Designed by architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the Sears Tower is composed of nine twenty-three-by-twenty-three-m towers bundled together, a type of design which allows for a building to have unlimited altitude. It is the largest private office complex in the world with a gross area of 410,000 square meters and 109 stories. Occupying an entire downtown Chicago block, the tower is comprised of sufficient steel to build fifty thousand cars, has enough concrete to complete an eight-lane, eight-kilometer-long highway, and enough wire to wrap around the earth one and three quarters times.