Tall Building: Burj Dubai... in Dubai (Revisited)

I'll start with the obvious.  A month ago, the developer, Emaar, announced that the Burj Dubai had hit 2,087 ft (636 meters), which shoots it farther up than KVLY-TV mast (a TV broadcast pole, literally, in North Dakota) and makes it the tallest man-made structure in the world.  The funny thing is that this building keeps stretching upwards, and last month the developers announced that the final height of the completed building will only be unveiled when construction finishes in September, 2008.  The original numbers indicated that, with the antenna, the height would reach 2,684 ft (818 meters).  That's one Tall Building.  That's two Empire State Buildings stacked on top of one another. 

Holy.  Moly.

I find the architecture sassy, because it would have been easy to just throw up a simple block-of-a tower, but this design, by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, is inspired by a flower indigenous to the area: the Hymenocallus.

No joke.  I don't quite see the similarity, but I've been known to be an idiot.

This building already stands 160 stories tall.  In it, you'll eventually find a whole lot of sass, including 4 luxurious pools, a cigar club, 15,000 square feet (1,400 square meters) dedicated to fitness, an observation platform on the 124th floor, restaurants, library, corporate suite offices, one of the first Armani Hotels (430,000 square feet/40,000 square meters) and some Armani Residences (144 luxury suites).  Both Hotel and Residences will furnished with Armani Casa, Armani's own home furnishing line.  Honestly, the details are still sparse.  Give me a list of restaurants!  Give me a size on that library!  I'm sure we can expect a bucket more in September when the building's frame is done.

Oh, and at the tower's base, you'll find the largest mall in the world and 30,000 homes. 

The building is being billed as "green," but they aren't releasing how they will incorporate renewable energy into the building.  The only environmental consideration I see is that they will collect moisture from condensation (cool building, warm outside) to water the building's landscape plantings.  This will amount to 15 million gallons of H2O annually.  I mean.... that's interesting, but that's it?  It's going to take a lot more to make this behemoth "green."

The Burj Dubai is being constructed in downtown Dubai, where the developer is pumping in $20 billion.  (From your pocket, through Exxon, to Dubai.)  The Burj Dubai, alone, is over $4 billion.  It's going to be interesting to see what the final building will look like and what its guts will be.

Oh, this is what construction looks like now.

That building is huge.  It's the ultimate Tall Building.  Look for the third post on this ultimate tower when details are announced in September.

It's HAWT action [hot ak-shuhn].