The world's tallest artificial structure is the 829.8 m (2,722 ft) tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai . The building gained the official title of "Tallest Building in the World" and the tallest self supported structure at its opening on January 9, 2010. The second tallest self-supporting structure and the tallest tower is the Tokyo Skytree. The tallest guyed structure is the KVLY-TV mast.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an organization that certifies buildings as the "World's Tallest", recognizes a building only if at least 50% of its height is made up of floor plates containing habitable floor area. Structures that do not meet this criterion, such as the CN Tower, are defined as "towers".
There are dozens of radio and television broadcasting towers which measure over 600 metres (about 2,000 ft) in height, and only the tallest are recorded in publicly available information sources.
The assessment of the height of artificial structures has been controversial. Various standards have been used by different organizations which has meant that the title of world's tallest structure or building has changed depending on which standards have been accepted. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has changed its definitions over time. Some of the controversy regarding the definitions and assessment of tall structures and buildings has included the following:
Within an accepted definition of a building further controversy has included the following factors:
This category does not require the structure to be "officially" open but does require it to be 'topped out'.
The tallest artificial structure is Burj Khalifa, a skyscraper in Dubai that reached 828.1 m (2,717 ft) in height on January 17, 2009. By April 7, 2008 it had been built higher than the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota, USA. That September it officially surpassed Poland's 646.38 m (2,120.7 ft) Warsaw radio mast, which stood from 1974 to 1991, to become the tallest structure ever built. Guyed lattice towers such as these masts had held the world height record since 1954.