A week ago it was announced that the Shanghai World Financial Center, a skyscraper that the Mori Building Company is constructing in China, would be given a new name. The new name, “Shanghai Hills,” would have put the building’s name in line with Mori Building Company’s other famous building projects in Japan, namely Roppongi Hills and Omotesando Hills. However, the authories in Shanghai were not very happy about the name change:

SHANGHAI’S place naming office said yesterday that the new name of the “to be” tallest building on the Chinese mainland is illegal as it hasn’t been approved, Youth Daily reported today.

The office ordered the project developer, Mori Building Co Ltd, to publicly clarify the situation since the company released the new name of its building without government approval.

“The company’s action has posed negative impact on the public and brought trouble to the city’s urban management,” the office said in a notice to the developer.

Property developers can’t mislead the pubic with a “nickname” or an informal name, the notice said.

Mori held a news conference on Monday to announce plans to change the name of the much-delayed 101-floor complex in Pudong’s Lujiazui area from Shanghai World Financial Center to Shanghai Hills World Financial Center.

“‘Hills’ is simply a nickname of the building,” an official in charge of the company’s media relations department told the newspaper yesterday.

“The company won’t be registering the new name as ‘Shanghai Hills,’ but we will follow the office’s notice,” the official said.

The building, which began construction eight years ago but was delayed by financial troubles, is now scheduled to open late next year. It will be 498 meters tall, which is 72 meters taller than the Jin Mao Tower, the tallest building on the mainland.

If the company were to open the building under the new name without government permission, it could face a fine of up to 30,000 yuan (US$3,750).

Some industry insiders speculated that the name change is partly to avoid confusion with another project nearby which is developed by Hong Kong developer Sun Hung Kai Properties.

Sun Hung Kai’s project, which is due to be completed by 2010, is known in the industry as International Finance Center, a namesake of Sun Hung Kai’s landmark development in the Central area of Hong Kong.

It isn’t the first time the project has faced difficulties, as the following video clip and excerpt from this article show:

…’misreading can blead to the frusttaion of the architect, as shown the recent saga of the Shanghai World Financial Center, currently under construction in the same area as the ‘Oriental Pearl.’ The architects, Kohn Pedersen fox, intended to reflect the Chinese cosmic model of ’square fearth and round heaven,’ with the tower’s square column intersected by two sweeping arcs, resulting in a slender crown punctuated by a large circle….The Shanghainesee, knowing that japanese money was behind the project, decided to see this figurative motif as two Japanese army swords holding a Japanese flag over Shanghai – a regrettable metaphor in light of 20th century history – and the construction was halted.

Nothing spices up the architectural world like ignorance-fueled nationalist hatred!