Dubai Aims To Build World's Tallest Skyscraper

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — With its world's tallest building nearing completion, Dubai said Sunday it is embarking on an even more ambitious skyscraper: one that will soar more than 10 American football fields.

That's about two-thirds of a mile or the height of more than three of New York's Chrysler Buildings stacked end-to-end.

Babel had nothing on this place.

"This is unbelievably groundbreaking design," Chief Executive Chris O'Donnell said during a briefing at the company's sales center, not far from the proposed site. "This still takes my breath away."

The tower, which will take more than a decade to complete, will be the centerpiece of a sprawling development state-owned builder Nakheel plans to create in the rapidly growing "New Dubai" section of the city. Foundation work has already begun, O'Donnell said.

The area is located between two of the city's artificial palm-shaped islands, which Nakheel also built. The project will include a manmade inland harbor and 40 additional towers up to 90 floors high.

About 150 elevators will carry employees and workers to the Nakheel Tower's more than 200 floors, the company said. The building will be composed of four separate towers joined at various levels and centered on an open atrium.

"It does show a lot of confidence in this environment" of worldwide credit problems and a souring global economy, said Marios Maratheftis, Standard Chartered Bank's Dubai-based regional head of research.

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As part of government-run conglomerate Dubai World, Nakheel has played a major role in creating modern-day Dubai, a city that has blossomed from a tiny Persian Gulf fishing and pearling village into a major business and tourism hub in a matter of decades.

Besides the growing archipelago of man-made islands for which it is best known, Nakheel is responsible for a number of the city's malls, hotels and hundreds of apartment buildings.

The company said the new project is inspired by Islamic design and draws inspiration from sites such as the Alhambra in Spain and the harbor of Alexandria in Egypt.

"This is nothing like it in Dubai," said Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Nakheel's chairman.

Perhaps not quite. But Dubai is already home to the world's tallest building, even if it remains unfinished.

That skyscraper, the Burj Dubai, or Dubai Tower in Arabic, is being built by Nakheel's chief competitor, Emaar Properties.

Emaar has kept the final height of the silvery steel-and-glass tower a closely guarded secret, saying only that it stood at a "new record height" of 2,257 feet at the start of last month. It's due to be finished next September.

The final height of Nakheel's proposed tower is likewise a secret, as is the price tag. The company would only say it will be more than a kilometer (3,281 feet) tall.

O'Donnell said he was confident that Nakheel could pay for the project despite the financial troubles roiling the world's economy.

He also brushed aside concerns by some analysts that Dubai's property market is becoming overheated and due for a potentially sharp correction.

"In Dubai, demand outstrips supply," he said. "There might be a slowdown, but there definitely won't be a crash."

Comments

[Jason404]

Oil prices have tripled since 2001. The OPEC countries love American stupidity and short-sightedness.

[AbrahamSadegh]

Parallel to the tallest building there should be the largest sign in the world starting with Shakespeare"s "All that glisters is not gold ... Gilded tombs do worms enfold."

Then "Islam" based on a God of Compassion and Mercy as the official religion of the realm should be declared.

Next to be recorded should be that this little country with a population of less than six million, an area smaller than that our state of Maine, with GDP of more than $190 billion and a per capita income in excess of $40,000 has the history subjecting 95% of its work force that are mostly of south Asian origin to "a range of human rights abuses" including
lesser pay the originally agreed upon, confiscation of the passports which is against the law but not in practice, tying an employer to one employee and thus preventing it from seeking alternative employment and making the workers dependent on their employer for "housing, wages and healthcare."

Added should be widespread abuse of the workers through "non-payment of wages, cramped and unsanitary living conditions, poor safety practices, physical and mental abuse," as well as some female domestic servants who are sexually violated!

What needs to be done with that tallest and less glistening building in the world is laying it flat on the ground so that it would not pollute the air and actually measuring it to see how many football fields it covers before leaving it to the worms.

[wallygator]

Wonder where they got all the money to pay for this.Hmm...
How many football fields would all that cash cover?

[JodyMcg]

America has lost her place in innovation, architechural design, building materials, manpower, an educated workforce and all of the other disciplines needed to create the world's tallest building. Not only are we not able to even contemplate such a feat; the opposite is sadly true. We are not able to rebuild New Orleans and now Galveston. Our roads are crumbling. Our bridges are collapsing. Our economy is "cratering". It's no wonder that Americans have lost hope. We have become cynical and bitter. We accept McCain's smears as par for the course. The world's tallest building used to be a mark of a great civilization. A civilization that can build. A civilization that can create. As long as we keep pouring tens of billions of dollars into occupying Iraq we have no hope of having the resources needed to build here in America. Vote Obama/Biden and get out of Iraq and build here in America once again.

[prius04]

But we've got more billionaires I bet.

[darthdarcy]

"There ain't no goin back, when the foot of pride comes down, ain't no goin back..!"

Bob Dylan...

[Roket]

So what do they plan on doing when the seas begin to rise? Will Dubai become the new Venice?

[rich misty]

They will build dikes like the Netherlands. The technology is off the shelf.

[special muppet]

The American people really have to start to understand that unless they are willing to take some lessons from how the rest of the world is conducting its affairs, it is going to fall behind. It won't just be the manufacturing jobs that go overseas, it'll be the high paying jobs too.

Now, I'm not saying that Dubai is a model we should strive for, but one thing is clear... unregulated, free markets will mean that a great number of good paying jobs will go overseas. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world has acknowledged that healthcare is an important economic factor. If people are spending a large proportion of their wealth or going bankrupt just to stay healthy, that is going to have an economic effect. That's why in Europe, healthcare comes out of taxes - people aren't offered the choice between buying healthcare or having the extra cash to re-model their homes. It's that important. Next education; unless the US invests in educating all the people, not just the middle class and above, the jobs will leave these shores.

[Blurp]

It's official. Dubai has the world's smallest c*ck.

[Veammn]

Ha! Nice. Dead on.

[politicalminded]

May be you should travel more often.

[AnotherHuddy]

Since we're now using football fields as a measure of distance, I think we should bring back leagues (3 miles), fathoms (really just yards), and ells (???).
~s~

[ibsteve2u]

See what they mean about "Easy come, easy go."?

Ain't no big thing, betting America's oil expenditures on 200 kilometers being far enough away from the Zagros fault line to provide a buffer for a building that is over 900 meters tall.

There is always more where that came from.

[GhostOfSchlesinger]

I'M waiting for a man-made mountain - a horrific notion in environmental terms, but . . . well . . . we've just gotta do it at some point, yeah?

Tall buildings are old hat. BORING!

But a mountain . . .

Imagine the brochure . . .

Rising over 14,000 feet above the desert floor, Mount Disniraq is the largest man-made structure on Planet Earth. At the bottom of Disniraq, summer temperatures peak at over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, while at the summit the average mid-summer high temperature is 37 degrees.

A vacation at Mount Disniraq can include hiking on our hundreds of miles of trails, mountain climbing (all difficulty levels) or shopping inside the mountain, which contains not only the world's largest roller coaster (a 9000 foot drop at 110 miles per hour) but also the world's largest hotel, retail and theme park complex (capable of housing over one million visitors).

And Mount Disniraq has created a unique opportunity for scientists to observe the evolutionary process in action, as the windward side of the mountain, which captures huge quantities of moisture, is reponsible for the beginnings of a Middle Eastern rain forest. The lee side, of course, has decreased precipitation even more. Yet, the combination of radical environmental changes and new ecological niches is obviously stimulating drastic biological shifts - all noteworthy events for the scientific community.

----------------------------------------------

Who has the guts to take on this project?

[AnotherHuddy]

Didn't you see "The Men Who Walked Up the Hill and Down the Mountain" ?
~s~

[GhostOfSchlesinger]

Yeah. I know. An excellent movie, that.

I'm just disappointed in our general lack of hubris. I mean, what happened to the whole "Man versus Nature" theme? Sure, I know it's idiotic. But I miss the whole idea of "man taming nature" - typified by Gary Cooper as Howard Roarke, rippling muscles in the quarry and ogled by Patricia Neale.

That was America.

Given today's technology that America would've built the space elevator. Hell, there'd be a mall up there, and a casino, and a weightless house of ill repute.

Imagine that! A zero gravity cathouse!

[Canuknotusa]

Exactly how high IS a football field?
I know they tend to be higher in the middle in order to drain the rain, but that can't be more than a foot or so...

[AnotherHuddy]

I think they meant as high as the length of ten football fields, or 3000 feet. Freaky.
~s~

[Dissident Dexter]

I hope someone flys a plane into it.

[eldorndef]

10% of Dubai's income is from Oil revenue + I don't think the US buy its oil from them. So it is not American dollars. Remember it is the free market that is creating all these crazy lucrative stuff overthere not the government.

[AnotherHuddy]

Then I guess they won't be building more skyscrapers soon.
~s~

[Jason404]

Dubai is relatively Islamically moderate. Women can drive, you can buy alcohol, etc So, arabs from all the other Arab countries go there to party. Dubai is planning ahead, for when the oil runs out, with business, finance and tourism. Maybe the US should start planning for the future and elect Obama?

[ReligiousWar]

YES ! ! ! A football field is NOT a unit of measure. It would be nice if America would use the Metric system like most of the planet. It is a much better system for everything. I don't know anything about football fields. Are they all the same? Why don't you tell us how many meters it is or KM high this building is. I am sure that information was included wherever this story was dug up. So why translate into something else? How tall is this thing?

If you have to translate the height of this new building why not say it is twenty times the height of some famous tower and tell us how height that is in feet miles meters or kilometers.