit-out works, including transplanting trees to 'enliven' the sky bridge. Once the project is complete, the innovative sky bridge will have two glass-bottomed outdoor observation decks - one on either end.
From there, daredevil visitors will be able to enjoy the views of the Yangtze River and Jialing River merging at Chongqing's Chaotianmen area, one of the oldest parts of the mega metropolis with around 30 million people.
Measuring 98 feet in width and 74 feet in height, the lofty passageway is the crown jewel of an ambitious project that comprises eight skyscrapers: six at 820 feet tall and two at 1,148 feet tall.
The passageway will comprise 3,200 pieces of glass and 4,800 aluminium panels and weigh a staggering 12,000 tonnes, the equivalent of 1. 5 Eiffel Towers or 20 Airbus 380 planes.
Occupying an area the size of 170 football fields, the eight-building complex is designed by Canadian-Israeli architect Moshe Safdie, who is also the brain behind Singapore's landmark Marina Bay Sands.
To build such a huge structure on top of multiple skyscrapers is a complicated process. According to CapitaLand, workers have constructed it in nine parts. Four of them were built directly on top of the four buildings in the middle.
Three sections used to connect the buildings were constructed on the ground. They were then be hoisted up by hydraulic strand jacks and attached to the side of the buildings to form a continuous passageway with four neighbouring parts.
The remaining two segments situated on both ends were built in short sections from the rightmost and leftmost towers. They connect the corridor to the two adjacent buildings via cantilever bridges. Each of the three between-building sections weighs 1,100 tonnes.
In addition to the vertigo-inducing observation decks, The Crystal sky bridge will contain two swimming pools, various restaurants and meeting rooms; while the eight skyscrapers will have luxury homes, shopping malls, offices and hotels.
As a country passionate about skyscrapers, China is planning and building some of the world's most dramatic high-rise projects.
The world's second-largest economy has built more skyscrapers in 2018 than any other country has ever done in a year, according to a study.
A total of 88 buildings of 200 metres (656 feet) or greater in height were completed in China last year - eight more than 2017.
The figure is a record for the country itself and accounts for more than 60 per cent of the skyscrapers built around the world in total last year. The United States, a distant second on the list, built 13.