World's Tallest Structure Opening: 160+ Story Burj Dubai

[heights unknown]

View from the top...

http://www.youtube.com/v/oWVLzVhnYE0

I would not want to be at the top of that "THING" looking down; makes me dizzy looking at it through the "YOUTUBE" video.  All I can say is......."MY GOD."

"HU"

[stjr]

See sunsets twice and enjoy an 8 degree temperature spread.  Also, a review of the design by one critic:

The facts and figures about the tower are equally surreal â€" like the one about how it could be eight degrees cooler at the top than at the bottom, or the one about how you could watch the sunset at the bottom, then take a lift up to the top and watch it all over again...

But, beyond height, is there anything to celebrate here? From our current perspective, the Burj Dubai symbolises catastrophic excess â€" of money, confidence, ambition, energy consumption. And the fact that it will most likely stand empty for years to come has been noted with great satisfaction here in the west. But isn't this how we've responded to every tall structure of note, from Babel onwards? And even its many critics have to admit the tower is a rather stunning piece of architecture. Chiefly designed by Adrian Smith, formerly of skyscraper specialists SOM, and engineer Bill Baker, it is beautifully sleek and elegant, rising in a graceful series of silver tubes of different heights. It looks less like a single tower than a cluster of towers, an organic formation rather than a self-consciously iconic object. This is surely the best-looking tall building since New York's Chrysler and the Empire State in the 1930s.

In environmental terms, the Burj Dubai is way too tall to justify itself, but there is at least some structural efficiency to the form. Its Y-shaped plan â€" three wings extending from a central core, like the roots of a tree â€" "confuses the wind", in the architects' words, while the core stops the wings from twisting (which would give top-floor occupants nausea). For super-tall buildings â€" and surely there will be more, one day â€" this "buttressed core" design is likely to become the prevailing form.

More worrying than the tower itself, however, is what's around it. In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled a scheme for an elegantly preposterous mile-high skyscraper for Chicago, safe in the knowledge that he'd never have to figure out how to build it. It was undoubtedly an influence on the Burj Dubai. It even had a similar triangular structure. But Wright's intentions with his mile-high skyscraper were to create a concentrated human habitat, the better to halt Chicago's unstoppable urban sprawl, and free up ground space for parks, nature and leisure.

The Burj Dubai, by contrast, has become the tentpole for several more acres of anonymous, soulless, energy-hungry cityscape. You can apparently see for 60 miles from the top, but when you look down, the immediate landscape is the same schematic real-estate tat you see everywhere else in Dubai: vast shopping malls, bland office towers, sprawling residential developments semi-themed to resemble "traditional" Arabian villages, outsized ornamental fountains. The Burj Dubai might be a triumph vertically, but what about the horizontal?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jan/04/burj-dubai-height-architecture

Here is a photo still of the look down from 124 floors:

[reednavy]

Here is the long video of the fireworks display.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRxxv6AZ_xg

[stjr]

The tubular sections, pointed spire, and Fantasia-style fireworks remind me of a combination of the Emerald City in Oz and Disney World's Cinderella's Castle.  It's amazing how similar the exterior building surfaces are to the Emerald City conceived so many decades ago.  Once again, fiction becoming reality.  Eerie.

[heights unknown]

This Building truly reaches "HEIGHTS UNKNOWN."

"HU"

[I-10east]

Well said Stjr. The first thing that I thought was that BD looked like the merry old land of Oz. That small pic of BD in the center looks so impressive.

[Bostech]

maybe folks should read the biblical Tower of Babel story again!

Let's not get into religion; you know what happens in this forum when we do!  (LOL)

"HU"

Muslim money+christian knowledge+budhist workers+jewish media= Burj Dubai

[reednavy]

Burj what?

[copperfiend]

I wanna live in Dubai...where everyone makes 6 figures >_<

give me 3 years there and I will come back and never have to work again.

Everyone? I assume you aren't factoring in the migrant workers and sex slaves?

[braeburn]

Two words: Debtors' Prison

[thekillingwax]

Everyone? I assume you aren't factoring in the migrant workers and sex slaves?

Exactly. Besides that, UAE is going bust. The coolest thing about this place is how it'll look as the entire city rots and crumbles around it. It's one mighty impressive nail that seals their guilded coffin.

Here's a good article about Dubai: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

One of my co-workers worked in Saudi Arabia for a while and her cousin went to work in Dubai. She said SA wasn't the most fun place on earth but said that the employer in Dubai took her cousin's paperwork and threatened to strand her on the streets if she didn't extend her contract for another 6 months at 1/4 the original pay rate. It's similar to what the detail in the story, you have to pay a huge fee to come and work in "paradise"- easy work, easy hours, easy money. Fortunately, my co-worker had enough cash saved to pay off her cousin's ransom and she was able to return home.

[Bostech]

Well its gonna end up looking like Detroit. :-)

Labor exploitation is happening EVERYWHERE.
Even here in US you have such cases,in Europe most common place that happens is Italy but you can see that almost any country.
That is daily life in Africa and parts of Asia.
That is how lot of rich people turn rich in first place...cheat,lie and exploit weak ones.

That is why rich Americans,British,Arabs and rest all hang out together.
Religion and cultural differences doesn't bother them at all when it comes to money.
Most people will forget about that in 6 months and nothing will ever change.

[Reaper man]

View from the top...

JUMP!  JUMP!  JUMP!  JUMP!  JUMP!  JUMP!  JUMP!  JUMP!  JUMP! ;P

[Bostech]

Looks like a Christmas tree and Star Trek.

[AaroniusLives]

That thing would consume downtown Jax!  It would likely increase the office and residential occupancy rate 10 fold!

That thing would end downtown Jacksonville. It would certainly suck even more life off the streets while creating more vacant buildings. Height doesn't not mean, nor guarantee, density.

It really is an amazing tower, however. In a small, densely populated metropolitan area, it would make tons of sense. Or you could build ten of them and scrape away everything else to nature in a sub-urban mess.

Regarding the slave/indentured servant labor in Dubai...that's entirely true. It certainly puts into perspective what we are celebrating when we extol Dubai.

Still, one can't help but notice a little bit of sour grapes, eh? As the Daily Show noted last night, this tower began construction in 2004, and we're still looking at a gaping hole in the ground in NYC. Or, to paraphrase John Stewart, remember when we used to build things? Sure, it takes longer without slaves (just ask the South, not so much gone with the wind as blown to less free societies.) But the United States used to be about creation and invention. Perhaps seeing this tower will remind us of that, shame us, and get us on track.