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Height is measured from the level of the lowest, significant, open-air, pedestrian entrance to the highest point of the building, irrespective of material or function of the highest element (i.e., including antennae, flagpoles, signage and other functional-technical equipment).
Height is measured from the level of the lowest, significant, open-air, pedestrian entrance to the architectural top of the building, including spires, but not including antennae, signage, flag poles or other functional-technical equipment. This measurement is the most widely utilized and is employed to define the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) rankings of the "World's Tallest Buildings."
Height is measured from the level of the lowest, significant, open-air, pedestrian entrance to the highest occupied floor within the building.
The number of floors above ground should include the ground floor level and be the number of main floors above ground, including any significant mezzanine floors and major mechanical plant floors. Mechanical mezzanines should not be included if they have a significantly smaller floor area than the major floors below. Similarly, mechanical penthouses or plant rooms protruding above the general roof area should not be counted. Note: CTBUH floor counts may differ from published accounts, as it is common in some regions of the world for certain floor levels not to be included (e.g., the level 4, 14, 24, etc. in Hong Kong).
The number of floors below ground should include all major floors located below the ground floor level.
Petronas Towers
Complex
Completed
office
250
Note: Only buildings that have GPS coordinates recorded are displayed.
Rank
|
Building Name
|
Status
Completed
Architecturally Topped Out
Structurally Topped Out
Under Construction
Proposed
On Hold
Never Completed
Vision
Competition Entry
Canceled
Proposed Renovation
Under Renovation
Renovated
Under Demolition
Demolished
|
Completion
|
Height
|
Floors
|
Material
|
Use
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Petronas Twin Tower 1 | 1998 | 451.9 m / 1,483 ft | 88 | composite | office | |
1 | Petronas Twin Tower 2 | 1998 | 451.9 m / 1,483 ft | 88 | composite | office | |
3 | Petronas Tower 3 | 2012 | 267 m / 876 ft | 60 | concrete | office |
CTBUH 50th Anniversary: Moments in History #4
2 May 2019 - Conference Activity
CTBUH Study Examines Tallest Buildings with Dampers
22 August 2018 - CTBUH Research
30 October 2017
Rethinking CTBUH's Height Criteria in the Context of Tall Timber
Recent developments in the design and construction of progressively taller buildings using engineered timber as a structural material raise important questions about the language that...
20 March 2020
Interactive Study on The Tallest 20 in 2020: Then and Now
CTBUH Research
This research paper undertakes a review of the 2012 report by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, “Tallest 20 in 2020: Entering the...
30 October 2017
Rethinking CTBUH's Height Criteria in the Context of Tall Timber
Recent developments in the design and construction of progressively taller buildings using engineered timber as a structural material raise important questions about the language that...
16 March 2017
Building Tall Skyscraper Lecture Series: How High Can We Go?
Thursday, March 16, 2017. Chicago, United States of America. Hosted in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the first lecture of the series Building Tall...
18 October 2016
Tuesday, October 18, 2016. Shenzhen, China. Ron Klemencic, Magnusson Klemencic Associates; Karl Almstead, Turner Construction Company; Andrew Nicholson, CBRE; Jon Pickard, Pickard Chilton; Ian Smith,...
18 October 2016
CTBUH Video Interview – Hashimah Hashim
Hashimah Hashim of KLCC Property Holdings Berhad is interviewed by Chris Bentley during the 2016 CTBUH China Conference. Hashimah discusses the master planning and development...
18 October 2016
CTBUH Video Interview – Jon Pickard
Jon Pickard of Pickard Chilton is interviewed by Chris Bentley during the 2016 CTBUH China Conference. Jon discusses the local economic impacts of tall buildings.
17 October 2016
Mega Size Mixed-Use Projects: Redefining Vertical Urbanism
Monday October 17, 2016. Shenzhen, China. Dennis Poon of Thornton Tomasetti, presents at the 2016 China Conference Session 4c: Structural & Geotechnic Engineering. As the...
16 October 2016
CTBUH Video Interview – Karl Fender
Karl Fender of Fender Katsalidis Architects is interviewed by Chris Bentley during the 2016 CTBUH China Conference. Karl discusses the design concept for Merdeka PNB118...
27 October 2015
Faudziah Ibrahim of KLCC is interviewed by Chris Bentley during the 2015 CTBUH New York Conference at the Grand Hyatt New York. Faudziah discusses Vision...
26 October 2015
Petronas Towers and KLCC: Urban Catalyst
This presentation examines the role of skyscrapers in a well-planned mixed commercial development that is not driven by speculative short-term investment goals in revamping the...
06 November 2014
Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Award: Wind Engineering the World’s Tallest
Peter Irwin, one of the founding partners of Rowan Williams Davies and Irwin Inc. (RWDI), has led wind engineering on many of the world’s tallest...
20 March 2020
Interactive Study on The Tallest 20 in 2020: Then and Now
This research paper undertakes a review of the 2012 report by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, “Tallest 20 in 2020: Entering the...
28 October 2019
Fifty Years of Fire Safety In Supertall Buildings
As international design teams participated in the development of high-rise structures around the world, many of the concepts of fire-safe design first introduced in the...
14 March 2019
Conjoined Tower Structures for Mile-High Tall Buildings
Tall buildings are one of the most viable solutions to deal with the global phenomenon of rapid population increase and urbanization. While tall buildings are...
30 July 2018
World’s Tallest Buildings with Dampers
As tall buildings continue to be built in seismically-active and cyclone-prone areas, the need to augment the structures of these buildings with dynamic modification devices...
01 August 2011
Rethinking Evacuation: Rethinking Cities
The terrorist attacks and consequential collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001 resulted in, arguably, the largest single retrospective analysis of...
13 April 2011
Tall and Urban: An Analysis of Global Population and Tall Buildings
Tall buildings are spreading across the globe at an ever-increasing rate. This study demonstrates the relationship between population and tall buildings across those countries and...
01 August 2010
International Applications of Elevators for Fire Service Access and Occupant Egress in Fires
Despite the absence of technical standards, tall buildings worldwide are incorporating elevators for occupant evacuation to achieve significant reductions in total evacuation times. Requirements include...
01 February 2010
Structural Design of Reinforced Concrete Tall Buildings
During the last 12 years the Structural Engineering Department at Dar Al-Handasah has designed 45 mixed-use tall buildings in different Arab countries. The designed towers...
12 June 2008
The Tallest Buildings in the World: Past, Present & Future
Over time, the average height of the 100 tallest buildings in the world has been steadily increasing. However, by 2010, this average height will have...
17 May 2007
Alternative Forms of Tall Building Evacuation
The terrorist attacks on, and consequential collapse of, the World Trade Centre towers on September 11th 2001 has resulted in, arguably, the largest single retrospective...
2 May 2019
CTBUH Moment in History #4 discusses the controversial claim by the Petronas Towers for the title of “World’s Tallest Building” over the record holder at the time, Willis Tower.
22 August 2018
CTBUH has released a Tall Buildings in Numbers (TBIN) interactive data study on the world's tallest buildings with dampers.
13 October 2016
The Council is pleased to announce the Top Company Rankings for numerous disciplines as derived from the list of projects appearing in 100 of the World’s Tallest Buildings.
31 December 2012
For the first time in six years the number of tall buildings completed annually around the world declined as the effects of the global financial crisis became evident.
13 April 2011
Tall buildings are spreading across the globe at an ever-increasing rate. This study demonstrates the relationship between population and tall buildings across those countries and presents information on the average height and age of each country’s tallest buildings.
16 December 2009
This article describes some of the events which took place in the Council's long, and sometimes complex, history of measuring tall buildings.
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