The striking building named Burj Khalifa, located in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), has a total height of 828 m, what means twice than the Empire State Building, and it can be seen from 95 km away. 

 

It’s important to mention that the Burj Khalifa doesn’t only have the first position regarding height, but also has the record for: The building with more floors (up to 162!), the building with the highest bay window, the building with the elevator that goes the longest distance in the world and the world’s highest situated swimming pool.

 

Its construction started on September 2004, but it wasn’t inaugurated until January 2010. It had a total budget of 4,000 million dollars yet it ended up needing 20,000 million to finish its construction, which also makes it one of the world’s most expensive buildings. In such construction, more than 12,000 people from 30 different countries participated. For those who wonder whether the Burj Khalifa has a special meaning, it does, since the structure of the main floor comes from the Hymenocallis flower, which can be found both in the United Arab Emirates and India. 

 

Until floor 156, or height 585 m, the structure is made out of concrete. From that point on, it’s made up of steel so it lighter. As the height increases, the building keeps getting thinner until reaching the communication tower, which is the building’s tallest point and that is made of 4,000 tons of steel. The entire building has a total of 45,000 m2 of concrete and weights more than 110,000 tons, and from these, 39,000 tons are due to the heavy steel bars. Surprisingly, if we settled all of these bars in a line, we could cover a quarter of the Earth’s perimeter. Regarding the amount of aluminum used, it’s similar to the amount required to assembly five A380 airplanes. In addition, it also has 57 elevators and the building itself needs more than 946,000 liters of water every day, which is one third of the water that needs an Olympic swimming pool. 

 

The exterior façade is made up of panel glass with some unique characteristics: It is hermetic and repels most of the sun’s heat, which ensures that the building doesn’t reach high temperatures… There are approximately 26,000 panels, meaning that we could cover up to 17 soccer stadiums with these glass panels. 

 

Regarding floor distribution, there are offices in 49 of the 162 floors and in 61 of the floors we can find up to 700 different private luxury apartments. On the remaining floors we can find the bay windows, the gym, the smoking room… 

 

Furthermore, inside this building we can also enjoy the Armani hotel, which is occupying from 1st floor to 39th. Astonishingly, only 20% of the inhabitants of the Burj Khalifa are from the Emirates, the other 80% are foreigners and most of them are businessmen.  

 

The Burj Khalifa is only one of the multiple projects that want to make Dubai a point of attraction and luxury at a world scale. Its shopping mall and the biggest fountain in the world are also part of this project. Although the Burj Khalifa is nowadays the world’s highest building, there are other projects under construction than could in the future reach the 1,000 m of altitude, like the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia or the Azerbaijan Tower in Azerbaiyan.

 

More information:

wikipedia.org/list-of-tallest-buildings

skyscrapercenter.com/buildings