The Surat Diamond Bourse Is Bigger Than the Pentagon

After 80 years, the Pentagon has lost its crown as the world's largest office building to a diamond center. The Surat Diamond Bourse in India, around 150 miles north of Mumbai, has 7.1 million square feet of floor space, according to its architects, putting it well ahead of the 6.5 million at the Arlington, Virginia, home of the Defense Department. The 15-story building spans 35 acres and is expected to accommodate around 65,000 diamond professionals after if officially opens in November, CNN reports. Surat in Gujarat state is a major hub for the diamond industry and around 90% of the world's diamonds are cut there.

The building has 131 elevators connecting thousands of office spaces that can be used as workshops for diamond cutters and polishers. The building also has multiple large courtyards that Sonali Rastogi, co-founder of Indian architecture firm Morphogenesis, says will function similar to "traditional bazaars." She says that despite the building's vast size, there are no offices that can't be reached from the entrance in seven minutes or less.

Rastogi says all the office spaces have been sold, many of them to clients who will no longer have to commute to Mumbai. She says the project took four years to complete, including delays caused by the pandemic. "When it started, it wasn't trying to become the largest building," she tells the National. "Slowly some of the requirements grew and some things got added to the project and then it turned out to be bigger than the Pentagon." (More office buildings stories.)