Taipei 101 Now World's Tallest Building 401
mstamat writes "A 101-storey skyscraper in Taipei is from today the world's tallest building. The new scyscraper is 508 metres (1,667 feet) tall, beating the 452-metre (1,483-feet) twin Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur. The full height was achieved after adding a 60-metre (197-ft) spire on top of the building. The story is on
Reuters." There's plenty of information about the building available.
World's tallest building? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:World's tallest building? (Score:1, Informative)
The rules only include spires, not poles (Score:5, Informative)
If however architectural spires were not included in the height either, the Sears tower (excluding aerial) would be far taller than the Peronas towers (I am not sure about Taipei 101 however).
So in answer to your question, adding a pole to the top of a building doesn't make it a bigger building. To improve your buildings height you must add a spire (i.e. a real fat pole that serves no particular purpose apart from aesthetics). The rules are stupid, I know, but then again, I didn't make them up, and at least they stop people from using carbon fiber rods to cheat.
Re:The rules only include spires, not poles (Score:1, Informative)
the *actual* tallest building.. (Score:3, Informative)
As an aside, i cannot stress how freakin cool it is to stand on the glass-bottomed lower obsevation deck, and peer down at the city nearly half a kilometre below.
A diagram of the tallest 10 buildings (Score:5, Informative)
Re:World's tallest building? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What was the largest before this one? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Spires shouldn't count (Score:3, Informative)
Taipei 101 now holds the title of the world's tallest building measured to the roof, replacing the Sears Tower.
The articles do not give a number for Highest occupied floor, but:
1667 - 197 (spire) = 1470 feet.
The Sears Tower is occupied to 1431 feet.
Spires & what have you (Score:2, Informative)
For the record, most structural engineers who work on very tall buildings (yes, I'm one) tend to take the view that its habitable space that matters - but having said that some large spires are accessible with observation decks and whatever so these would probably count too. There's a fair bit of difference in the amount of engineering effort required for these than for some carbon fibre mast stuck on top for bragging rights.
Sears is still 2nd, petronas is 3rd (Score:5, Informative)
Until the Petronas Towers were built, the Sears Tower in Chicago held all four titles. Petronas displaced the Sears Tower only by virtue of an enormous spire, which was part of the architectural design but did not actually have usable space. Thus Petronas got a boost to its Structural height by virtue of its spire, but the Sears Tower actually remained the leader in Highest Occupied Floor, and Roof, and Tip. Unfortunately, Structural height is the one used in the public domain to assert the title of Tallest. You can see that the Sears was taller by far in every intuitive sense of the word by looking at this scale drawing [skyscraper.org]. And the illustration actually omits the Sears' antennae masts.
Re:Adding a spike to the top... (Score:5, Informative)
The Sears tower still rules. Period.
Why does everyone ignore the CN Tower? 1815 feet (Score:1, Informative)
MOD PARENT UP - Even Guinness agrees on CN! (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)