The Council on Tall buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) was founded at Lehigh University in 1969. Its office remained at Lehigh until October 2003, when it moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois. Although its stated mission is to study and report "on all aspects of the planning, design, and construction of tall buildings," it is best known to the general public for its compilation of the World's 100 Tallest Building rankings.
The ranking of tall buildings was originally based on a building's height from the sidewalk level of the main entrance to the architectural top of the building. The "architectural top" included towers, spires and pinnacles, but not antennas, masts or flagpoles. In 1996, as Petronas Twin Towers was nearing completion, CTBUH changed its system to identify the tallest building in three additional categories -- the highest occupied floor, the top of the roof, and the top of the pinnacle or antenna.
In 1996, as Petronas Twin Towers was nearing completion, CTBUH expanded its system to rank the tallest buildings in three additional categories -- the highest occupied floor, the top of the roof, and the top of the pinnacle (the heighest point in the structure of the building).
In 2005 the CTBUH partnered with Emporis to develop a much larger database of high-rise buildings with height data and expanded categories of technical data.
The Emporis and CTBUH building databases have been integrated, and have always used the same standards for measurement of tall buildings.
Emporis' stated goal is to list and photograph every major building in the world: from a hut to a skyscraper.
In October 2005 Emporis formed a partnership with the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) to give members of this organization access to the vast amount of information and to serve as the CTBUH's primary data platform.
Its data is managed and verified by the Emporis Standards Committee, which uses standards more elaborate than those set in 1998 by the CTBUH but using the same principles.
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