U.S. Bank Tower vs Mecca Royal Clock Tower

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U.S. Bank Tower, formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center, is a 1,018-foot (310.3 m) skyscraper at 633 West Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles, California, United States.

It is, by structural height, the third-tallest building in California, the second-tallest building in Los Angeles, the Eighteenth-tallest in the USA, the third-tallest west of the Mississippi River after the Salesforce Tower and the Wilshire Grand Center, and the 129th-tallest building in the world, after being surpassed by the Wilshire Grand Center. It is the only building in California whose roof height exceeds 1,000 feet. Since local building codes required all high tech buildings to have a helipad, it was known as the tallest building in the world with a roof-top heliport from its completion in 1989 to 2010 when the China World Trade Center Tower III opened.



It is also the third-tallest building in a significant active seismic region; its structure was designed to withstand an earthquake of 8.3 on the Richter scale. It consists of 73 stories above ground and two parking levels below ground. Construction began in 1987 with completion in 1989. The building was designed by Henry N. Cobb of the architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and cost $350 million to construct. It is among the most recognizable buildings in Los Angeles, and often appears in establishing shots for the city in films and television programs.

Source: Wikipedia

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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