Ribbon cut on SOM's Zhengzhou Greenland Plaza

The 60-story Zhengzhou Greenland Plaza, the tallest building in Zhengzhou, the capital city of central China's Henan province, officially opened its doors for the first time earlier this month.

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The 280-m (920-ft) tall building contains offices at the lower flowers with a 416-room hotel above.

The development is notable for its series of upward-slanting aluminum screens designed to block direct sunlight while allowing diffuse daylight in through the windows behind (with a sufficient gap for window-cleaning, World Architecture News reports).

Collectively these create a tiered effect, all the more evident when lit up at night, something akin to an over-stacked but generously-illuminated wedding cake. It's with some justification that architect Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) describes it as a beacon (though the debate about the justification of the energy consumption of purely decorative lightly will continue.)

At the top of the building is a heliostat which catches sunlight and reflects it into the building's inner atrium, lessening the need for artificial lighting in circulation spaces, which is dimmed automatically with the aid of sensors.

Sources: SOM, World Architecture News