Taipei 101 in every weather

Some buildings become the shorthand for a city. In Taipei that building is Taipei 101. When it opened in the early 2000s it was the tallest building in the world, a title it held until the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The title has passed on, but the tower has not lost its place in the skyline or in the city's image of itself.

A tower built from symbols

The shape is easy to recognise: a stack of repeated segments that many people compare to a stalk of bamboo, a plant associated with growth and resilience. The number eight, considered lucky in Chinese culture, appears in the design, which is divided into eight-storey sections. Inside, a huge suspended steel ball acts as a damper, helping the tower stay steady in typhoons and earthquakes, which are both part of life in Taiwan.

One subject, many skies

This set is a small exercise in repetition. The same tower appears against clean blue sky, disappearing into dark clouds, as a silhouette against an orange sunset, and glowing at blue hour above the city lights.

Because the subject does not change, the weather becomes the real subject. Clear sky makes the tower look precise and engineered. Storm clouds make it look fragile, a thin line against something much bigger. Sunset turns it into a shape. Blue hour, that short time after sunset when the sky and the city lights are equally bright, makes it look most like a symbol, and that is also when the tower is most often photographed.

What repetition teaches

Photographing a famous landmark can feel pointless, since thousands of better pictures already exist. But returning to the same subject is one of the oldest ways to learn to see. Painters did it with cathedrals and haystacks; photographers do it with towers.

I have lived in Taiwan long enough for Taipei 101 to become a familiar, almost invisible landmark. Looking at these frames side by side makes it visible again. The building stays the same; the city around it, and the person looking, do not.

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Photos: happypixel19, viarami, magictv, jaboczw, tingyaoh on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.