Eureka Tower

At the base of the tower is an art installation containing bees inside a white box, resembling a manmade beehive. There are two regular sized bees outside the box, and one queen bee on the top. The gold colour of the bees complements the gold at the top of the tower. The installation was created by Richard Stringer and Nonda Katsalidis, and was complete in December 2007.

When measured either by the height of its roof, or by the height of its highest habitable floor, Eureka Tower was the tallest residential building in the world when completed. It was also the building with the most floors available for residential occupancy in the world. The building stands 297 m (974 ft) in height, with 91 storeys above ground plus one basement level. At the time of its completion, it was one of the only buildings in the world with 90 or more storeys. It is also the third-tallest building in Australia and the second tallest building in Melbourne, behind Australia 108 which topped out in November 2019. The single level basement and first 9 floors contain car parking. The building's proximity to the water table as well as the Yarra River made the construction of a basement car park uneconomical. In all, there are 84 floors of apartments (including some floors shared between car parking and apartments), with the remainder being used for building facilities and the observation deck.[citation needed]

According to the ranking system developed by the U.S.-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the Eureka Tower qualified as the tallest building in three of the four categories in which heights are ranked, namely height to the floor of the highest occupied floor of the building. For comparison, the Q1 apartment tower on the Gold Coast has its highest habitable floor (the observation deck), reaching a height of 235 m (771 ft), some 62 m (203 ft) lower than Eureka Tower's highest habitable floor. Q1's highest penthouse apartment is 217 m (712 ft) whilst Eureka's penthouse is 278 m (912 ft) high. However, the spire attached to the top of Q1 exceeds the Eureka Tower in the other two categories, na