Skyreaching Heights

Here’s a trivia question for you: Without cheating and looking at your smartphone, can you name the top ten tallest buildings in the world?

And for bonus points: do you know that one of the planet’s highest skyscrapers has a Yardi connection?

Until not too long ago, the world’s tallest skyscraper, was the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.

For six years, between 1998 and 2004, Petronas’ sky-scraping spires were the highest on record. Since then, a number of buildings have surpassed it. Here’s the top ten list of tallest buildings as recorded by Wikipedia:

1 Burj Khalifa Dubai  UAE 828 m 2,717 ft 2010
2 Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel Mecca  Saudi Arabia 601 m 1,971 ft 2012
3 One World Trade Center New York City  USA 541 m 1,776 ft 2013
4 Taipei 101 Taipei  Taiwan 509 m 1,670 ft 2004
5 Shanghai World Financial Center Shanghai  China 492 m 1,614 ft 2008
6 International Commerce Centre Hong Kong  Hong Kong 484 m 1,588 ft 2010
7 Petronas Tower 1 Kuala Lumpur  Malaysia 452 m 1,483 ft 1998
7 Petronas Tower 2 Kuala Lumpur  Malaysia 452 m 1,483 ft 1998
9 Zifeng Tower Nanjing  China 450 m 1,476 ft 2010
10 Willis Tower (Formerly Sears Tower) Chicago  USA 442 m 1,450 ft 1973

 

Its one-time status as the tallest is one of many interesting facts about the Petronas Towers. Here are a few more from PBS.org:

  • The Petronas Towers are constructed of 36,910 tons of steel
  • Even if you have never visited Malaysia, you may have seen the towers featured in the film Entrapment, which came out in 1999, just one year after construction was completed
  • A high-speed elevator takes you from the basement to the top of either tower – 88 stories – in just 90 seconds
  • A full round of window washing of the 16,000 windows on each tower takes one month to complete
  • The towers are connected by a “flexible skybridge” on the 42nd floor.

If you visit Kuala Lumpur and want to visit the Petronas Towers, you’ll find plenty of entertainment to enjoy on site. The towers are home to more than eight million square feet of shopping and entertainment, including a symphony hall and conference center. They’re also home to cultural resources, including a petroleum museum (oil is a major economic driver in the  Kuala Lumpur region) and a mosque.

It’s the epic-sized shopping mall, managed by Suria KLCC Sdn Bhd, that provides a direct link between Yardi and this amazing building.

Suria KLCC Sdn Bhd has announced that they will use the Yardi Voyager Commercial platform, together with the Yardi Commercial CRM™ and Yardi Advanced Budgeting & Forecasting™ modules, for retail property and asset management.

“After an extensive evaluation process, we determined that only Yardi provides a fully integrated front and back office real estate platform that meets all of our needs in a single application,” said Andrew Brien, Chief Executive Officer of Suria KLCC Sdn Bhd. He added, “Moving to a single, scalable platform will allow us to increase operational efficiency through all levels of our retail mall business, provide higher value client services and allow us to focus on an aggressive growth forecast.”

Sounds like a winning combination with the potential to go sky high!

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AUTHOR

Leah Etling is the founding editor of the Balance Sheet and a 12-year Yardi employee who also oversees press releases and social media. An award winning journalist, she holds a master's degree from UC Berkeley and is a native of Santa Barbara County, Yardi's home.

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