Tour du Midi vs Mecca Royal Clock Tower

Informations

The Tour du Midi (French) or Zuidertoren (Dutch), both meaning South Tower, is a 38-storey, 148 m (486 ft) skyscraper built between 1962 and 1967 in Brussels, Belgium. The tower is the tallest building in Belgium, and was the tallest in the European Economic Community when it was built until it was surpassed by Tour Montparnasse in Paris in 1972.

Tour du Midi stands adjacent to Brussels-South railway station. The building's facade was reclad in 1995-1996 with unitised glass panels using double glass solarbel silver, and it can accommodate about 2,500 office workers. It was built for the Belgian Pensions Administration, which occupies it now.

Source: Wikipedia

Informations

The Abraj Al-Bait (Arabic: ????? ??????, romanized: ?Abr?? al-Bayt 'Towers of the House') is a government-owned complex of seven skyscraper hotels in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These towers are a part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project which aims to update the city in catering to its pilgrims. The central hotel tower, the Makkah Royal Clock Tower, has the world's largest clock face and is the third-tallest building and fifth-tallest freestanding structure in the world. The clock tower comprises the Clock Tower Museum which occupies the top four floors of the tower.The building complex is metres away from the world's largest mosque and Islam's most sacred site, the Great Mosque of Mecca. The developer and builder of this complex is that the Saudi Binladin Group, the Kingdom's largest construction firm. It's the world's second most expensive building with the whole cost of construction totalling US$15 billion. The complex was built after the demolition of the Ajyad Fortress, the 18th-century Ottoman citadel on top of a hill overlooking the Grand Mosque. The destruction of the historically important site in 2002 from the Saudi authorities sparked international outcry and a powerful response from Turkey.

Source: Wikipedia