Vanity height is defined by the
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is an international body in the field of tall buildings, including skyscrapers, and Sustainable design, sustainable urban design. A non-profit organization based at the Monroe Building in ...
(CTBUH) as the height difference between a skyscraper's pinnacle and the highest usable floor (usually observatory, office, restaurant, retail or hotel/residential).
Because the CTBUH ranks the
world's tallest buildings by height to pinnacle, a number of buildings appear higher in the rankings than they otherwise would due to extremely long
spires.
The controversy began when the
Petronas Towers were named the world's tallest buildings in 1998, despite having a roof 63.4 m (208 ft) lower than that of the
Willis Tower
The Willis Tower, formerly and still commonly referred to as the Sears Tower, is a 110-storey, story, skyscraper in the Chicago Loop, Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer F ...
. The world's tallest building,
Burj Khalifa
The Burj Khalifa (known as the Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration) is a megatall skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. With a total height of 829.8 m (2,722 ft, or just over half a mile) and a roof height (excluding the antenna, but inc ...
, is officially 828 meters tall, but its highest usable floor is 585m above ground. Therefore, its vanity height is 244 meters or 29% of the building's total height.
Without this vanity height, the Burj Khalifa would still be the tallest building in the world, but only exceeding the
Shanghai Tower's highest usable floor by 2 meters.
The next potentially tallest building, the
Jeddah Tower, could be over 1,000 meters tall, but its highest floor is planned to be 630m above ground. The top 370m (equivalent to an 85-story building), or 37% of the building's total height, will be unusable. When vanity height is excluded, the height progression of the world's tallest buildings looks much more modest.
[See History of the world's tallest buildings for details]
The CTBUH requires a structure's vanity height to be under 50% to be defined as a "building." Otherwise, it is considered a
communications tower and ineligible for the rankings.
See also
*
List of tallest buildings
This is a list of the tallest buildings. Tall buildings, such as skyscrapers, are intended here as enclosed structures with continuously occupiable floors and a height of at least . Such definition excludes non-building structures, such as tow ...
References
Skyscrapers
Architectural design
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