The Burj Dubai tower. Oops, it's now been renamed as Burj Khalifa, after the president of Abu Dhabi.
The 160-story, 2,717-foot tall Burj Dubai (now renamed as Burj Khalifa) opened Jan. 4. Designed by Adrian Smith, formerly of the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it's as tall as the World Trade Center towers stacked on top of each other. It is about 1,000 feet taller than the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which had been the tallest skyscraper until now. Skidmore's Willis Tower in Chicago (formerly the world's-tallest Sears Tower) has dropped to 5th-tallest. Seven of the world's 10 tallest towers are in Asia. Featured in the Dubai cloudscraper: the world's highest mosque, on the 158th floor.
A light show at Burj Khalifa on opening night. / KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images
While the skyscraper's 1,000 or so condos are mostly sold, it is believed that those sales, which closed a few years ago, are mostly to speculators. While developers in Dubai are not revealing exact figures, it is widely believed that much of the skyscraper remains unleased.
Here's a fascinating essay from the Los Angeles Times by Christopher Hawthorne about the building. Hawthorne talks also about overbuilt cities in the global recession. In Detroit, for example, a company has announced plans to buy 5,000 acres within the city limits to convert to farmland.
Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin gushes about the pre-opening light show at the tower last night, which to us seems like a giant case of light pollution.
Kamin, who is on the ground in the Mideast, has written what appears to be the first full-length review of the new tower by an American critic. Kamin's rave for the work of his fellow Chicagoan calls the world's tallest buidling "exquisitely sculpted, elegantly detailed and unapologetically exultant."
The Wall Street Journal reports on Dubai's real-estate collapse, its economic problems and how it hopes this building, and related nearby development, will reignite business activity in the emirate.
