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News: the world’s vainest skyscrapers have been revealed in the latest report from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which reveals the unnecessary “vanity space” added to the top of the world’s tallest buildings.

Of the top ten tallest buildings in the world at present (pictured), at least 27 percent of each structure is superfluous, according the report.

Without its 244-metre spire, the 828-metre Burj Khalifa – currently the tallest building on earth – would drop to a substantially smaller 585-metre height without any reduction in usable space. As the report states, the spire “could be a skyscraper on its own”.

“We noticed in Journal 2013 Issue I’s case study on Kingdom Tower, Jeddah, [currently under construction] that a fair amount of the top of the building seemed to be an unoccupied spire,” reads the report. “This prompted us to explore the notion of ‘vanity height’ in supertall buildings, i.e. the distance between a skyscraper’s highest occupiable floor and its architectural top, as determined by CTBUH Height Criteria.”

The Ukraina Hotel in Moscow, Russia, is revealed as the world’s vainest skyscraper, with 42 percent of the building’s 206-metre height identified as useless space. Meanwhile the vainest “supertall” building – a term given to structures over 300 metres – is identified as the 321-metre Burj Al-Arab in Dubai, whose curving spire makes up 39 percent of the overall height.

The report identifies the United Arab Emirates as the nation with the highest number of vain skyscrapers, with an average of 19 percent useless height across all of its tallest buildings. However it also contains the world’s humblest skyscraper, as the 328-metre Index in Dubai has a vanity space of just four metres.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is the world’s leading authority on the skyscrapers. Recent reports by the organisation have predicted the 20 tallest buildings in the world by the year 2020 and revealed the number of skyscrapers completed last year.

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