Renamed 160 story building opens with a flair.
Construction began in 2004, at the height of an economic boom.
Clad in 28,000 glass panels, the tower has 160 floors and more than 500,000 sq m of space for offices and flats.
The tower also lays claim to the highest occupied floor, the tallest service lift, and the world’s highest observation deck – on the 124th floor. The world’s highest mosque and swimming pool will meanwhile be located on the 158th and 76th floors.
Um…hmm…lets hope Silverstein hasn’t taken
out an “in case of Terrorist attack” insurance policy on this building…
We all know what happened the last time such a policy was written up…
-s
150 stories?
That is only 1500 feet. This tower is over 2600 feet. What the hell is the rest of it, if it isn’t called a story?
@#1, The building contains “The world’s highest mosque…”. I think that’s a brilliant insurance policy. But they should go a step further and put in a few churches, a temple or two, Shinto shrine and any other religious meeting place that they can think of. Cover all the bases.
-they “cheat” with “spires” i think they are called…
read up on how the height race here in NYC back in the 30’s, iirc.. was played.
ie: The Chrysler building was usurped by the Empire State Building… as soon as they outthe spire on the chrysler building, the Empire crew added xxx feet to its spire to beat it etc…
I may be describing this wrong, but that is the gist of it..
-s
WOW! I wonder if you get light headed going from the planets surface to the top?
Do they have an elevator that goes the whole way?
Can you say “base jumping mecca of the universe?”
Soft target.
Wonderful what slave labour can do huh?
Cursor_
The Middle of Nowhere: Population 2,000,000
That’s a lot of Lego bricks.
Meh.
@#2,4 It is 160 stories, which doesn’t mean that they have followed some standard measure (by the looks and content, I’d bet that the mosque at least is one story of the few-standard-stories height…). And, of course there is a spire worth at least 30 stories…
This was started in 2004? How is it then that the site of the World Trade Center is still little more than a hole in the ground?
Soon to be the tallest structure a suicidal banker has ever jumped from.
Does it have a dirigible docking for easy unloading at the top floors just like the Empire State Building?
“In the Middle of Nowhere” never-the-less manages to rank above Istanbul, Boston & Rome on the “Global City Index.” You just gotta get out more often.
Maybe it’s their indoor snow ski resort.
RBG
Looks like someone figured out how to convert oil to concrete and build buildings instead of bombs. Interesting concept.
Calhoun,
It seems all we do in the US these days is talk, and posture, and prance around like fairies, and promote how great we are, and send the lowest paid and most unappreciated to do our work for us.
What is the solution?
Lets hope that GW Bush brother, Marvin, and his ‘security’ company isn’t awarded the security contract for this building. Especially if (as #1 says) Silverstein rents it out and starts buying insurance for it.
We all know very clearly what happened last time this occurred.
Nice little article about Marvin, the Bush with a name so stupid that even daddy (GHW Bush) didn’t want him in politics.
Is it going to be a radical muslin or a radical christian that flys a plane into it?
#3 – since we know that a Shinto shrine does not involve shattering sheet glass in the shit house and shouting slogans, it would be OK to have them up high like that.
Just a little note. The graphics refers to Willis Tower. I was born, raised and still live in Chicago. No one from Chicago calls that building Willis Tower. It’s still The Sears Tower and that south side ballpark is still Comiskey Park. I don’t care how much money you pay to change the name.
“Middle of no where” ?? Thats a mega-city we are talking about here which most of the world’s biggest corporations and companies drool to open up their offices there. It has a huge populations of foreigners and number of skilled and unskilled workers living there.
You cant build this impressive piece of engineering if you are in the middle of no where.
The chart is a bit wonky. 553 metres puts Canada’s the CN Tower in 3rd place, so there’s at least one other building missing.
Waiting for the Freudians.
Considering that Dubai is behind on their loans and the government is willing to back the loans I’d hate to have loaned money on this white elephant.
#3 Um, Your suggestion reflects a complete misunderstanding of what is going on in that region. There are to my knowledge no religious buildings in Dubai other than Muslim. Trying to build one would almost certainly have painful or even fatal results.
At least on paper both Christians and Jews can be tolerated as long as they pay the tax and no longer but they have to know their place which is in the shadows.
All other faiths…are to be exterminated. Sorry if that offends you but that is the way I read the Koran.
I don’t know of any populations of non Muslims in the entire peninsula. You may have a few people working there of other faiths but they aren’t allowed to practice their faiths and they are going home.
This will go down in history as one of the great mistakes of hubris, like the North Korean Ryugyong Hotel for example.
Dubai’s got all the makings of a nation for sale. They might be the first nation to go corporate, no politics just business. Hey if I were Bill Gates I’d jump at it. Make everybody move from Redmond to Dubai. Put the programmers up near the top of that huge tower, they’re high all the time anyways.
They really thought they could make the transit from being a major oil producer to high rent real estate. Using revenues form the last of their oil reserves they financed and built this false paradise. A major opportunity or the biggest mistake a nation can make.
We built this thing. Literally, in two ways.
First off, a Chicago architect built this thing. They would have been happy (and have) built skyscrapers in the United States, but buildings like this aren’t “real”. There’s no economic rational for building a 160 story building in a city with and endless expanse of land. This is the kind of thing kings and queens build (see old English castles, pyramids, etc) as toys for their own glory…even if the kingdom goes broke doing it.
Second, we paid for it. All you good-ol-boys Christians in your V8 hot rods and 8mpg pickups and our ever increasing need for super cheap oil means we have to funnel a huge chunk of our economy to the UEA an middle east in general. So enjoy kids, you bought it.
# 24 Shryke 553 metres puts Canada’s the CN Tower in 3rd place, so there’s at least one other building missing.
I believe the CN Tower is considered to be a tower or a “free-standing structure” and not a building as such.
16 gRANDPA Looks like someone figured out how to convert oil to concrete and build buildings instead of bombs.
“…revenues from oil and natural gas currently account for less than 6% of the emirate’s revenues…The emirate’s share in UAE’s gas revenues is about 2%”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai
18 Zybch “Lets hope that GW Bush brother, Marvin, and his ’security’ company isn’t awarded the security contract for this building. Especially if (as #1 says) Silverstein rents it out and starts buying insurance for it.
We all know very clearly what happened last time this occurred.”
Yeah, Bush left the security company board before 9/11 and went to HCC Insurance that insured some of the 9/11 buildings. You’d think an inside man would have seen that coming.
RBG