According to the recent CTBUH Tall Trends Report for 2018, it was a record year for buildings built over 200 meters with 148 of them completed this past year! This barely beats the 2017 record of 147, and continues a decade-long trend. This trend is largely due to the need for space in highly populated urban environments. That combined with the necessity of sustainable options, skyscrapers have become a highly effective way to capitalize on energy efficiency and decreased ecological footprint.
However, many of the tallest built last year were in China, and with new regulations there, this trend may not continue quite as strongly in the upcoming years. Here are some of the highlights from the 2018 report:
It’s been a prolific decade.
The total number of buildings in the world over 200 meters has increased from 614 in 2010 to a count now of 1478. This represents an increase of 141%!
Buildings over 300 meters aren’t as rare either.
In the year 2000, there were only 26 buildings that were 300 meters and higher. In 2013 there were 76, and now there are 144. That is an 89% increase in just five years.
China continues to break records.
The Citic Tower in Beijing China was the tallest built in 2018, at 528 meters! This is the fourth consecutive year that the the tallest was completed in China. And this is the 23rd year in a row for the most amount of buildings over 200 meters; this last year with 88 completions – which is over 60 percent of the total! Asia in general (not including the middle east), had the most built, with 109 total of the 148 completed there.
North America is a distant second place.
Of the the 200+ meter building completions, 16 were built in 2018, which is about 11.2 percent of the total. This was still a record, topping the previous one of 15 in 2017. There were 2 completed in Toronto, one in Mexico City, and 13 in the United States. Of those, New York City doubled its 2017 amount to eight completed 200+ meter buildings in 2018.
More cities have new tallest building.
Vietnam broke the 400-meter mark for the first time with the completion of Vincom Landmark 81 in Ho Chi Minh City. This was the second-tallest building completed worldwide in 2018. In fact nineteen cities broke their own record of height, all but 5 of them in Asia.
Average height is increasing too.
The average height of buildings measuring at 200-plus meters in 2018 was 247 meters, compared to 244 meter-average from 2017. And the World’s 100 Tallest Buildings average grew too; from 381 meters compared to 372 meters in 2017.
Concrete was the most used material.
Ninety out of the 143 buildings at 200+ meters in 2018 used concrete for its primary structure. This is a 62.9 percent share, an increase over the 49.7 percent from 2017. San Francisco is the home to the only all-steel building completed in 2018 at 245-meters.
The report predicted that there will be between 120 and 150 buildings completed at 200 meters or more in 2019 – so it’s more likely to be less than 2018. If you need craftsmen on your team this next year to help you build – short or tall buildings – give us a call at Madden today! We’ll match craftsmen with the experience and training you’re looking for.