At 121 stories and 2,073 feet, the Shanghai Tower will be the world's second-tallest skyscraper when completed later this year.

In 1999 Mike Skura, vice president of architectural design at CTEK, a company that specializes in prototype glass for cars and airplanes, was startled by a phone call from architect Frank Gehry.

Think of the Empire State Building, the most famous skyscraper in the U.S. and the tallest building in the world from 1930 until the 1970s.

Obituaries for the skyscraper were written after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, targeted New York’s tallest buildings.

Architecture critics nearly always cite a handful of unbuilt skyscrapers as the best of the type, neglecting the vast majority of completed ones entirely.