Dubai opens world's tallest skyscraper

Burj Khalifa rises 828 meters (2,717 feet) out of the desert sands



The financially troubled Gulf emirate of Dubai has opened the world's tallest building, a glistening concrete, glass and steel pinnacle rising 828 metres (2,717 feet) out of the desert sands.

Blazing fireworks rippled up and down the massive structure after it was officially opened by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum.

Known during construction as Burj Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad renamed the building Burj Khalifa, in honour of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

Sheikh Khalifa is also ruler of Abu Dhabi, the UAE emirate which came to Dubai's help late last year to the tune of 10 billion dollars to bail out troubled property developer Nakheel, a subsidiary of Dubai World.

"Today the United Arab Emirates achieves the tallest building ever created by the hand of man... and this great project deserves to carry the name of a great man. Today I inaugurate Burj Khalifa," Sheikh Mohammad said.

Parachutists bearing the UAE colours of red, green, black and white then touched down as a giant portrait of Sheikh Khalifa was projected on an outer wall of the structure which cost 1.5 billion dollars to erect.

In the fireworks spectacle that followed, blossoms of flames crackled up and down the huge building and out into the Dubai night sky, followed later by lasers sweeping the horizon from the tower's many levels.

Dubai hopes the opening of the Burj Khalifa -- the latest in a series of grandiose projects -- will burnish an image tarnished by its crippling debt woes.

The needle-shaped tower, described by its developer as a "vertical city" as it dwarfs existing skyscrapers, boasts new limits in design and construction.

Emaar Properties, the partly government-owned developer, had maintained the suspense about the skyscraper's final height, saying only that it exceeded 800 metres (2,625 feet).

The construction of the tower, which began in 2004, "cost 1.5 billion dollars," Emaar chairman Mohammed Alabbar said.

Burj Khalifa has more than 200 floors, only 160 of which will be inhabited, while the remaining floors are for services.

It has a total built-up area of 5.67 million square feet, including 1.85 million square feet of residential space and more than 300,000 square feet of prime office space, Emaar said.

This amounts to 1,044 apartments and 49 floors of office space, served by 57 lifts. It also has a hotel carrying the Georgio Armani logo.

"We have sold 90 percent of the project," said Alabbar.

Bill Baker, a structural and civil engineer and partner in Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), which designed the tower, said it has set a new benchmark.

"We thought that it would be slightly taller than the existing tallest tower of Taipei 101. (Emaar) kept on asking us to go higher but we didn't know how high we could go," he said.

"We were able to tune the building like we tune a music instrument. As we went higher and higher and higher, we discovered that by doing that process... we were able to reach heights much higher than we ever thought we could."

A spiralling Y-shaped design by SOM architect Adrian Smith was used to support the structural core of the tower, which narrows as it ascends. Higher up it becomes a steel structure topped with a huge spire.

To reach the final stages, concrete was propelled to a height of 605 metres -- a world record.

Monday's inauguration of the tower comes, however, after the once-booming real estate sector of Dubai crashed, halving the value of most of the UAE city-state's properties in comparison with peak prices recorded in the summer of 2008.

It also comes as Dubai battles a serious debt crisis, resulting from the heavy borrowing by some of its state corporates to finance imposing property projects.

The emirate narrowly escaped financial catastrophe last month as neighbouring deep-pocketed Abu Dhabi threw it a last-minute lifeline worth 10 billion dollars to pay imminent debt owed by Dubai World.

The group last month began negotiations with its creditors with the hope of reaching an agreement over restructuring an accumulated debt of 22 billion dollars amassed by its troubled subsidiaries.

Dubai's total debt, mostly that of its state-owned companies, amounts to 100 billion dollars.

Abu Dhabi, and the Abu Dhabi-based central bank of the United Arab Emirates, have already extended financial aid of 25 billion dollars to Dubai since it announced early in 2009 that it needed to sort the debt problem of its firms.

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Burj Khalifa (Arabic: برج خليفة‎ "Khalifa Tower"),[3] formerly known as Burj Dubai, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 828 m (2,717 ft).[3] Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009 and the building officially opened on 4 January 2010.[1][7] The building is part of the 2 km2 (490-acre) flagship development called Downtown Burj Khalifa at the "First Interchange" along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai's main business district. The tower's architect and engineer is Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, LLP (Chicago).[8] Bill Baker, the Chief Structural Engineer for the project, invented the buttressed core structural system in order to enable the tower to achieve such heights economically. Adrian Smith, who worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) until 2006, was the Design Partner on the project.[8][9]

The primary builder is South Korean Samsung C&T, who also built the Taipei 101 and Petronas Twin Towers,[10] followed by Belgian group Besix and Arabtec from UAE. Turner Construction Company was chosen as the construction project manager.[11] Under UAE law, the Contractor and the Engineer of Record are jointly and severally liable for the performance of Burj Khalifa. Therefore, by adoption of SOM's design and by being appointed as Architect and Engineer of Record, Hyder Consulting is legally the Design Consultant for the tower.

The total budget for the Burj Khalifa project is about US$1.5 billion; and for the entire new "Downtown Dubai", US$20 billion.[12] Mohamed Ali Alabbar, the CEO of Emaar Properties, speaking at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat 8th World Congress, said that the price of office space at Burj Khalifa had reached US$4,000 per sq ft (over US$43,000 per m2) and that the Armani Residences, also in Burj Khalifa, were selling for US$3,500 per sq ft (over US$37,500 per m2).[13] The completion of the tower coincided with a worldwide economic slump and overbuilding, causing it to be described as "the latest ... in [a] string of monuments to architectural vacancy."

I was there. The fireworks display was not fantastic. But I love the dancing fountain - ala-Las Vegas infront of Dubai Mall.

i would prefer to have the old name Burj Dubai for it's a distinction that it is in Dubai rather than naming it Burj Khalifa..

Why they need to change that t Burj Khalifa?