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.
One Raffles Place
One Raffles Place, formerly Overseas Union Bank Centre or OUB Centre is one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city of Singapore. It was the tallest together with the UOB Plaza and Republic Plaza until the construction of Tanjong Pagar Centre in 2016. At , it was also the tallest building in the world outside North America at the time of its completion in 1986, surpassing South Korea's 63 Building completed one year earlier, until it was succeeded by the Bank of China Tower. The building sits at the city centre of Raffles Place.Frenchman Alain Robert, well known for climbing skyscrapers, aborted an attempted climb on this building on 3 November 2000. After reaching the 21st floor, the police dissuaded Robert's ascent, and he re-entered the building through a window on the 23rd floor. He was detained by the Singapore police who treated his stunt as criminal trespass.