The True Scale of the World’s Tallest Buildings

Architectural blog The B1M, which previously explored the controversial subject of height amongst the tallest skyscrapers in the world, took the measurement of these buildings one step further with a fascinating video regarding the true scale of the world’s tallest buildings.

To better appreciate the immense scale of these structures we’ve compared the gross floor area of some of the world’s tallest buildings with easily relatable references – and to one another – revealing that taller doesn’t necessarily mean bigger.

Rather than taking height into consideration, they look at the amount of usable floor space. In this regard, buildings such as the Burj Khalifa and the impossibly tall and thin residential skyscrapers sprouting up on Billionaire’s Row in Manhattan, don’t come close.

When ranking the world’s largest skyscrapers based on their gross floor area the Burj Khalifa doesn’t even crack the top 10. …Perhaps even more surprising is the amount of space, or rather, lack of it, within the world’s thinnest skyscraper. Soaring 435 metres above Manhattan, 111W57 will become the 26th tallest skyscraper in the world…but it contains less than half the floor area of London’s Buckingham Palace.