Bahria Icon Tower

Bahria Icon Tower is a skyscraper complex in Clifton, a seaside district of Karachi, Pakistan. Its main tower has 62 floors and is 273 meters tall, which makes it the tallest building in Pakistan and one of the tallest in South Asia. Beside it stands a second tower with 42 floors.

The complex belongs to the Bahria Town Group. Building began in 2009, and the tower was topped out in October 2017. The faces of the main tower are dark glass with white bands, and the top ends in a stone-clad pointed crown with a spire. A shopping mall at the base links the two towers, so the whole complex works like a small vertical city.

Where is it and what is inside?

The complex sits on a plot of about four acres in the upscale Clifton area. It is right beside the Bagh Ibne Qasim park and the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi, an 8th-century mystic widely seen as the patron saint of Karachi. The Mall of Karachi, spread over eight floors, is in the lower part of the towers. The second tower, the Bahria Hotel Tower, is 42 floors and about 200 meters high, and the two buildings share the mall podium.

How long did it take?

Construction started in 2009 and went slowly. Digging the foundations upset traffic in the area, and the sources give different finish dates: completed in March 2016 in one place, and topped out in October 2017 in another. Fireworks lit the sky when the tower was done. Plans for more buildings at the site have been on hold since 2021. Because it stands so much higher than anything else in Pakistan, the tower is a landmark of the coast of Karachi.

On the globe

The model shows a dark and white-banded glass tower with a pointed stone crown and spire, joined by a mall podium to a smaller second tower. Look for the tallest spire in Karachi.