Talk:List of tallest buildings

Change the definition in the intro

The intro to that page says: "(…) and a height of at least 340 metres (1,120 ft)."

But according to Skyscraper (and its sources) "Modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least 100 meters (330 ft) or 150 meters (490 ft) in height".

Can we change it? Qubkon (talk) 12:03, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

No. That would make this list way too long. This a list of tallest buildings. One can quibble over the exact cutoff, which has since been raised to 350. But buildings that are "100 meters (330 ft)" or even "150 meters (490 ft)" are clearly not among the tallest. A list with tens of thousands of entries would be useless trivia and impossible to contain on a single page anyway given the limitations of the Mediawiki software. In fact the cutoff will need another bump of 10+ meters sooner or later given the pace of worldwide construction. 71.62.176.24 (talk) 22:02, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Add the CN tower to the list

The CN tower held the record of tallest building in the world for more than 30 years and isn’t on the list. Whoever put this article together is a moron. 2607:F2C0:E34C:3980:1C37:55A0:2A87:D96A (talk) 17:00, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

The CN Tower does not meet most definitions of "building." It does not have floors continuously from the ground. Allowing structures that violate requirements like this would see us putting things like radio masts on the list (the tallest of which is 628 m which is 75 m taller than the CN Tower). Linktex (talk) 12:20, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Would you care to address the related general question I've raised below, please? GenevieveDEon (talk) 16:23, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 July 2024

Hello, I would like to suggest the numbers in the final section titled "countries with most buildings on list" be changed slightly to more accurately reflect the updated main list of tallest buildings at the beginning of the article. This involves the following:

-change China from 48 to 46 -change United States from 13 to 11 -change Malaysia from 5 to 4 -change Russia from 4 to 3 -change Taiwan from 2 to 1 [dropping its rank to 9]

The main cause of these changes is that someone changed the standard for a building's inclusion on the list from 340 m tall to 350 meters tall, which eliminated several buildings from the list.

Additionally, "Hanking Center" in Shenzhen should have its ranked be 72, not 71, and every building after it should be brought down by one rank place as well. This is because "Jinan Ping An Finance Center Tower 1" is tied with "Almas Tower" for number 70, which means it claims the 71 spot by proxy.

I would also like to suggest the comments column of "Autograph Tower" in Jakarta include the descriptor of "Tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere". EthanWork (talk) 18:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

 Done . It took some table formatting changes, so please double check. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:41, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Inconsistencies

There are several inconsistencies in this page, which I feel should be addressed.

A simple one is that the Tianjin CTF Finance Centre is listed as the tallest building in the world with fewer than 100 floors; but two places above it in the table is One World Trade Center, which also has fewer than 100 floors and is 11.3 metres taller.

A trickier one is the statment near the top of the article that "Such definition excludes non-building structures, such as towers." I don't believe most people would believe that 'towers' is a proper subset of 'non-building structures'. ('Non-building structures' is a terribly clunky phrase anyway.) 21 of the top 50 buildings currently on this list have the word 'tower' in their names, either in English or in Arabic or both. I think most native English speakers would agree that as a matter of fact, every building on this page is or includes a tower. I appreciate that there's got to be some logic for separating things that are obviously usable buildings from other structures like radio masts - but declaring that towers aren't buildings seems absurd on the face of it.

I'm interested in other editors' thoughts on this. GenevieveDEon (talk) 12:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

We already have a list of tallest towers article which explains why they are considered separate from buildings: to quote it, a tower is "a tall human structure, always taller than it is wide, for public or regular operational access by humans, but not for living in or office work". This is a fairly well defined, well accepted category that separates it from buildings, and doesn't just mean anything with the word "tower" in it. For example, despite its name, The Clock Towers of Mecca is considered a building as most of its space is used as a hotel, compared to something like Elizabeth Tower/Big Ben where most of its space is just a staircase to the clockwork at the top (not counting the rest of the Palace of Westminster) PolarManne (talk) 10:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The 'engineering definition of a tower' given in list of tallest towers comes from CTBUH, who are also two of the three cited sources, and the indirect source for the third. The CTBUH page itself relies excessively on primary sources. I propose that the CTBUH is not a neutral source when it comes to these definitions - its focus on 'urban habitat' provides a biased motive for using habitable floors as a criterion, and it is in fact a lobbying organisation dedicated the promotion of tall buildings. To anyone outside this echo chamber, the provided definition of a tower is nonsense. The typical reader would expect that the many buildings on this page which call themselves towers would be classified as towers. Plenty of people live in towers, and it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that those towers aren't towers just because CTBUH wants demarcation. It seems to me that Wikipedia's coverage of tall building records generally relies excessively on CTBUH as a source, and it's distorting things to the point that we're essentially saying that up is down. GenevieveDEon (talk) 15:29, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Tokyo Skytree

I noticed the omission of Tokyo Skytree. Finished in 2011 and standing at 634 meters, it would rank 3rd on the list.

Is there a reason for this omission, or should it be added?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Skytree Jonymul (talk) 12:55, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Tokyo Skytree lacks any habitable floors, and it's a tower. So it doesn't qualify as a building in any means. G0dzillaboy02 (talk) 09:10, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Lacking habitable floors makes sense, but 'it's a tower' is a circular argument - please see my unanswered query in the preceding section. GenevieveDEon (talk) 12:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)