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Indian proposal for the world's tallest free-standing clock tower would replicate London's Big Ben

Indian proposal for the world's tallest free-standing clock tower would replicate London's Big Ben

India appear to be copying China‘s predilection for, well, copying iconic architecture from around the world. The Indian city of Mysore will see a record-breaking clock tower that has a remarkable resemblance to London’s Big Ben constructed next year.

“Clock towers symbolize perfection, discipline, and the way we do our work,” Ramadas Kamath, executive vice president at Infosys, the company behind the proposal, told the BBC. Based on Infosys’ plans for its clock tower in Mysore, Kamath, it seems, is paying a big compliment to the neo-gothic work from Augustus Pugin who created the Westminster clock tower.

Known by pretty much everyone as “Big Ben” (which is actually the name of the ringing bell, not the clock or tower), Infosys’ proposed design appears to take much inspirations from Pugin’s work. At a glance, the two structures look almost identical. Only upon closer inspection do they begin to bare any differences, as can be seen with the intricate detailing on the tower’s shaft.

Regardless of the similarities with its Western counterparts, the Mysore clock tower will be unique in one respect: size. Soaring to 443 feet, it will trump “Old Joe” in Birmingham, U.K., by 82 feet. In doing so, it would become the tallest free standing clock tower in the world. Big Ben will pushed down to third in the pecking order, standing at 316 feet, followed by the Campanile Tower at UC Berkeley rising to 307 feet. The tallest clock tower in the world, albeit not free standing, is the King Al Ahli on in Saudi Arabia.

Construction is set to take around 20 months, with much of the tower being prefabricated in the adjacent state of Tamil Nadu.

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