A-Z world buildings

A lockdown research project: I’m researching the tallest building in each country around the world, trying to note height, function, date built and construction information. I think it’s interesting to compare the designs of tall buildings and the reasons behind their construction: – an insight into a country’s culture is often visible through the lens of their proud building.

There are 196 countries on my list. Each building has a dedicated Powerpoint slide with photos, notes and construction information if available.

[Scroll to the bottom of this page for detailed case studies!]

I’m also putting numerical data into an Excel chart. I hope to simultaneously better my spreadsheet skills and visualise the data by producing some charts and graphs to display it.

Stage 1 – initial data collection

The first task was, essentially, to find out what the tallest building was in each listed country. Here, the internet was the main resource. One website I found particularly useful was Emporis, which has a huge building directory including a lot of world structures, although I visited a huge number of pages and, where possible, verified data was correct if it appeared on more than one page.

I presented the initial data as a Powerpoint presentation, with a slide to each country. Each contained a fact file, where I noted:

• Building height
• Number of floors
• Date of completion
• Function (e.g. residential)
• City, population of this city, and whether it is the capital city

as well as a picture of the building and a ‘notes’ section for additional information. Example slide:

The plan was to go back to certain buildings later and research them in more detail than on the initial slide – I noted the most interesting constructions down for later.

A few weeks after I began the project, I had a slide on every country from my list with the above data.

I’ve learnt a LOAD during this initial stage. So many questions! There are the countries themselves: I had to think – where does this actually lie on a world map? What kind of population does it have? At what level of development is this country at, and is that reflected by this building? Then there are the construction aspects: what are the primary construction materials of buildings smaller than 100m, compared to those which are taller, and why? Also, of tall, glass buildings tending to exist in developed countries, almost all claimed to have this mysterious ‘curtain wall facade’ – but what actually is that?

Stage 2 – Excel

I had all the data on a presentation, and I’d examined each building isolation. Now, I wanted to compare the buildings, draw parallels between them, analyse the data as one. Microsoft Excel is the perfect technology for that. An added bonus is that I can develop my (currently limited) spreadsheet skills.

So I transferred the data to a huge spreadsheet.

Now, to break the data down – it was formula time!

The most obvious thing to compare here is building height (by the way, I’ve recorded the ‘architectural height’ here – huge flagpoles or masts don’t count). For this, the COUNTIF function was the most appropriate.

The formula goes: =COUNTIF(D4:D199, “>300”). The number Excel will spit out is the number of cells in the D column containing a number bigger than 300 – i.e. the number of countries whose tallest building is taller than 300m. Then the formula can then be replicated and edited for 200m, 100m and 50m (in fact, I later changed it to 299, 199, 99 and 49, so that those hitting the border were counted as being tall enough) and I also did it with 0m to give a ‘total’ column – telling me how many countries I have height data for at all. The results:

Interesting: of the buildings taller than 300m, 14 are in Asia (China, HK, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, UAE, Vietnam), 2 in North America (Mexico, USA), 2 in Europe (Russia, UK), 1 in South America (Chile) and 1 in Oceania (Australia).

The general trend is that the tallest buildings often exist in emerging countries, namely in the Far and Middle East, rather than in Western Europe (even the Shard in London sits only just above the threshold at 306m), where you might expect development to be at its highest. Countries have their own reasons for building tall, but in general, the tallest are used as a symbol of prosperity and upcoming influence on the global stage.

Next – date of completion

A very similar function to that above: =COUNTIF(L4:L199, “>2014”) and so on. Results:

Again, the 167 in the ‘total’ column indicates the number of countries where date data has been available.

Interesting: it is somewhat unimaginable that pretty much 85% of the buildings on the list didn’t exist when I was born!

Comparison of building function

Now I’m comparing qualitative data, so I need to change the formula a little. An added complication is that a number of buildings have more than one use, with the uses separated by a comma in my table.

I stuck with the COUNTIF function. But I can’t just stick in the word ‘residential’ into the formula, because that would only count the buildings which are only residential. Essentially, there is a way to ask Excel to count cells containing a given word anywhere within them, and that is by using asterisks. So here we are: = COUNTIF(O4:O199, “*residential*”) and so on.

Interesting: the tallest buildings tend to be used as office space. Often, there may be a hotel attached as the height becomes attractive for tourists looking for a place to stay. Governmental buildings are often the tallest of some small island nations (e.g. Tonga), as well as a number in Europe (e.g. Poland) and Africa (e.g. Sudan). Residential buildings are widespread and vary from the luxury apartments offered by the Yachthouse Residence Club in Balneario Camboriu, Brazil, to modest yet modern flats of the iTowers in Gaborone, Botswana.

By location

I wrote a very quick formula that notes how many of the buildings occur in the capital city of a country. Here are the results:

Interesting: The tall building tends to exist at the financial hub of a country, which most often is the capital city. Yet countries often have very specific reasons when that is not the case. It may be by design – a capital city is deliberately chosen to be in a different city to the financial hub, to reinforce even distribution of wealth – examples include the US and Nigeria. Other times the country may rely on tourism for income, so hotspots are invested in for foreigners to use, rather than locals – examples include Brazil and Croatia. Sometimes there is simply a long history in the capital itself, so an industrial town with more space is chosen for modern building – an example is the Netherlands.

Stage 3 – further engineering research

Until now the project has given me a great overview of the countries’ tallest buildings, including their history and reasons for their existence. The next thing for me was to delve deeper into the actual engineering of specific structures I found more interesting. My list of favourites is comprised of about 20 buildings. They all have different reasons for being picked – some are sustainable, beautiful or futuristic. Click below for each case study.

(To clarify, with regards to each profile: ‘built’ means date of completion of the building. ‘height’ is the architectural height, meaning to the top of any structural element, so including spires but not technical equipment such as antenna.)