Urban exploration is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment. Photography and historical interest/documentation are heavily featured in the hobby, sometimes involving trespassing onto private property. Urban exploration is also called draining, urban spelunking, urban rock climbing, urban caving, building hacking, or mousing.
Buildering describes the act of climbing on the outside of buildings and other artificial structures. The word "buildering", sometimes misspelled bildering, combines the word building with the climbing term bouldering. If done without ropes or protection far off the ground, buildering is extremely dangerous. It is often practiced outside legal bounds, and is thus practiced mostly at night.
Alain Robert is a French rock climber and urban climber. Known as "the French Spider-Man" or "the Human Spider", Robert is famous for his free solo climbing, scaling skyscrapers using no climbing equipment except for a small bag of chalk and a pair of climbing shoes.
The Jin Mao Tower, also known as the Jinmao Building or Jinmao Tower, is a 420.5-meter-tall (1,380 ft), 88-story landmark skyscraper in Lujiazui, Pudong, Shanghai, China. It contains a shopping mall, offices and the Grand Hyatt Shanghai hotel which starts from the 53rd floor, which at the time of completion was the highest hotel in the world. Along with the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Shanghai Tower it is part of the Lujiazui skyline seen from the Bund. It was the tallest building in China from its completion in 1999 until 2007, when it was surpassed by the Shanghai World Financial Center which is located close by. The Shanghai Tower, a 128-story building located next to these two buildings, surpassed the height of both these buildings in 2015, creating the world's first trio of adjacent supertall skyscrapers.
Terminal Tower is a 52-story, 215.8 m (708 ft), landmark skyscraper located on Public Square in the downtown core of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Built during the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and 1930s, it was the second-tallest building in the world when it was completed. Terminal Tower stood as the tallest building in North America outside of New York City from its completion in 1927 until 1964. It was the tallest building in the state of Ohio until the completion of Key Tower in 1991, and remains the second-tallest building in the state. The building is part of the Tower City Center mixed-use development, and its major tenants include Forest City Enterprises, which maintained its corporate headquarters there until 2018, and Riverside Company.
The Federation Tower is a complex of two skyscrapers built on the 13th lot of the Moscow International Business Center in Moscow, Russia. The two skyscrapers are named Tower East or Vostok and Tower West or Zapad.
Badoo is a dating-focused social network founded by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev in 2006. It is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus and London, United Kingdom, with offices in Malta, Russia and the United States. It operates in 190 countries and is available in 47 languages, making it the world's most widely used dating network. The app is available on iOS, Android, and the web. Badoo operates on a freemium model, whereby the core services can be used without payment.
The Tregunter Towers is a complex of three residential buildings located in The Peak on Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong. All three highrises, named Tregunter 1 (地利根德閣第一座), Tregunter 2 (地利根德閣第二座), and Tregunter 3 (地利根德閣第三座).
Goldin Finance 117, also known as China 117 Tower, is an unfinished skyscraper in Xiqing District, Tianjin, China. The tower was topped out in 2015 at a height of 597 m. It has 128 storeys above ground, with 117 of them housing, hotel, and commercial space, which provides the source of the building’s name. Construction began in 2008 but was twice halted. As of December 2023, it remains unfinished and unoccupied.
The Devon Energy Center is a 50-story corporate skyscraper in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is the tallest building in the city and state, though it has fewer floors than the 52-story BOK Tower in Tulsa. It is tied with Park Tower in Chicago as the 72nd tallest building in the United States; at its completion Devon Tower was tied as the 39th tallest. Construction began October 6, 2009, and was completed in October 2012. The tower is located next to the historic Colcord Hotel, which Devon currently owns, on Sheridan Avenue between Hudson and Robinson Avenues.
Lotte World Tower (Korean: 롯데월드타워), is a 123-story, 555 m (1,821 ft) supertall skyscraper, located in Sincheon-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, South Korea. It is the sixth-tallest building in the world, the tallest in OECD countries, and also the first in South Korea to be over 100 stories tall.
The Ping An Finance Center is a 115-storey, 599.1 m (1,966 ft) supertall skyscraper in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. The building was commissioned by Ping An Insurance and designed by the American architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. It was completed in 2017, and is the tallest building in Shenzhen, the 2nd tallest building in China and the 5th tallest building in the world. It also broke the record of having the highest observation deck in a building at 562 m (1,844 ft). It is the second largest skyscraper in the world by floor area after Azabudai Hills Main Tower in Tokyo, Japan.
Merdeka 118, formerly known as Menara Warisan Merdeka, KL 118 and PNB 118, is a 118-story megatall skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At 678.9 m (2,227 ft) tall, it is the second-tallest building and structure in the world, only behind the Burj Khalifa at 828 m (2,717 ft).
The Hotel Meliá Barcelona Sky is a skyscraper designed by Dominique Perrault located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The building is 116 metres (381 ft) tall and has 31 floors and 258 rooms. It is the fourth-tallest building in Barcelona after Torre Mapfre, Hotel Arts, and Torre Agbar.
Pavlo Gennadiyovich Ushivets, better known as Mustang Wanted, is a Ukrainian urban climber and Internet celebrity. He is known for the high-altitude stunts he performs around the world with little or no safety equipment.
Ontheroofs is an urban exploration and rooftopping photography project conceived by Vitaliy Raskalov and Vadim Makhorov, from Ukraine and from Russia respectively. Their main focus of photography is the exploration of high-rise architectural structures like skyscrapers, bridges, historic sites and cathedrals. The team have been notable for their number of free-climbs up famous buildings and monuments around the world. Typically, their videos are uploaded onto YouTube and showcase their ascent and descent. Raskalov and Makhorov appeared as recurring cast in the documentary series URBEX – Enter At Your Own Risk, which launched globally on Red Bull TV on August 1, 2016.
URBEX – Enter At Your Own Risk is an eight-part original series that launched globally on Red Bull TV on August 1, 2016. Urbex is a documentary series that chronicles the motivations, mindsets and adventures of today's new type of explorers, Urban Explorers, who explore areas above, around and below the world's most famous cities, climbing cranes and bridges, descending into subway networks, infiltrating monuments to industry and commerce old and new. Urbex stands for Urban Exploration. The series was filmed in locations across the world including Moscow, Melbourne, Malaysia, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Kazakhstan, Dubai, Toronto, Marseille and Bulgaria with some of the world's most famous urban explorers like Oleg Cricket and Ontheroofs' Vitaliy Raskalov and Vadim Makhorov. The series was promoted with digital enhancement 360-degree videos.
Justin Casquejo, also known online as LiveJN, is an American rooftopper, free solo climber and stunt performer of Filipino descent. He has scaled several skyscrapers in Manhattan, New York City, as well as a water tower in his hometown, Weehawken, New Jersey, and has been arrested, charged, and convicted for some of his activities. Others have been brought to light through his publication on social media, such as Instagram and YouTube.
Alistair Law is an English YouTuber from Southampton. His videos feature parkour, with him climbing on a range of buildings and cranes, as well as doing 'overnight challenges', where he and a group of friends attempt to stay in various commercial premises after closing hours.
Angela Nikolau is a Russian rooftopper and blogger who gained recognition due to her unusual photographs taken on the roofs of skyscrapers around the world.
