5 impressive construction world records

Tallest Residential Building – Central Park Tower – New York, USA

Standing at an incredible 98 above ground floors, this 1,550 ft skyscraper in the heart of New York City is the tallest primarily residential building in the world.

Surprisingly, there was only 5 years between the start of construction, and the building being topped out, in September 2014 and 2019 respectively, with full completion taking place in 2020. However, unsurprisingly, the total cost of constructing the Central Park Tower sits at a staggering $3 billion.

The building features 179 luxury apartments as well as facilities that you’d be hard pressed to find in your typical multiple occupancy residential property, including a gym, a rooftop pool, and even a private members club situated on the 100th floor. Alongside these facilities, the apartments themselves feature floor to ceiling windows with perfect views of New York City, as well as subtle finishing touches including custom build cabinets and LED strip lighting in the walk-in wardrobes included in many of the apartments.

All of this luxury comes at a very hefty price, taking location and facilities in to account, buying one of these apartments can reportedly cost anything from $6 million for standard apartments, all the way up to as much as $100 million for the 3 storey penthouse suite.

Largest Structure Demolished (by controlled demolition) – The Kingdome – Seattle, USA

From building up to tearing down, The Kingdome Stadium in Seattle was the largest structure to be demolished back in 2000.

The multipurpose stadium played host to several sports teams, such as the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and the MLB’s Seattle Mariners, as well as concerts from several prominent artists including Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Who.

Construction of the stadium began all the way back in 1972, opening 4 years later in 1976 at a final construction cost of $67 million (just over $357 million today).

The finished stadium stood at an impressive 250 ft tall and 660 ft wide, which resulted in the use of over 2,000kg of explosives and 22 miles of detonating wire to take the building down.

The building was demolished to make room for a new and improved stadium, however debt for the original construction was not paid off before The Kingdome’s demolition, which left the residents of King County to pay the rest of the $80 million cost, which was finally paid off in 2015.

Furthest Leaning Tower – ADNEC Capital Gate Tower – Abu Dhabi, UAE

When we think of leaning towers, our minds often go to the iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa. However, even though it was the world furthest leaning tower for over 800 years, this all changed in 2010 when construction finished on the ADNEC Capital Gate Tower in Abu Dhabi.

Unlike the famous Italian tower, this $231 million tower was intentionally designed to lean, using a combination of vertically stacked and staggered floors, held together by vertical post tensioning. The building features everything from restaurants and bars to offices and even a hotel.

This tower is so impressive, that Guinness World Records created a category specifically for it, and when comparing the Capital Gate Tower to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Capital Gate Tower has an incline of 18 degrees, which is significantly more than the 4 degrees incline of its traditional leaning counterpart.

Longest Bridge – Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge – Shanghai/Nanjing, China

Built as part of the Beijing/Shanghai High Speed Railway, the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge holds the title for the longest bridge in the world, with a final recorded length of 102.4 miles.

This bridge is classified as a viaduct bridge, consisting of small stands that cross a gorge, and this bridge has cut the travel time between the cities of Ningbo and Jiaxing by over half, from four and a half hours to around two hours.

Construction began on the bridge around 2006, during the time in which China was expanding their network of bridges to reinvent public transport. Construction finished 4 years later in 2010, at a huge final cost of $8.1 billion.

Due to the fact that the bridge crosses over several types of terrain, including rice paddies, soft soil and other uneven terrain, it has to be strengthened on a regular basis, adding further to costs.

Heaviest Building – Palace of Parliament – Bucharest, Romania

Often unseen and underappreciated, the weight of a building is just as impressive as its height, and this is especially the case for the worlds heaviest building, Romania’s Palace of Parliament.

Used as the seat of the Parliament of Romania, the building also holds the world record for the most expensive administrative building, with a final construction cost of €4 billion, with maintenance costs including lighting and heating reportedly costing just over €5.5 million per year.

But the most staggering aspect of this building is its weight, coming in at 4.10 million tonnes. The elements that went in to constructing this behemoth of a building included 700,000 tonnes of steel, 3,500 tonnes of crystal glass, plus 1 million and 900,000 m³ of marble and wood respectively.

Built in 1984 and completed in 1997, it took a team of 700 architects and between 20,000 and 100,000 workers to complete the job, however, due to the nature of the building, it remains unoccupied around 70% of the time.

As construction methods and modern skylines continue to evolve, there is no doubt that these records will be challenged and maybe even broken, but for now, they remain at the very top of the construction game when it comes to these factors.