Mecca Royal Clock Tower vs Shanghai World Financial Center

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The Abraj Al-Bait (Arabic: ????? ??????, romanized: ?Abr?? al-Bayt 'Towers of the House') is a government-owned complex of seven skyscraper hotels in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These towers are a part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project which aims to update the city in catering to its pilgrims. The central hotel tower, the Makkah Royal Clock Tower, has the world's largest clock face and is the third-tallest building and fifth-tallest freestanding structure in the world. The clock tower comprises the Clock Tower Museum which occupies the top four floors of the tower.The building complex is metres away from the world's largest mosque and Islam's most sacred site, the Great Mosque of Mecca.

The developer and builder of this complex is that the Saudi Binladin Group, the Kingdom's largest construction firm. It's the world's second most expensive building with the whole cost of construction totalling US$15 billion. The complex was built after the demolition of the Ajyad Fortress, the 18th-century Ottoman citadel on top of a hill overlooking the Grand Mosque. The destruction of the historically important site in 2002 from the Saudi authorities sparked international outcry and a powerful response from Turkey.

Source: Wikipedia

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The Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC; Chinese: ????????) is a supertall skyscraper located in the Pudong district of Shanghai. It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by the Mori Building Company, with Leslie E. Robertson Associates as its structural engineer and China State Construction Engineering Corp and Shanghai Construction (Group) General Co. as its primary contractor. It is a mixed-use skyscraper, comprising offices, hotels, conference rooms, observation decks, and ground-floor shopping malls. Park Hyatt Shanghai is the tower's hotel element, comprising 174 rooms and suites occupying the 79th to the 93rd floors, which at the time of completion was the highest hotel in the world. It is currently the third-highest hotel on earth after the Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong, which occupies floors 102 to 118 of the International Commerce Centre.On 14 September 2007, the skyscraper was topped out and is 492 meters (1,614.2 feet ), which makes it the 12th tallest building in the world and the fourth tallest structure in Mainland China. The SWFC opened to the general public on 28 August 2008, with its observation deck opening on 30 August. The observation deck offers views from 474 m (1,555 feet ) above ground level.The SWFC was lauded for its design, and in 2008 it was named by architects as the year's best-completed skyscraper. In 2013, the SWFC was exceeded in height by the adjoining Shanghai Tower, which will be China's tallest structure as of 2017. Collectively, The Shanghai World Financial Center, The Shanghai Tower and The Jin Mao Tower form the world's first adjoining grouping of three supertall skyscrapers.

Source: Wikipedia