Scrapers of the Sky Trivia Quiz

Answer: Singapore

Sir (Thomas) Stamford Raffles founded Singapore and so it is perhaps not surprising that the name pops up around Singapore. The address Raffles Place, where the tower is found, is the financial heart of Singapore.

The tower was the tallest outside the US at the time of construction in 1986 and used to be called the Overseas Union Bank Centre. It now shares the title of tallest building in the city with others as there is a height restriction (set at 280 metres) for buildings in the central business area due to a nearby airbase.

Answer: London

Sometimes referred to as "The Gherkin" and formerly called the Swiss Re Building, this 180-metre tall building was completed in 2003. It replaced the Baltic Exchange and the Chamber of Shipping, both of which were extensively damaged by an IRA bomb in 1992. St Mary Axe is in the City of London and was a mediaeval parish.

Answer: Pyongyang

Construction on the 330-metre pyramidal building in North Korea's capital started in 1987, took a break in 1992, resumed in 2008 and stopped a second time in 2013. Money and political issues appear to be the cause of delays. In 2015 it could claim to be the tallest unoccupied building in the world.

Answer: Frankfurt

Owned by the German bank of the same name, the 259-metre tower is in the form of a hollow triangular building with full height atrium and winter gardens spiralling up on nine levels.

Steel was used as a construction material to avoid visually intrusive concrete support columns in the sky gardens, making it the first skyscraper in Europe to use steel as the main construction material. It is also claimed to be the world's first "ecological" office tower.

Answer: Kuala Lumpur

Found in the Malaysian capital, this former record holder was built on top of substantial foundations. In fact the soft rock underneath led to 104 concrete piles being bored between 60 and 114 metres into the ground. A tube within a tube design was employed to provide structural support for the towers.

What you count as part of the building determines how high it is. The 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers with a roof height of 378.6 metres and architectural spires on top is considered to be 10 metres taller than the 110-storey Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), which has a roof height of 442 metres, as the aerials on the latter tower are ignored.

Answer: Macau

Housing a hotel and casino, the 261-metre tower has been likened to a lotus flower opening and the feathered plumes of a carnival headdress. It was opened in 2008. The name is a reference to the Portuguese heritage of the city.

Answer: Hong Kong

Hong Kong has more than 300 skyscrapers (defined by some as at least 150 metres high), topping the list of cities in the world with skyscrapers. Two International Finance Centre (or 2IFC) was the tallest building in Hong Kong when completed in 2003, but was surpassed by the International Commerce Centre in 2009.

One of its unusual features is double-deck lifts with two elevators stacked on top of each other in the same lift shaft, thereby increasing passenger capacity.

Answer: Dubai

Classed as a mega-tall skyscraper, this one comes in at 829.8 metres high and claimed the title of the world's tallest building when opened in 2010. The designers used a hexagonal core with three buttresses forming a Y-shape and providing the residential and hotel accommodation.

Take off the spire on top and the building's height would drop to 585 metres without any loss of usable space.

Answer: Barcelona

Classified as high-tech architecture (where typically the technical and functional elements of the building are on prominent display), the shape is said by the architect to resemble a geyser and was inspired by the pinnacles of Montserrat, a nearby Spanish mountain. Other nicknames are more scatological in nature.

Its external lighting system has made it a nocturnal feature of the city.

Answer: Malmo

The name of this 190-metre Swedish skyscraper describes its shape: by the time the building tops out, it has twisted 90 degrees relative to its base. The Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was asked to base his design on his sculpture 'Twisting Torso'.

Local politicians saw it as a replacement landmark feature for the Kockums Crane, which marked the Malmo skyline for nearly 30 years but was removed in 2002 and ended up in South Korea.