The Bitexco Financial Tower, Ho Chi Minh City’s iconic building, has been listed as one of the world’s 50 most innovative skyscrapers, the group behind the tower announced Thursday.

The 68-story skyscraper, located in the city’s downtown, is ranked 32^nd in the Innovative 50 list by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the Vietnam News Agency quoted a Bitexco Group representative as saying.

CTBUH is a Chicago-based organization which boasts a huge resource for professionals focused on the design, construction, and operation of tall buildings and future cities, according to its website.

The Innovative 50 list features tall buildings currently under construction or completed in the past 15 years that have “challenged the traditional typology of tall buildings in some way, through innovation in form, design, facade, environmental approach, technologies, or other areas,” according to CTBUH.

The selected buildings are not necessarily the tallest on Earth, even though most of them are really so, the CTBUH noted.

The tallest building in Ho Chi Minh City, Bitexco Financial Tower stands 263 meters high and is described as embodying “the hope of a future of prosperity for Vietnam.”

The Vietnamese tower was honored together with other famous buildings, including Burj Khalifa (Dubai), Taipei 101 (Taiwan), Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort (Singapore), 1 Bligh Street (Australia), and Gran Torre Santiago (Chile).

Founded in 1969, the CTBUH facilitates the exchange of the latest knowledge available of tall buildings around the world through events, publications, research, working groups, web resources, and its extensive network of international representatives.

Inspired by Vietnam’s national flower, the lotus, Bitexco Financial Tower, opened on October 31, 2010, is designed to represent the energy and aspiration of its people, the Bitexco Group said on the building’s website.

“A true urban masterpiece that is more than a structure of glass and steel, it evokes beauty and progress as it rises above the culturally rich Ho Chi Minh City,” it said.

The tower was the tallest building in Vietnam from 2010 to early 2011 when 72-story Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower topped out on January 24, 2011.

In 2013 the Bitexco Financial Tower was also listed as one of 25 great skyscrapers that could be considered the world’s “icons of construction” by CNN.

The news website ranked the tower seventh on the list of the buildings standing “among the most iconic, representing their designers and their cities as memorably as anything else.”

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