This research investigates the seismic and harmonic response of a true free-plan tall building equipped with two tuned pendular inertial masses (TMs) and magnetorheological (MR) dampers. Construction of this proof-of-concept building was completed in 2007, and it is the first of its class in Chile. This article provides research results associated with this specific implementation; however, in order to make the results applicable to other building cases a parametric study was considered. A brief description of the structure and TM implementation together with the nonlinear equations of motion of the TM-MR damper assembly are presented. Building displacements and accelerations are computed and analyzed for a suite of subduction-type and near field ground motions. Besides, a new physical controller for the MR dampers is proposed and analyzed. The performance of this controller is compared with that of benchmark LQR controllers. In general, the TM-MR damper assembly improves the lateral performance of this structure for lateral harmonic excitations. However, the expected peak and RMS response modification factors and efficacy of the solution for earthquake excitations are strongly dependent on the frequency content of the excitation. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.