The Dubai Tower and What We Build In Life

On January 4th, the Burj Dubai, arabic for the Tower of Dubai, was officially opened as the tallest building in the world. The Burj Dubai is 2717 feet tall, 160 stories. It is roughly as tall as the two World Trade Center towers placed one on top of the other. It is a beautiful building, designed by an architect from Chicago.

The Burj Dubai was built at the height of the global real-estate boom. It cost 1.5 billion dollars to build and due to the real estate crash, it is currently mostly empty. With a hotel, apartments and office space, the tower flooded Dubai with more residential and commercial space than the market can possibly bear. This beautiful tower will probably remain mostly empty for years to come.

The Burj Dubai can be a metaphor for pursuing goals in life that ultimately prove empty, like the current tower itself. In the recent terrific film “Up in the Air,” George Clooney works for a firm that a company hires in order to fire its employees. Clooney travels over 250 days a year, going from city to city, company to company, following a script to fire people and “ease their transition.”

As Clooney is alone and has a soul-destroying job, he finds an outlet in another goal, reaching 10 million American Airlines miles, a feat only accomplished by seven other people. When Clooney finally reaches that goal, he receives a special platinum card and a visit from the head pilot of American. Sitting together in first class, Clooney says to the pilot something like: “I’ve been thinking about this moment for years, what I would say to you. But now my mind is empty.”

In a sense, Clooney’s character built his own empty tower, 10 million American Airlines Miles tall, but like the tower in Dubai, it is empty. When we set our goals in life of building higher, acquiring, or hoarding, these material goals may not provide us with the satisfaction that we desire. Even if each of us won the lottery, and could stack up dollars bills in a tower that reached towards the sky, we all know that money does not buy happiness.

If we want to build something, we should not strive for a 160-story skyscraper. Each of us has plenty of work to do to build and strengthen our relationships with family members and friends. If we want to build something, let’s build our communities, seeking to strengthen our town and our connections to others.

The pursuit of material goods and taller buildings is perhaps only a form of self-aggrandizement and it can never provide us with ultimate satisfaction. It is when we shift the focus away from ourselves and to others, to strengthening the bonds of family, to building community and to helping those in need, then we have the potential to build something meaningful and lasting in our lives.

Dubai Tower

Dubai tower:

Dubai tower or Burj Khalifa is the largest structure in the world. It is about 2625 feet high and has more than 160 stories. It took five years to complete the construction of this building (from September 2004 to October 2009). It was opened on 4th January 2010. It is the exquisite masterpiece of Downtown Burj Dubai. It is surrounded by various shopping centers and hotels. It stands as a marvelous example of Dubai’s role in the changing world.

Burj Khalifa was designed by Louis Skidmore, Nathaniel Owings and John Merril of Chicago. More than 110,000 tons of concrete were used to construct this building. The total cost for completing this project was about $1.5 billion. It achieved a world record for installing the highest façade made up of aluminum and glass. It has the highest outdoor observation deck, which is located on level 124 of the tower.

Dubai tower is supported by a strong concrete mat, which is supported by reinforced piles made of concrete. A high density concrete was used in the foundations and cathodic protection system was used under the mat to reduce the harmful effects from the corrosive chemicals in the ground water.

The exterior cladding of the tower is made with aluminum and textured stainless steel panels. Nearly 26,000 hand cut glass panels were used in the exterior cladding. It is specially designed to withstand the extreme hot weather in Dubai.

The mechanical floors in Burj Khalifa abode the electrical sub stations, air handling units and water tanks, which are indispensable for the operation of the tower. The telescopic spire is the most important attraction of this tower. It comprises of more than 4000 tons of steel. It was built from inside the structure. It houses communication equipment and offers an overwhelming appearance to the tower.

The structural core of Burj Khalifa was designed in Y shape to reduce the wind forces on the tower. The central core of the tower provides resistance against torsion. The corridor walls resist the wind shears. A beautiful park of greenery and water features serve as an outdoor living space and entry to the Dubai tower.

The World's Tallest Skyscaper, Burj Dubai Unveiled

The world's tallest tower 'Burj Khalifa' developed by Emaar Properties stands tall at nearly 2,718 ft; its twice the height of the Empire State Building in New York City.

The grand opening ceremony for the 11-hectare skyscaper was unveiled on January 4, 2010 in Dubai, U.A.E. to a crowd of thousands and the world in a crescendo of fireworks, lasers and fountain displays.

Fireworks cascaded from the tower and lasers blazed out from all levels leaving the crowds awestruck.

Mohamed Alabbar, Chairman of Emaar Properties, said that the tower represented a symbol of hope to the Arab world and a shining example of human achievement.

"Thousands of people from more than 100 countries have contributed to the realisation of 'Burj Khalifa'. The tower embodies the spirit and optimism of global collaboration, and shows to the world what can be achieved when communities work in partnership."

'Burj Khalifa' features luxury residences and offices, the world's first Armani Hotel, and the world's highest observation deck, 'At the Top', which is located on the tower's 124th floor. Around 90 percent of the tower's offices and apartments have been sold.

'At the Top' opens officially to the public on January 5. The handover of offices and apartments starts in February, and the Armani Hotel Dubai will be opened by its designer, Giorgio Armani, on March 18.

The amazing Burj Dubai

Since the birth of the Chicago School in the late nineteenth century, which sought not only to try to reach heaven but solve problems of space, massive structures that have emerged so far had not exceeded 700 meters. When we speak of the Burj Dubai (Khalifa) in the UAE, we will associate the word with a height of almost a thousand meters, specifically 828. It has a total floor number of 186, whose highest point is at 768 meters, and it will include more than one thousand luxury apartments and offices, a luxury hotel designed by Giorgio Armani, plus spas and restaurants.

The Burj Khalifa is only the central part of the development known as the Downtown Burj Khalifa (previously Downtown Burj Dubai, “Burj Dubai Center”in English), which along Sheikh Zayed Road, form a complex of two square kilometers,crossing the complete city in a transversal way.

The Chicano (half mexican half north-american) Adrian Smith was the chief architect, who worked with the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) until 2006. Burj Khalifa had a budget estimated at more than 4,000 million dollars, which were increased to 20,000 million for the full development of the Downtown Burj Khalifa, part of the cost financed by the family of the Emir Mohammed
bin Rashid Al Maktoum, among which his nephew Fuad bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Alvarez, just 20 years old, supported the idea by giving 25 million dollars.

Challenging the conditions of workers:

The project has been criticized by several human rights groups that say workers have been exploited since the beginning of 2004, most of them earning less than 10$ an hour and an average of 468 dirhams per month ($ 169). For the construction of the building it took more than 12,000 workers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (mostly), many of them taking advantage of
the situation by staying overnight in the same building (dormitories), perhaps not wanting to lose more than half an hour to get down to the first floor. Environmentalists for their side have not been happy with the construction of what they think will be a black hole of energy consumption and something that will significantly increase the country’s carbon footprint.

With controversy or not, the fact is that this new building of the UAE has become the symbol of the country’s recovery
and is now considered a relique for the inhabitants of Dubai, increasingly proud of what is being built in their city.

How Do They Clean The Burj Dubai?

The Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai had its official opening ceremony on Monday although it was hardly a grand unveiling as you cant hide a 828 meter tall building behind a curtain. The Burj Khalifa (also known as the Burj Dubai) is the tallest man made structure ever built and has the world’s fastest elevators which travel at 40 mph. The building is so high that those visiting the top of it’s needle like tower are treated to the kind of views you would only otherwise see on a flight to Dubai.

One thing which always fascinates me about large buildings is the amount of effort required to maintain them. Very often large structures, in particular bridges, require constant cleaning so once those doing the work get to the end they start from the beginning again. Most skyscrapers require a lot of window cleaning as they tend to have floor to ceiling windows. The window cleaners who work on the Burj Dubai have to be fearless and fast as this video shows:

The building has 24,830 windows which total 120,000 square meters of glass. The cleaners use normal soapy water according to Dale Harding of Cox Gomyl

“It’s the same as an average shop front cleaner would use — there’s nothing complex about it at all,”

The top floors of the building require a more complex system than men dangling by ropes with a sponge in their hands. An Australian firm called Cox Gomyl were tasked with working out a way to keep the views from the top clear. They went through a series of ideas before designing a series of machines which emerge from the building a run on tracks along its outer edge. The 12 machines carry up to 36 windows cleaners who do their thing in the traditional manner.

The equipment required cost around $7.3 million and each machine weighs in at 13 tonnes. As well as the 12 moving platforms there are six smaller machines which clean the exterior of floors 21 and up. You can see these in action on Cox Comyl’s info page here.

To service the facades of the 828 m high structure, 3 permanent parapet mounted BMUs were installed at each of Levels 40, 73 and 109. These track-mounted and telescoping systems are operate on a horizontal track which has been installed on Burj’s exterior façade. The machines are very flexible in their operation and are able to luff, telescopic, hoist, slew and travel. The average outreach of these machines is 10 m, retracting to 5 m for the parking configuration.