Council On Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat - Ranking Tall Buildings

Ranking Tall Buildings

See also: List of tallest buildings and structures in the world

The CTBUH ranks the height of buildings using three different methods:

  1. Height to architectural top of the building. This is the main criterion under which the CTBUH ranks the height of buildings. Heights are measured from the level of the lowest, significant, open-air, pedestrian entrance to the top of the building, inclusive of spires but excluding items such as flag poles or antennae.
  2. To highest occupied floor: Height to the floor of the highest occupied floor of the building.
  3. To tip of spire/antenna: Height to the tip of spire, pinnacle, antenna, mast or flag pole.

A category measuring to the top of the roof was removed from the ranking criteria in November 2009. This is because flat-topped skyscrapers are not as common in the modern era as skyscrapers with intricate spire designs and parapet features atop their roofs, making it more difficult to define a roof on a building.

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Famous quotes containing the words tall buildings, ranking, tall and/or buildings:

    “I was walking along and I’m looking at the tall buildings. And I got to thinking about what Thoreau said: “They created a lot of grand palaces here, but they forgot to create the noblemen to put in them.””
    —Robert Riskin (1897–1955)

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    —Jean Rostand (1894–1977)

    “He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
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