World's Tallest Building To Open Monday 360
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)."
Great timing (Score:5, Insightful)
Right in time for the Dubai economy to start tanking.
Re:Great timing (Score:4, Funny)
You... want to buy a building? I can get you a great price.
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AMERICAN PATHETIC LOSER GHETTO ASS
Thats an Australian PATHETIC LOSER GHETTO ASS thanks.
Abu Dhabi is sitting on 7 TRILLION dollars of money, real cash, they made from oil trade
There is more to life than money, and you should know that. My personal measure of a good city is one I can ride my bike around in reasonable safety. From what I have read, Dubai fails on that account.
Re:Great timing (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh definitely. I ride a bike to work in Melbourne and I agree totally we have serious problems.
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I can see why those people are angry. I have been a victim of violence here myself. As for cycling in Dubai this article [liveworkexplore.com] is consistent with others I have read:
Dubai is not a very bicycle-friendly city but there are plenty of areas where you can ride, and it can be a great way to explore as well as keep fit. The pedestrian areas on both sides of the creek are pleasant places for a spin, especially in the evening, and riding through the souks can also be an experience. Clubs and groups of cyclists generally ride at the weekends, and early mornings and evenings when roads are quieter and the temperatures are cooler. If you have no choice but to ride in busy areas, exercise a lot of care and attention. Although helmets are not legally required, it is recommended that you wear one considering how crazy Dubai traffic can be. Outside the city limits the roads are flat until you near the mountains. Jebel Hafeet near Al Ain, the Hatta area of the Hajar Mountains, and the central area in the mountains near Masafi down to the coast at either Fujairah or Dibba, offer interesting paved roads with better views. The new road from Hatta through the mountains to Kalba on the east coast is probably one of the most scenic routes in the country.
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Its pretty dangerous, bot not as suicidal as it would be in Dubai.
Re:Great timing (Score:4, Interesting)
You'd be amazed how many people ride bikes in Sydney.
Re:Great timing (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Great timing (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
Re:Great timing (Score:5, Interesting)
Not quite. This building already made 10% more than what was spent. The company was hoping at max for break-even, since their whole idea was to make money from the 500 acres near it which is also owned by it.
That part might have to wait a little, but anything else now is a bonus.
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Construction hubris and economic crash seem to be close companions.
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Or it could be that every decade sees several new highest buildings erected in various places, regardless of pending economic troubles. Any correlation between ongoing construction hubris and economic crashes is likely coincidental.
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Perhaps you can spot the correlation now.
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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 [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Great timing (Score:4, Interesting)
Did significant regional economic troubles follow the construction of Taibei 101 or the Petronas Towers?
The Petronas Towers were initiated during the boom which preceded the Asian Financial Crisis [wikipedia.org].
I would consider Taipei 101 to be part of the financial boom engineered following the Dotcom crisis and 9/11.
You are correct that this is only a correlation. I am recalling it from a study I read that also included an analysis of the fortunes of those who financed and those who operated these "tallest" projects. They were not good. I wish I could recall the author/book I read it from. I apologize for my inability to do so.
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Come on think about it for a bit. They didn't build this in the last few months. Burj Dubai was started during an economic boom. I doubt anyone was predicting that it would be completed in an economic crash.
Although you are right about construction and economic downturn going hand in hand. It's a great way for government to keep people employed reducing discontent. It can potentially have some follow through stimulus effects. It can b
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More than tallest building (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More than tallest building (Score:4, Funny)
Monday - Worried a Jew or American Capitalist pig might fly a plane into it or something?
Re:More than tallest building (Score:5, Funny)
nah, it'd have to be the prince cooperating with an international cabal to plant explosives/incendiaries in the building and setting them off at the exact moment volunteers fly aircraft into it.
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That's not how we'll take it down.
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You could launch sailplanes by dropping them from an upper storey, and have enough altitude to go off looking for lift. Hmmm I wonder if they encourage or prohibit parasailing.
Re:More than tallest building (Score:4, Insightful)
Having at least a parachute while living on upper floors might be a good idea in such a building...
Chuting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Chuting (Score:4, Informative)
And remember, jump with the wind, if possible.
It isn't pleasant when you jump on the windward side and get blown into the side of the building.
Re:More than tallest building (Score:5, Informative)
> 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 [hypertextbook.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well [wikipedia.org]
Re:More than tallest building (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how having a building at a higher elevation in the Rockies is relevant. If height above sea-level is considered instead of height above local ground-level then the first homeless guy to set up a cardboard box in Denver beat the Dubai Tower by half a mile.
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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 ! ;-)
Re:More than tallest building (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.
Re:More than tallest building (Score:5, Informative)
That part isn't actually true (though not by much). The roof of Burj Dubai's highest occupied floor seems to be [skyscraperpage.com] 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.
Re:More than tallest building (Score:4, Informative)
...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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:More than tallest building (Score:5, Interesting)
You're correct about it being a half-wavelength, but that has less to do with 'range' and more to do with matching the impedance of the antenna with that of the transmitter. An antenna that is a half wavelength and fed in the center is called a dipole [wikipedia.org], and typically presents an impedance of 50-80 ohms [radio-electronics.com] to the transmitter (with most of being purely resistive, one hopes). This arrangement would allow the station to omit a matching circuit, which would be enormous and costly for 2 MW of power.
Re:More than tallest building (Score:5, Funny)
Americunts like you lack the education required to understand the difference between the words you are so ignorant of.
Education indeed.
That would be:
Americunts like you lack the education required to understand the difference between the words of which you are so ignorant.
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And this changes what? (Score:2)
Presumably, finishing the building is a good thing, but it doesn't make much of a dent in the fundamentals of the place that it is built in. Even a building this monumental is only going to get so much attention and translating that into revenue will be that much more difficult.
If their model really is "borrow and build", it definitely is a dangerous basis to start with. Hopefully, they can get their house in order, but that surprise moratorium on payments coupled with the extreme ambitiousness of the pro
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Why would this building be a target for terrorism? As far as I can tell there's never been a case where a building was targeted by terrorists because of its height.
Re:And this changes what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I've always wondered what sort of people are happy to work at the top of buildings like this.
I'm not scared of heights in the slightest, but I have to say I'd feel a bit nervous purely because of a lack in the faith of the stability of a building like this with the strong winds and earthquakes the area is prone to coupled with the fact it was built using nigh-on slave labour which isn't exactly going to give you the type of worker that particularly cares about being thorough or doing a good job. Not to mention this is quite a symbol of modern capitalism in a region known to have many people with a severe distaste of capitalism.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine it'd be easy convincing people to rent or buy the upper floors of this thing.
The way to go is up (Score:2)
Re:The way to go is up (Score:5, Insightful)
The principle of building up is right, however. Higher population density makes for better public transportation, more services available within walking distance, and nicer, more pristine outdoors spaces.
50 years ago, Dubai (and Abu Dhabi) was nothing more than a small mud brick & stone town in the desert.
Once oil was discovered, the revenues were used to fund explosive development...
BUT the emirates did a terrible job of planning.
There are highrise apartment buildings everywhere, but no parking.
They have incredible population density, but no sewage system to speak of.
Anything you see that is green must be watered constantly or it'll die.
Dubai is a rather good example of how not to build a city.
Re:The way to go is up (Score:4, Funny)
They have incredible population density, but no sewage system to speak of
Gee thats interesting. So how...
Never mind.
Re:The way to go is up (Score:5, Informative)
Every night, the stuff is pumped out of municipal septic tanks by a half-mile long convoy [arabianbusiness.com] of trucks, which then dump it [timesonline.co.uk] in nearby storm drains. It all ends up on the beach.
Re:The way to go is up (Score:5, Funny)
I told you not to tell me that...
Re:The way to go is up (Score:5, Funny)
Huh, no shit.
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Trucks carrying around sewage from septic tanks really baffle me.
I tried googling it, but haven't found a single reason why centralized sewage system was never built, are there specific regional/geographic factors, like the lack of water, or it's all due to stupidity of the local government?
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I'm well aware of the artificial life that is a Gulf city. As I said, building up Dubai is mostly an extravaganza. Yes, building skyscrapers in Dubai is a bad idea -- but that's because building anything there is inefficient -- not because of a particular problem with skyscrapers.
The principle still holds: building up is a good approach to urban planning. Yes, you need appropriate infrastructure: a skyscraper needs a lot of public transport around it (potentially a deep parking facility), as well as mass
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Just as Phoenix, Arizona is. Building cities in deserts is just not a good idea, and exploiting the environment to the absolute maximum it can take is bound to fail in the long run.
Re:The way to go is up (Score:4, Interesting)
Building cities in deserts is just not a good idea, and exploiting the environment to the absolute maximum it can take is bound to fail in the long run.
Tell that to the Israelis. Either they really DO have Yahweh on their side, or it's not as hard as you're implying. I'm gonna go with the latter.
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Would it be cynical of me to say "I KNEW IT!" - I've been pondering /theorising over the past few months when I think of Dubai of how quickly the place has boomed, everything is an incredible, ridiculous rush to try and convert their economy from oil to tourism.
Surely correct planning is being simply thrown to the wayside. I mean I have no facts at all to back me up here, however - I have to at least ask the question, how well built is the Burj Dubai?
Is it safe? Are the facilities reliable? - for example my
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The entire place really is just an insane example of how to spend cash, it's totally not self sufficient (They have an indoor ski slope, how much energy does it take? Seriously.... is it on sustainable energy?) I don't mean to throw chip here, because western culture is pretty stupid and wasteful often but I see some real tacky shit over there, it seems like 'we have money, let's do the biggest!!!!!!!!!' (exclamation marks required)
You could just as easily be describing this place. [wikipedia.org]
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Higher population density makes for better public transportation
And because the public transportation is vertical it can be totally free without offending the free marketers.
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In case you haven't noticed, The Onion only publishes fictional news as a form of satire. Nothing in it should be taken seriously.
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I though that some analysts expressed concerns about building extremely high buildings after the twin towers incident. I do not see this point mentioned in the comments yet.
Back then, I took for granted that USA would not try to hold that record again for obvious reasons.
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This is a primarily muslim country. At this exact moment in history, I don't know of an organized terrorist group that would be both capable and interested in knocking it over.
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The US hasn't held the record for highest building since 1998, and the World Trade Center was still attacked in '93 despite the Sears Tower having been taller than it for two decades. The WTC was not targeted because of it's significant height, more likely it was targeted for being the most significant landmark in America's financial center.
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> was not targeted because of it's significant height
It made more victims than in Washington because of its significant height although...
That was my point and I remember listening to similar concerns. Very high buildings are more vulnerable in almost any event.
Could you imagine a government holding its daily meetings or a military command housed at the 150th floor of a building ?
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THE WTC WAS TARGETED BECAUSE it was the ultimate icon that represented all that is wrong with the Western world, according to the muslims. Its height didn't have anything to do with that. Hadn't there been an attempt to blow the towers up before the plane attacks?
Impressive.. (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad it was built with slavery [independent.co.uk]...
Re:Impressive.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having a bunch of not-quite-slaves-because-we-said-we-would-pay-them to build the scenery and fill drinks for the people who matter is just part of the "charm".
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Actually, the GP is right. Neoliberalism [wikipedia.org], the driving force behind modern conservative economics that has swept the United States and Canada (and probably other nations), includes, among its components, tax reform, trade liberalization, privatization, and deregulation.
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Re:Impressive.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Impressive.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the point. The construction workers, maids etc. are often enslaved. This guy was a CEO, or fairly senior.
The Saudis, Emiratis, Kuwaitis etc. are almost racists, and the countries are tyrannies far worse than the West's enemies like Iran, Libya, Syria Saddam Hussain etc: Syria, Iran and Iraq allow minorities freedom of worship, and religious minorities where much better off under Saddam Hussein than they are in Iraq now.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
824m tall, not 818 or 808m. (Score:2, Informative)
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.
dirty money (Score:2, Interesting)
more real estate bubble
dubui is the british replacement for hong kong for dirty money transfers. hah, every government agency has a worthless prince at the top and the second in command, who actually runs things, is always a brit. when the drug lords disneyland resorts started going under, it tended to set off a wave of soverign defaults, of which greece is the leading example. so this building is not anything to admire, but something to condemn
The people who built it were paid a pittance (Score:2)
Don't forget that the average worker on this were paid 5-10 dollars a DAY. Pratically slavery [guardian.co.uk]
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My hopes (Score:4, Funny)
Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an impressive achievement. I'm glad they got it finished before the economy tanked. Dubai is overbuilt, and many of the sillier projects there will never be completed, but Burj Dubai is a prestige location and will probably be rented out successfully. It's partly a hotel and residential building, not just an office tower.
The Empire State Building was built during the Great Depression and wasn't fully rented for years.
Truly sad (Score:4, Insightful)
The USA once was dominant in metrics like this. Now, our leadership position, being pissed away for so many years by inept leadership and increasily divisive politics, has been compromised in many areas.
In education, we rival the 3rd world. There is actually serious discussion about teaching so-called "Intelligent-Design" as a part of our Science curriculum! Our math and science scores are near the bottom, and are actually beaten by 3rd world countries in many cases.
Our production and manufacturing idustries have been bleeding red ink for decades. Once the pinnacle of the 1st world, we now sardonically compliment our own quality. Our upper-middle and upper classes don't buy our American-made cars.
Our leadership in Science development is tanking fast. From our until-recent ban on stem cell research funding, and our generally soft support for "basic Science" research, to our cancelling funding for the SSC supercollider [wikipedia.org], we've sent the message to the scientific community - support is elsewhere!
Tallest building in the world is a pissing contest, that we led for a long time in the last century. We've not only lost it, but our vain attempt to regain it in the so-called "Freedom tower" is mired in controversy, bad design, and travesty, bungled so badly that it's the architectural equivalent of the "mission accomplished" poster of GWB notoriety.
I'm an American, and it's really, really sad to watch my nation slowly collapse in on itself.
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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 th
New Metric: Average building height per sq. mile. (Score:2)
they weren't particularly economical compared to just building two or three shorter (but still pretty tall) buildings
We need a new "tallest building" metric to account for this. Something along the lines of average-building-height per geographic-square-mile. Or better yet, to stop cheaters building a solitary building in a vacant square mile, maybe we should use total-habitable-square-feet per geographic-square-mile (taller buildings will naturally have more habitable square feet). Or maybe total-building-volume per geographic-square-mile (this avoids the trouble with variable floor heights).
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The U.S. was still unquestionably the world superpower through the 1990s at least
No set of comments on Slashdot is complete without at least one pointing out how the article reflects America's decline.
Re:Truly sad (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right, it is a pissing contest, and there's really no point in it. The US does not need to build that high. For that matter, western Europe does not have a single building in the top 100 for height. This is a huge white elephant for the UAE, and white elephants are something the US already has plenty of.
Building a building that goes to 11 is not a technological challenge. Heck, Burj Dubai was designed by a US firm. There are a dozen firms in the US and around the world that could build a building a hundreds of feet taller than the Burj Dubai if there was a need. There isn't. Pursuing a giant national phallic symbol is not what the US should be spending its resources on.
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The US should have responded to 9/11 by building a stupendous building on the WTC site. By that I mean they should build something which anybody else in the world considers utterly impossible. Five or 10 kilometres tall. The upper floors would of course belong to NORAD, with a big primary radar on the roof.
dubai faq (misconceptions) (Score:4, Interesting)
- dubai doesn't have oil
- dubai is very western-oriented
- dubai is not a country
- dubai has been largely isolated from regional tensions
got that?
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It does actually have oil, though you're correct that oil is no longer a major part of their economy, as the fields are mostly now depleted. However oil was very important to it being built up as the prosperous emirate it is now--- most of the current business was initially financed with oil money. At one point, Dubai's oil exports accounted for over 50% of GDP, though that number's now down under 10%.
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It does actually have oil
Isn't that's why "dubai doesn't have oil" comes under the heading "misconceptions"?
Does anybody else.....? (Score:2, Funny)
Holes, not poles. (Score:2)
Nowdays I'd prefer my buildings to be as *low* as possible. Having a nice *deep* underground bunker would be best.
Tall buildings, as well as other major attractions like stadiums, are a status symbol. Every time the building is mentioned you name either the company, the city, or the country in question. Tall building are a brand image. In these times companies prefer a more conservative (and some may argue greener) profile. Tall buildings in this respect are not useful. It is easier to get the same name-re
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Digging holes is WAAAAYYYYY more expensive than building stories (with "normal sized buildings").
A 10 story building costs more than a 5 story building mainly because the taller building needs a deeper fundamentum in the ground.
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A tall building can be "green", for instance you can face it with solar panels [co-operative.coop] (even in the north of England!) and you can use its height like a chimney to provide ventilation [wikipedia.org]. An underground building is going to require even more ventilation, and lots more artificial light.
A small bomb detonated in an underground building would likely cause more damage/injuries, as the explosion is confined to the building rather than blowing out through windows.
Anyway, how tall is tall? 14 stories, or 40, or 80, or more?
Space occupied by elevators (Score:2, Interesting)
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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 resident
World's Tallest Building To Open Monday (Score:5, Informative)
Another bubble pops (Score:3, Funny)
scheduled to open to the public on Monday.
And scheduled to enter receivership on Tuesday.
All solved with parachutes (Score:2)
What about security features ? Fire exits ?
Simple. They gave every man and male child a parachute in case of emergency, or just for plain fun. Airplane strikes the building, just open a window and glide away to safety. Assuming you don't have a burning airplane in your face of course.
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I'm quite sure they know, but they have no incentive to tell that the building has shrunken substantially from initial designs.
There is prestige in big numbers. It's not simply a probably of unknown dimensions.
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Two points:
1) Building heigth isn't measured from sea level.
2) The ground around the buldiing isn't flat, so picking 'the' spot to measure from is a subject for debate.
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It's nice to know an Architect and Engineer can design a building and still not know how much above sea level it is.
Which entrance is considered the "main" entrance has changed several times. As the landscaping around the building is not level, switching the main entrance from one side of the building to another, lower side of the building can add many meters to the "official" height.
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already happened http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pGp1LX8yZY [youtube.com]
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This particular building? Yes, it did. It tested in practice technologies of architecture and building engineering that existed only in theory before. It pushed the limits a good way further. The original record-keepers were TV towers, unlivable grider constructions. On top of huge ego show off, this project has financed many years of solid scientific research. New materials were developed, new construction principles invented, new methods of calculating old problems on scale not found before were found and