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)."
More than tallest building (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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.
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.
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?
Re:Great timing (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Great timing (Score:4, Interesting)
You'd be amazed how many people ride bikes in Sydney.
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.
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.
Space occupied by elevators (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:The way to go is up (Score:3, Interesting)
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 work building is 38 stories and has 2 'service' lifts for cleaners / staff to move between floor besides the regular lifts. I firmly believe they should've built 3 service lifts, most cleaners are waiting 2 to 5 minutes each time they change a floor.
Now that's only a small basic example but has these kind of finer details been thought of in the Burj Dubai? I have to wonder, how's the water pressure? Sewerage system, network cabling, security, heating, energy efficiency in this building? (etc etc etc, you get the idea)
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)
I'm curious to see the place but mroe from sideshow freak kind of angle and I'm terrified if I ever went there, I'd say or do something taboo which would land me in jail for 4 goddamn years - frankly I think their tourism industry is doomed with such dopey laws.
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:The people who built it were paid a pittance (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The way to go is up (Score:3, Interesting)
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?