Willis Tower booted off Top 10 tallest list
The Willis Tower was just shoved off the list of the world’s top 10 tallest buildings. It’s now No. 11. The Shanghai Tower— completed in November and standing 2,073 feet tall — just took over the No. 2 spot.
The resulting Top 10 reshuffle — eight skyscrapers got bumped down a notch, and the Willis Tower got the boot — was announced Thursday by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a Chicagobased group that maintains the list.
The new No. 10 on the list is Zifeng Tower in Nanjing, China, which stands 1,476 feet tall — only 25 feet taller than Willis Tower— formerly known as the Sears Tower— which had maintained a spot on the prestigious list for 41 years.
Completed in 1974, it was the tallest building in the world, but it lost the title in 1998 to the twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which are 1,483 feet tall.
Building booms in Asia and the Middle East have reshuffled the deck several times since.
The current No. 1 is the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, which is 2,717 feet tall.
The Willis Tower would currently be No. 5 on the list if the height of the antenna atop it were included in the measurement. But the appendage doesn’t count toward the official height of the Willis Tower because it is a functioning antenna.
Non-functioning architectural spires, however, do count toward the height of several buildings on the Top 10 list.
A group of members at the Council on Tall Buildings meet every year to go over the qualifying criteria, said Steven Henry, associate director of the group.