25 great skyscrapers: icons of construction

21:54, 11 August 2013

NEW YORK. August 11. KAZINFORM China may have just topped out on its new tallest building -- the 632-meter Shanghai Tower -- but if plans underway in Changsha come to fruition, that building will hold the title until only April 2014 when the country's 838-meter Sky City is completed.

When that happens, Sky City will become the world's tallest building, beating the Burj Khalifa in Dubai by 10 meters.

While people debate the merits of building so high so quickly -- there's evidence that tall buildings often presage an economic collapse -- we wanted to take a look at other buildings that deserve browser time.

These aren't the tallest buildings in the world, they aren't the prettiest buildings in the world, they aren't even the most successful -- the inclusion of North Korea's disastrous Ryugyong Hotel attests to that, Kazinform quotes CNN.

But they are among the most iconic, representing their designers and their cities as memorably as anything else.

To put together the list we collaborated with A. Eugene Kohn, founder and chairman of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), one of the world's largest architectural firms, and Michael Greene, KPF principal.

Let us know what you think of our choices and tell us about your own favorite iconic buildings in the comments section below.

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