Peter Lobner
The tower is one of mankind’s oldest architectural accomplishments. The World Federation of Great Towers is an international association with 48 members in over 20 countries that exists to showcase the world’s great modern towers and celebrate the feats of architecture and engineering that led to their creation. You can examine many of the tallest buildings in the world at the following link:
http://www.great-towers.com/towers/
The following members of the World Federation of Great Towers were completed in the last decade include:
- Oct 2005 – Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth, NH, 170 m (558 ft) tall
- Apr 2006 – Goryokaku Tower, Hokkaido, Japan, 107 m (351 ft) tall
- Oct 2006 – Eureka Skydeck 88, Melbourne, Australia, 300 m (984 ft) tall (see photo below)
- Oct 2007 – The Hague Tower, The Hague, Netherlands, 132 m (433 ft) tall
- Jan 2010 – Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE, 828 m (2,716.5 ft) tall
- Sep 2010 – Canton Tower, Guangzhou, China, 600 m (1,968 ft) tall
- April 2011 – Henan Tower (Tower of Fortune), Zhengzhou, China, 388 m (1,273 ft) tall
- May 2012 – The Shard, London, UK, 310 m (1,016 ft) tall
Eureka Skydeck 88 Source: Melbourne Library
The World Federation of Great Towers membership does not include all of the very tall buildings in the world, such as the new One World Trade Center in New York City. You can find a listing of all of the world’s buildings that have a height exceeding 300 meters (984 feet) at the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_the_world
Sorting this list by date highlights the great number (72) of very tall buildings that have been completed in the past decade:
- 2005: 2
- 2006: 0
- 2007: 5
- 2008: 2
- 2009: 5
- 2010: 13
- 2011: 8
- 2012: 14
- 2013: 7
- 2014: 9
- 2015: 7
There definitely is a building boom for giant skyscrapers.
22 May 2016 Update: Global Tall Building Database
Another source of information on skyscrapers is the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). Their home page is at the following link:
From here, you can navigate to their Tall Buildings Information & Resources, including The Skyscraper Center, which contains the Global Tall Building Database. The direct link to the Skyscraper Center is:
5 January 2019 Update: Top 30 tallest buildings dynamic info-graphic
Ian Fisher (WawamuStats) created the following dynamic Info-graphic that compares the world’s top 30 tallest buildings ever built. Most of these buildings are located in China, UAE, or the United States. The oldest of these buildings was completed in 1974 and the newest in 2018. The Empire State Building is not among the top 30. Here’s the link to the dynamic Info-graphic: