Top 10 tallest buildings in history over time (3200BC to 2021) using to-scale building images where 1 pixel on the screen is equal to 1 meter when viewed in full 1080p quality.
Building height for this video is generally "architectural height", meaning the tallest of roof & spire height. The data does not count antennas, which can make certain buildings appear taller than others even if they rank lower. Also note that communication towers and other non-building, non-ancient structures were not included in the plot.
Note that the data set only has one image per building but some buildings change height over time either due to damage or additions. In those cases the building's size may not exactly align to scale with others.
Also note that years in which the top 10 buildings in the world did not change were excluded from the plot. There were some years (and long periods) in history with no new tall buildings in the top 10; skipping those years was the only good way I found to keep the graph moving and interesting.
Data: Custom data set compiled from various sources including:
The Skyscraper Center (skyscrapercenter.com)
SkyscraperPage.com
Wikipedia
Images:
SkyscraperPage.com (Special thanks for to-scale drawings!)
Plotting:
No existing data visualization tools were capable of making this plot the way I wanted, so I made this as a custom data viz in the browser with JavaScript.
Music:
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...