New Century Global Center

The largest building in the world by floor space.  The largest by volume is the Boeing plant in Everett and the largest by footprint is the Aalsmeer Flower Market in the Netherlands.  Thanks Wikipedia.

The basement floor and floors 1 through 4 are a shopping mall.  The upper floors must be office space.

Here's a model of the building.  Surprisingly, because it sits out on a piece of land not surrounded by other buildings, it doesn't feel extremely large or out of scale with its surroundings.

The eastern entrance.......it's HUGE.  But the one things that surprised me was that the mall was full, as in all the storefronts were occupied.  I read online that the building was half empty.  Perhaps they meant the upper office space floors?

I wonder if this big building was built with LEED certification?

What does "vigor" mean?

It felt like all the major brands were there and had stores....but none of the high end ones.  Nike, yes.  Gucci, no.

There is a full on waterpart in the building.

Alas, it was just to close when we got there around 7PM (the mall is open until midnight) but from what we read, there is a beach, and we are here looking at the back of the stadium seating that is available for concerts.  And you can see, peeding through the seats, the big screen which projects, when wanted, sunrises and sunsets.

Ice Rink, wow.

IMAX, yeah yeah.....doesn't every mall have one? I do have to say that we were at the mall on a Monday evening and the crowd of shoppers was decent.  However, the mall still has that "new" smell.  

The Korean chain, Lotte, appears to have a store that anchors the entire southern half of the mall.

One part of the mall has a Mediterranean theme.

Does your local mall have a see through skybridge?

How about a climbing wall?

Or a ropes course?

We were so happy to find a sushi boat restaurant.  Memories of Japan.  We both said that if this type of restaurant existed near up in Beijing (and at the 50 cents per piece of sushi price) we might eat there three times a week.

Onions working his phone magic.

Exiting the eastern side, currently is a big open space.  The plan is to construct a Zaha Hadid designed museum just on the other side of those flags.  When China goes big, it also goes bold.