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World's Tallest Building To Open Monday
dtmos writes "The Burj Dubai ('Dubai Tower' in Arabic) is scheduled to open to the public on Monday. Its height, claimed to be 824.55m (2,705.2 feet), but believed to be 818m (2,684 feet) — either way, more than half a mile — makes it far taller than Taiwan's Taipei 101, which had been the world's tallest skyscraper at 509m (1,670 feet)."
Too bad it was built with slavery...
The three sides of the building have different heights due to the differing ground levels.
For a long time, the unofficial height was 808m. However this then switched to 818m, and now finally 824m as different entrances were chosen as "ground level".
The problem is that the building is part of a massive development that includes quite a bit of landscaping. Thus the definition of ground level is somewhat fuzzy. The real base of the building is an enormous concrete slab a few stories underground.
> freestanding or otherwise
I have regularly worked to build more than 1 mile tall structures while working on the oil rigs back then. We inserted permanent steel casing after digging the hole most of the time so the casing would constitute a taller non-freestanding permanent steel structure ;-)
While drilling in the Rockies, we were well above sea level so our steel structures would actually be standing higher than the 'Dubai Tower' which I think is is at sea level (or almost).
The deapeast holes are well above 5 miles !
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/AdamCassino.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
The only thing possibly taller would be offshore oil rigs, but I can't remember how those stack up against it
In the open sea height is not your friend. Some platforms that have legs all the way down operate at depths up to 170 m. The above-water portion is about the size of a regular office tower. The deep water platforms float, so their height doesn't include the water depth.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
That part isn't actually true (though not by much). The roof of Burj Dubai's highest occupied floor seems to be 620m or so, slightly less than the 629m TV mast (the last 200m or so of Burj Dubai is unoccupied structure). However, the structure as a whole is much taller than any other structure, and the highest occupied floor is over 100m higher than any other building's occupied floor.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
In a symbolic way this seems vaguely a symptom of decline, but the U.S.'s disinterest in this particular metric---building really tall office buildings---dates back a few decades. The U.S. was still unquestionably the world superpower through the 1990s at least, but the spurt of building tall buildings stopped by the mid-1970s, since they weren't particularly economical compared to just building two or three shorter (but still pretty tall) buildings.
If anything there's a minor tall-building resurgence in the U.S. recently: the Trump Tower in Chicago and Bank of America Tower in NYC, both completed 2009, are the tallest new buildings since the last major spurt of skyscraper construction in 1973-74.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Every night, the stuff is pumped out of municipal septic tanks by a half-mile long convoy of trucks, which then dump it in nearby storm drains. It all ends up on the beach.
Agreed, I was just raising the question whether an oil well permanent casing, 2 miles or more tall, could qualify as a non-freestanding structure ;-)
It sure would be noticeable with some sort of ground scanning device when looking at the planet. I mean, they are all over the place and their height can be an order of magnitude taller than the conventional structures we were talking about ! ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
lol what?
Burj Dubai wasn't built nor designed by Arabs. The architect was Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, structural engineer was Bill Baker, and it was built by cheap labor from South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Abu Dhabi has lots of money, and lots of oil, yes, and has followed traditional prudent Islamic financial practices.
Dubai has very little oil, and lots of debt, and has not followed traditional prudent Islamic financial practices, instead preferring to be more "westernised".
When Dubai World Ports (nothing to do with Abu Dhabi) took over Peninsular and Oriental from the British, the Americans forced them to sell the US ports division as a condition of allowing the sale to go through.
The proposed solution for this is in effect a vertical reailway; multiple fifts per shaft, express elivators (only stopping on every 20'th floor for you to change to a "local" elivator), etc.
...which took the lead when a mast in Poland fell down if I am not much mistaken about the history...
Yup, radio mast in Konstantynow which fell down in 1991 due to cable handling error during maintenance (which was a bit neglected anyway). 646 meters, though supposedly chosen because it was half-wavelength of its transmission (giving it fabulous "range")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_radio_mast
One that hath name thou can not otter
Last month the emirate was bailed out to the tune of $10 billion by neighboring Abu Dhabi after its state-owned holding company, Dubai World, shocked investors but asking for a freeze on payments owed on its $26 billion in debts.
The announcement by Dubai World -- an umbrella group which includes the Burj's developers, delivered a cold dose of reality to speculators worldwide who believed the oil-rich region was impervious to the global financial crisis.
There are special parachutes for this (which will probably open when jumping from a not-so-high-building), but i'd suspect that given the height of this tower any "normal" parachute will do. http://www.fallschirm.de/index-Dateien/Page932.htm (it's in german, i came across this one not so long ago)
Kaspersky AV when going to http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/ shows the following: "detected: Trojan program Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent.ewi" Be careful...
THIS ADDRESS HAS MALWARE-----++++++++1/4/2010 6:32:42 AM Deleted Trojan program Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent.ewi C:\Users\Dennis\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Low\Content.IE5\IO58EOL8\infolinks_main[1].js
*****http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/
then eclipsed by the Sears Tower the very next year, which remained the tallest building in the world until 1998
No, the CN Tower in Toronto was completed in 1976 and was the world's tallest building until 2007, when it was beaten by Burj Dubai. It's still the tallest building in the Americas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cn_tower
The CN tower was the world's tallest structure, but it's not a building in the conventional sense since it is not filled with floors for people to live/work on. Yes, it is still the tallest structure in the Americas.
How tall can a building be built before all the space gets eaten up by elevator shafts?
That's the real problem. The World Trade Center towers had "sky lobbies", with big express elevators to intermediate floors, and local elevators from there. Local elevator shafts could then be above each other.
The World Trade Center was unique in that all the floors were the same size. Most other tall buildings are pointy, so the higher floors are smaller and traffic to the top is less. Burj Dubai is also residential on the higher floors, so the people density and traffic for the upper floors is low.
Elevator speeds are limited by the rate at which people can stand air pressure changes. Tapei 101 has pressurized elevators, so they can fine-tune the rate of pressure change. It's not clear if Burj Dubai does; if they don't, they'll probably have to slow down the higher elevators to reduce resident complaints.