Tallest buildings and structures in the UK
- Published
In the centre of this picture is what No 1 Undershaft will look like in the London skyline when it's complete. Planning permission has just been granted so it's up, up and away for what will be the City of London's tallest building.
The 73-storey tower will be home to offices, shops, restaurants and cafes, as well as a free viewing gallery at the top. It will be a staggering 304.94m tall (above sea level).
The architects had hoped it would be a few more metres taller, but London City Airport is nearby and flight safety restrictions mean it had to shorten its ambitions!
And that means, that although it will be the tallest building in the City of London area of the UK's capital city, the title for the country's tallest building will stay with the Shard which just pips it to the post at a height of 309.6m. In fact all the top tallest buildings in the UK can be found in London, with the tallest outside of London being...
...the Beetham Tower in Manchester. It's half hotel and half apartments standing at 168m tall. It's almost half the height of the Shard but in the Manchester skyline it still stands out and it's claimed it can be seen from 10 English counties on a clear day.
But none of those skyscrapers compares to the 330m of the Arqiva Tower, Emley Moor, West Yorkshire. You may not have heard of it but it's the tallest freestanding structure in the UK - 20m taller than the Shard. The tower is used in television and radio transmissions, broadcasting to around 5 million.
On a world scale though, all the UK's huge buildings and structures are dwarfed by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in the Middle East. It's the tallest building and tallest free-standing structure in the world at 828m high - more than twice the height of the tallest in the UK!
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