History of the world's tallest buildings
The buildings that were the tallest secular skyscrapers, which excludes religious buildings, were:
The list of tallest buildings is based on the default metric of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), that of measuring to the highest architectural element. Other criteria would generate a different list. Shanghai World Financial Center is not on the above list, but it surpassed Taipei 101 in 2008 to become the building with the highest occupied floor. Using the criteria of highest tip (including antennae), the World Trade Center in New York City was the world's tallest building from 1972 to 2000, until the Sears Tower in Chicago (which already had a higher occupied floor than the World Trade Center) had its antenna extended to give that building the world's tallest tip; a title it held until the 2010 completion of Burj Khalifa. Petronas Towers and Taipei 101 were never the world's tallest buildings by the highest–tip criteria.
Maharishi Vastu Architecture
The Maharishi hired Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center towers, to design the world's tallest building. Called "The Centre of India" or the "Vedic Vishwa Prashasan", the 160-story, 2,222' (675.5m) tall building would have been considerably higher than the 1,483' Petronas Towers, then the tallest building in the world. The layered, pyramid-shaped building would be decorated ornately, with arches and columns, like a Hindu or Vedic temple. The base would be 339 meters square, about 11.5 hectares. Priced at $2.5bn, it would have been large enough to hold 60,000 or 100,000 meditators. The foundation stone was laid on November 6, 1998, at the Brahmasthan of India. The elaborate, three-hour ceremony was attended by dignitaries, including representatives from ten countries, and 2,000 local villagers. No specific completion date was given. As of 2010, the Indian tower was still described in news reports as an active project.