Dubai's architecture / World's Tallest Building

[TW11]

Dubai's architecture / World's Tallest Building

Burj Dubai will be a half mile high in 2009

 

 

Part 1

 

Part 2

[qwertyuiop]

Amazing city. I saw the burj tower this summer - didn't realise that it wasnt at its full height yet! !

 

What I dont understand is - who are they getting to make use of all this buildings?

 

I can help but think of the doozers in fraggle rock.

[drbubb]

Construction update:

 

- Designed by Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for Emaar Properties.

- Will house hotel and condominiums, be largely residential.

- Completion date: June 30, 2009

- 959 meters high, 189 - 200 floors?

- An observation deck will be located on the 124th floor.

- The top residential level will only be 8 meters wide.

- Will have the fastest elevators in the world with a speed of 700m/min (42.3 kmh / 26.1 mph)

- When finished, It will be almost 40% taller than the the current tallest building, the Taipei 101.

 

 

- -

 

THere's a Curse of Tall buildings.

I wonder if Dubai will be able to avoid it.

[drbubb]

The huge Burj Dubai project opens next week, I believe

 

They may find it is a massive cash drain for the owner

 

(Al Burj at left, was never started, I believe)

 

Videos: http://www.persianhub.org/interesting-pict...burj-dubai.html

 

These videos are great:

Building the Burj Dubai (Part 1) - Big, Bigger, Biggest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfPe9YJTIU4&NR=1

#2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh90HN5HYxQ

#3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhQlaymegVI

#4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmx_rfQc3s

#5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2o6jBcjBL0

 

 

THE VIEW from the 155th floor

[drbubb]

Comments ... "how sad" - how sad they worry about this !

 

OIi (3 months ago)

I feel sad for Taipei.

Taipei lost their only world landmark (Taipei101).

Not just Taipei, I feel sad for other cities too.

Like the city in China that owns the largest mall, etc.

Feel sad. Dubai is trying to make everything the largest but doesn't care about other cities.

Dubai is planning to beat my city's only landmark too. Sucks.

Whats the point of going to Taipei? Whats so special about those cities now? Nothing. It's all in Dubai.

How sad... how sad.

 

bernardmarianovella (3 months ago)

The sad thing is, they're all in Dubai, and Dubai is probably the tackiest city in the world.

 

TheUltimateShadow64 (2 months ago)

Forget Taipei, what about the world trade centre?

 

JUKIO01 (2 months ago)

hey, im sad too. but what cant they do about it? their just gona have to beat them in other ways now. but i still would visit those countries not for the biggest stuff, but the culture, etc.

 

andymate999 (1 month ago)

hmmi understand where u are coming from, but this is how mankind moves forward, people will never forget the cities where the original landmarks you speak of are!

 

JoseProkof (4 weeks ago)

I'm sad for all the egos who want more and more, and more power and more height putting in danger a lot of people. It takes a burp from nature to get these structures down.

 

/see; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmx_rfQc3s...feature=related

[drbubb]

Indian sweat and toil helped Burj reach for the skies

 

November 23rd, 2009 .. SindhToday

 

Dubai, Nov 23 (IANS) On Jan 4, when Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building at 818 metres, is officially opened, the Indian expatriate community in this glittering Gulf city can rightfully bask in reflected glory. It is estimated that about half of the 13,000-plus people who sweat and toil on the project every day are from India.

 

And it is not only the labour. There are scores of Indian supervisors, technicians and engineers working round the clock to ensure that the much-delayed Burj Dubai is completed and is at its spiffiest best before opening day.

 

Among them is Rajam Krishna Moorthy, a manager with the US-based Turner Construction that is overseeing a part of the over-160 floor Burj project.

 

A Dubai veteran of 15 years, Moorthy, who is originally from Chennai, has worked on nearly a score of the tallest buildings in this “City of Gold” – which has a thing for tall buildings and boasts of over 40 that are 200 metres or higher.

 

The $1.1 billion Burj, a shimmering spire that developers Emaar contend can be seen from as far away as 96 km, will literally dwarf all these structures, with its nearest rival – the 363 metre Almas Tower – less than half as tall.

 

Architects concede that Emaar’s showpiece structure – set in the $20 billion 500 acre development in New Dubai – is an engineering marvel.

 

The Burj, which means tower in Arabic, is over 300 metres taller than Taipei 101, the erstwhile tallest building at 509.2 metres, and comfortably towers above the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota in the US, the world’s tallest man-made structure at 628.8 metres.

 

Designed by Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Burj Dubai is being constructed by high-rise building experts from South Korea’s Samsung Corp. When completed, Burj Dubai should meet all four criteria listed by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), which classifies the world’s tallest structures.

 

CTBUH measures the height of buildings on the basis of spire height, the highest occupied floor, roof height and pinnacle height.

 

The super-tall structure will have residences, commercial space and hospitality elements, including the world’s first Armani Hotel and Armani Residences.

 

It remains to be seen, however, how long Burj Dubai will hold the top slot among the world’s tallest buildings.

 

Emaar’s local rival Nakheel has announced a project that will see a tower on the Dubai waterfront that is expected to be almost a kilometre high. And construction circles in the region are also agog with talk of a 1,600 metre tall structure being planned in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

 

/see: http://www.sindhtoday.net/news/1/74457.htm

[drbubb]

A first look inside Burj Dubai, the tallest skyscraper in the world

 

 

/more Photos: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegal...on.html?image=1

 

Coming up:

Photos of sheiks standing on ledges

[drbubb]

Hotel occupancy is low and room rates are down 40 -50%. Apartment/ house rentals are the same. There is a complete over supply of accommodation. Many "world class" master planners have got their forecasts of population growth completely wrong and the infrastructure/hotels/housing has been built or is coming on line, to meet these forecasts.

 

Salaries/fees are significantly down and redundancy is rife.

. . .

The UAE therefore urgently needs to attract more affluent expats to settle in the region with their families to meet the population forecasts. I believe this is going to prove very, very difficult and in particular, Dubai will be now be faced with paying for its development without a proper revenue stream needed to pay for it.

. . .

As far as I can see, the saying "if you build it, people will come" hasn't worked. Or maybe they've come to have a look, done some homework, and returned home.

I hate to be moralistic about it, but there's an element of that in my thinking.

 

Dubai built a fantasy world for the affluent, without considering what was behind that affluence.

It was largely an affluence built on an ability to sell assets at inflated prices, or borrow against the inflated values.*

 

In the post crash environment, prices and lending are going to have to "return to earth", and the affluent "lifestyles

of the rich and famous" will have to morph into something a bit more practical. If I am right about this, then the

Dream City-Dubai, will remain a dream, and the reality there will fade into a nightmare as they find that the demand

and the cash flows are just not there to service the debts that have been built up.

 

Writedown, Burj-sized writedowns, will be needed over the next several years to come.

== ==

 

*The unreality, and the waste it represented, is something that I will not be sad to see gone.

Our world cannot afford so many rich folk busying themselves in over-consuming, while we

run out of scarce resources.

[TW11]

A recent post from the rather excellent 'English Russia' site: Click

 

It really is astonishing to see what they have done. On the one hand the engineer in me can marvel at what man can do, but for me it really is only a technological achievement. I'd hate to live there.

[wren]

Amazing hubris.

 

Some of the designs are nice but surely most will sit unused.

[G0ldfinger]

Any first hand reports from the artificial islands? Is the 'World' still uninhabited? How are the palms doing? Are people actually living there?

[drbubb]

DONT LOOK IT UP, JUST LOOK UP

 

Along with being the first business day of the new year, and the opening of the Burj Dubai,

yesterday was a "Combust Day" according Larry Pezavento. That's a day where we often see market turns

(or within 24 hours, says Larry.) SPX closed at: 1,133 +17.89 , up 1.60%, a new high since 2008.

+ + + + +

 

World's tallest skyscraper opens

 

By Adam Schreck .. 4th January 2010, 4:12pm

 

Dubai opened the world’s tallest skyscraper Monday, and in a surprise move renamed the gleaming glass-and-metal tower Burj Khalifa in a nod to the president of the UAE and leader of neighbouring Abu Dhabi — the oil-rich emirate which came to its rescue during the financial meltdown

 

 

Fireworks explode around Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest tower, during the opening ceremony in Dubai on Jan. 4, 2010. Dubai opened the world’s tallest structure on Monday, and a statement said it was 828 metres (2,717 ft) high. Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum renamed the tower Burj Khalifa after the president of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi. (REUTERS)

 

/more: http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/...3/12340261.html

== ==

 

From Today's SCMP, Tom Holland's Monitor

 

The higher they build, the faster markets crash

 

2010 Tall Tower openings ... call to mind the work of Chistopher Rathke on the economics of tall buildings.

 

Back in 1994, Rathke, then working as a financial analyst in Tokyo, was inpired by the start of building work on Malaysia's Petronas Twin Towers to investigate the correlation between skyscaper construction and equity market performance.

 

The results astonished him. "Competing projects to build the world's tallest building are a sure-fire sign of sign of immanent financial collapse," says Rathke. "As a rule of thumb, a bout of tallest building mania is followed by a 70 percent stock market crash."

 

There are plenty of historical examples. The skyscraper frenzy of the early 1900s, which saw the construction of New York's Singer Building and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, and was followed closely by the "Banker's Panic" in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by more than 50%.

 

The roaring 1920s saw another rash of skyscaper construction in New York with work starting on the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building. Before they were finished, the party came to abrupt end with the 1929 Wall Street Crash. By the time the last of the three took the tallest building crown in 1931, the American economy was in the depths of the Depression and the new tower was popularly dubbed, the "Empty State Building."

 

Fast forward to the late 1960s and there was another building boom in the US. Construction began on both the World Trade Center in New York, and the Sears Tower in Chicago. True to form, the twin towers were finished just in time for teh 1973 oil crisis and the 80 percent inflation-adjusted collapse of the US stock market that followed.

 

Towards the end of the 20th century, Asia caught the tall building bug. First there was were Malaysia's twin towers, whose completion coincided with the Asian financial crisis of 1998. Then came Taipei's Taipei 101, finished in 2004, just as Taiwan's equity market slumped 25 per cent.

 

And finally we had the most recent bout of skyscaper building, which saw ground broken on New York's Freedom Tower, to be built on the site of the old World Trade Centre, as well as the Shanghai World Financial Centre - better known as the Shanghai bottle opener - Hong Kong's very own ICC and the record-shattering Burj Dubai.

. . .

The reason for Rathke's correlation between tall building construction and stock market crashes is simple enough. Tall buildings are very expensive, so erecting them needs loose credit conditions. As a result, competiting vanity projects to build ever-taller towers are a clear sign of an unsustainable credit bubble, whose inevitable bursting must inevitably trigger a stock market crash.

 

"Analysts can manipulate the numbers are much as they like to try and justify excess," Rathke says. "But skyscaper construction is one obvious indicator you cannot ignore. The warning signs are visible for everyone to see."

. . .

The sort of "skyscaper boom and stock bust" the world has just witnessed happens at most two or three times in a lifetime. Typically, each is followed by a lengthy bear market in stocks. "I believe we are in a Bear market that will last for at least 10 years," he says.