Maximum Building Height

Jun 21, 2026Aditya948351

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Description:

You want to build n new buildings in a city. The new buildings will be built in a line and are labeled from 1 to n.

However, there are city restrictions on the heights of the new buildings:

• The height of each building must be a non-negative integer.
• The height of the first building must be 0.
• The height difference between any two adjacent buildings cannot exceed 1.

Additionally, there are city restrictions on the maximum height of specific buildings. These restrictions are given as a 2D integer array restrictions where restrictions[i] = [idi, maxHeighti] indicates that building idi must have a height less than or equal to maxHeighti.

It is guaranteed that there will be at most one restriction for any building.

Return the maximum possible height of the tallest building.

Example 1:

Input: n = 5, restrictions = [[2,1],[4,1]] Output: 2 Explanation: We can build the buildings with heights [0, 1, 2, 1, 2]. The tallest building has a height of 2.

Example 2:

Input: n = 6, restrictions = [] Output: 5 Explanation: With no restrictions, the heights can be [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. The tallest building has a height of 5.

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Approaches:

1. Two-Pass Constraint Propagation

To optimize the approach and find the true maximum height, we can treat this as a constraint propagation problem. The height of any building is restricted by the limits set on buildings to its left and its right.

1. Add Boundary Conditions: Explicitly append the base constraint [1, 0] since the first building is always height 0. Also, append a constraint for the last building [n, n - 1] because the height can only increase by a maximum of 1 per step.
2. Sort: Sort the restrictions array based on the building IDs in ascending order.
3. Left-to-Right Pass: Iterate forward through the sorted restrictions. Update the current building's height limit to be the minimum of its own limit and the previous building's limit plus the distance between them.
4. Right-to-Left Pass: Iterate backward. Update the current limit to be the minimum of its own limit and the next building's limit plus the distance between them.
5. Calculate the Peaks: Loop through adjacent pairs of restrictions. The highest possible building between two restrictions forms a "peak". The maximum height between two restrictions with heights h1 and h2 separated by distance d is (h1 + h2 + d) / 2. Keep track of the global maximum.

Total Buildings (n)

Restrictions Array

Active Constraints:

Step 1 of 0:

Max Height

• Time Complexity: O(M log M) where M is the number of restrictions. Sorting the restrictions dominates the time complexity. The forward and backward passes take linear time O(M).
• Space Complexity: O(1) or O(M) depending on the language and the sorting algorithm's internal space requirements. Modifying the array in-place keeps auxiliary space minimal.

Solutions:

C++

class Solution {
public:
    int maxBuilding(int n, vector<vector<int>>& restrictions) {
        restrictions.push_back({1, 0});
        restrictions.push_back({n, n - 1});
        sort(restrictions.begin(), restrictions.end());
        
        int m = restrictions.size();
        
        // Left to right pass
        for (int i = 1; i < m; ++i) {
            restrictions[i][1] = min(restrictions[i][1], restrictions[i - 1][1] + restrictions[i][0] - restrictions[i - 1][0]);
        }
        
        // Right to left pass
        for (int i = m - 2; i >= 0; --i) {
            restrictions[i][1] = min(restrictions[i][1], restrictions[i + 1][1] + restrictions[i + 1][0] - restrictions[i][0]);
        }
        
        int max_height = 0;
        // Find the maximum peak between any two adjacent restrictions
        for (int i = 1; i < m; ++i) {
            int h1 = restrictions[i - 1][1];
            int h2 = restrictions[i][1];
            int d = restrictions[i][0] - restrictions[i - 1][0];
            int peak = (h1 + h2 + d) / 2;
            max_height = max(max_height, peak);
        }
        
        return max_height;
    }
};

Java

import java.util.Arrays;

class Solution {
    public int maxBuilding(int n, int[][] restrictions) {
        int m = restrictions.length;
        int[][] res = new int[m + 2][2];
        for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) {
            res[i] = restrictions[i];
        }
        res[m] = new int[]{1, 0};
        res[m + 1] = new int[]{n, n - 1};
        
        Arrays.sort(res, (a, b) -> Integer.compare(a[0], b[0]));
        
        m = res.length;
        
        // Left to right pass
        for (int i = 1; i < m; i++) {
            res[i][1] = Math.min(res[i][1], res[i - 1][1] + res[i][0] - res[i - 1][0]);
        }
        
        // Right to left pass
        for (int i = m - 2; i >= 0; i--) {
            res[i][1] = Math.min(res[i][1], res[i + 1][1] + res[i + 1][0] - res[i][0]);
        }
        
        int maxHeight = 0;
        // Find the maximum peak between any two adjacent restrictions
        for (int i = 1; i < m; i++) {
            int h1 = res[i - 1][1];
            int h2 = res[i][1];
            int d = res[i][0] - res[i - 1][0];
            int peak = (h1 + h2 + d) / 2;
            maxHeight = Math.max(maxHeight, peak);
        }
        
        return maxHeight;
    }
}

Python

class Solution:
    def maxBuilding(self, n: int, restrictions: List[List[int]]) -> int:
        restrictions.append([1, 0])
        restrictions.append([n, n - 1])
        restrictions.sort()
        
        m = len(restrictions)
        
        # Left to right pass
        for i in range(1, m):
            restrictions[i][1] = min(restrictions[i][1], restrictions[i - 1][1] + restrictions[i][0] - restrictions[i - 1][0])
            
        # Right to left pass
        for i in range(m - 2, -1, -1):
            restrictions[i][1] = min(restrictions[i][1], restrictions[i + 1][1] + restrictions[i + 1][0] - restrictions[i][0])
            
        max_height = 0
        
        # Find the maximum peak between any two adjacent restrictions
        for i in range(1, m):
            h1 = restrictions[i - 1][1]
            h2 = restrictions[i][1]
            d = restrictions[i][0] - restrictions[i - 1][0]
            peak = (h1 + h2 + d) // 2
            max_height = max(max_height, peak)
            
        return max_height

JavaScript

/**
 * @param {number} n
 * @param {number[][]} restrictions
 * @return {number}
 */
const maxBuilding = function(n, restrictions) {
    restrictions.push([1, 0]);
    restrictions.push([n, n - 1]);
    restrictions.sort((a, b) => a[0] - b[0]);
    
    let m = restrictions.length;
    
    // Left to right pass
    for (let i = 1; i < m; i++) {
        restrictions[i][1] = Math.min(restrictions[i][1], restrictions[i - 1][1] + restrictions[i][0] - restrictions[i - 1][0]);
    }
    
    // Right to left pass
    for (let i = m - 2; i >= 0; i--) {
        restrictions[i][1] = Math.min(restrictions[i][1], restrictions[i + 1][1] + restrictions[i + 1][0] - restrictions[i][0]);
    }
    
    let maxHeight = 0;
    
    // Find the maximum peak between any two adjacent restrictions
    for (let i = 1; i < m; i++) {
        let h1 = restrictions[i - 1][1];
        let h2 = restrictions[i][1];
        let d = restrictions[i][0] - restrictions[i - 1][0];
        let peak = Math.floor((h1 + h2 + d) / 2);
        maxHeight = Math.max(maxHeight, peak);
    }
    
    return maxHeight;
};