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The height of irrelevance?
Welcome to the world’s tallest new building, plonked on the edge of a burning desert, with a view reputed to exceed over sixty miles.
Reportedly built with enough glass to cover seventeen football ovals, and sufficient concrete to build a pavement from London to Naples, the Burj Khalifa ‘superscraper’ also contains an AUD $230 million fountain (the world’s biggest), 900 apartments, 160 floors, 57 lifts, a cigar club, restaurants, spas, swimming pools, an Armani hotel, chocolate shop, florist shops, nightclub – and a mosque.
At 828 metres in height, the Burj Kahalifa is so tall that you can watch the sun set at ground level, catch a sixty second lift ride to the top of the building, and watch the sunset all over again.
Chiefly designed by Chicago-based designer Adrian Smith, formerly of skyscraper specialists SOM, and engineer Bill Baker, the building spirals upwards in a series of silver tubes of different heights around a Y-shaped floor plan.
The three-winged core and a series of setbacks in the towers provides strength and resistance to potentially damaging winds, and eliminates any twisting in the structure – which may be disconcerting for any guests.
It might be awe-inspiring if you think that money equals taste and bigger is always better, but the world’s latest superscraper also hides a more cautionary tale.
Originally named the Burj Dubai, the building had to be rather embarrassingly re-named by the Government of Dubai in deference to the ruler of the neighbouring country of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Sheikh Khalifa kindly organised a reputed $25 billion bailout to help prop up Dubai’s crippled property and financial markets, which buckled under the strain of the global economic crisis and buildings like the superscraper.
While jet-setting billionaires paid millions for their sky-high apartments – only to watch prices slump by up to 50% – labourers on the project, like those in many other Arab nations, were flown in from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and earned spectacularly low wages by comparison.
According to a report in the British Guardian newspaper, skilled immigrant carpenters employed on the superscraper could look forward to takehome pay packets of approximately $AUD7.50 per day, with labourers earning just AUD$4.90.
Meanwhile, the Burj Khalifa soaks up approximately 1 million litres of clean water per day – in rather stark contrast to Abu Dhabi’s proposed zero-carbon city called Masdar – featured in a DIA news item late last year (http://www.design.org.au/content.cfm?news=815&id=101)
The Burj Khalifa is almost certainly destined to become a monument to excess, but that aside, the attention to detail and overcoming the incredible design logistics is almost a work of art in itself.
You can view more about the intricacies of this project at the superbly comprehensive website at www.burjdubai.com and even watch videos of the opening night and fireworks ceremony.
(Images courtesy of www.burjdubai.com )
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Reportedly built with enough glass to cover seventeen football ovals, and sufficient concrete to build a pavement from London to Naples, the Burj Khalifa ‘superscraper’ also contains an AUD $230 million fountain (the world’s biggest), 900 apartments, 160 floors, 57 lifts, a cigar club, restaurants, spas, swimming pools, an Armani hotel, chocolate shop, florist shops, nightclub – and a mosque.
At 828 metres in height, the Burj Kahalifa is so tall that you can watch the sun set at ground level, catch a sixty second lift ride to the top of the building, and watch the sunset all over again.
Chiefly designed by Chicago-based designer Adrian Smith, formerly of skyscraper specialists SOM, and engineer Bill Baker, the building spirals upwards in a series of silver tubes of different heights around a Y-shaped floor plan.
The three-winged core and a series of setbacks in the towers provides strength and resistance to potentially damaging winds, and eliminates any twisting in the structure – which may be disconcerting for any guests.
It might be awe-inspiring if you think that money equals taste and bigger is always better, but the world’s latest superscraper also hides a more cautionary tale.
Originally named the Burj Dubai, the building had to be rather embarrassingly re-named by the Government of Dubai in deference to the ruler of the neighbouring country of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Sheikh Khalifa kindly organised a reputed $25 billion bailout to help prop up Dubai’s crippled property and financial markets, which buckled under the strain of the global economic crisis and buildings like the superscraper.
While jet-setting billionaires paid millions for their sky-high apartments – only to watch prices slump by up to 50% – labourers on the project, like those in many other Arab nations, were flown in from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and earned spectacularly low wages by comparison.
According to a report in the British Guardian newspaper, skilled immigrant carpenters employed on the superscraper could look forward to takehome pay packets of approximately $AUD7.50 per day, with labourers earning just AUD$4.90.
Meanwhile, the Burj Khalifa soaks up approximately 1 million litres of clean water per day – in rather stark contrast to Abu Dhabi’s proposed zero-carbon city called Masdar – featured in a DIA news item late last year (http://www.design.org.au/content.cfm?news=815&id=101)
The Burj Khalifa is almost certainly destined to become a monument to excess, but that aside, the attention to detail and overcoming the incredible design logistics is almost a work of art in itself.
You can view more about the intricacies of this project at the superbly comprehensive website at www.burjdubai.com and even watch videos of the opening night and fireworks ceremony.
(Images courtesy of www.burjdubai.com )
Return to the news list
