China once again builds more supertall buildings than rest of world combined

Sixty-two percent of the world’s supertall buildings completed in 2018 were in China, according to this year’s survey of global skyscraper construction by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

It means that, once again, China has built more supertall buildings than the rest of the world combined.

The city of Shenzhen alone saw more skyscrapers go up than in all the US during the year.

The survey found that 143 buildings taller than 200m were completed in 2018, a little off the record of 147 achieved the previous year.

Of those, 109 were built in Asia, and 88 in China, which increased its dominance of the supertall market, accounting for 62% of the total, compared with 54% last year.

Second place was held by the US, which completed 13 supertall buildings, compared with 10 in 2017.

It is also the fourth year in a row that China has completed the tallest building of the year – in this case the 528m Citic Tower in Beijing.

The single city with the most supertall completions, however, was Shenzhen with 14, the third year in a row in which it topped the municipal league. Next were Beijing and Shenyang, with eight each, and Nanning, with seven; outside China, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur tied for seventh place with five completions each.

Other highlights in the report were Vietnam’s 461m Vincom Landmark 81 building in Ho Chi Minh City, the second tallest building of 2018, and Bangkok, which completed Thailand’s new tallest building at the Magnolias Waterfront Residences Tower, one of the city’s three supertall completions.

Image: Kohn Pedersen Fox’s 528m CITIC Tower (KPF)

Further reading:

• Goettsch wins supertall Wuhan tower competition with “graceful tapering design”
• China-US joint venture plans $3bn supertall tower for New York
• Anything you can do, we can do bigger, taller and pinker…