I have always been and always be a fan of tall buildings. My visit includes almost all the top skyscrapers in the U.S. (obviously, including Sears Towers, Empire State and Aon center). But I never really got the chance to visit any of the upcoming so-called super-tall skyscrapers in Asia. No one really knows what exactly is going on, but almost everyday there are hundreds of new tall buildings coming up there. It is like a movement.

One such place is Dubai, which is the commercial capital of middle east (atleast by now). It is now ‘officially’ the home of the world’s tallest skyscraper. Sorry…make that the world’s tallest super-tall skyscraper (considering a lot of buildings have the title ‘skyscraper’). So what does it take to qualify as super-tall? Well, there is no maths for this…it is kind of a ‘thumb-rule’…A building with atleast 300m (~1000ft.) in height can have the title. And 300m is tall, very very tall. So what about the tallest building in Dubai then? At an insanely 818m (holy mother earth!), it is by far the tallest structure ever made by man. Number of floors? A mind boggling 164 !!! In a comparative scale, Sears Tower (which use to have the most number of floors) has only 108. So that’s Sears Tower x 1.5 ! The building is named Burj Dubai.

 http://www.wikipedia.org

On July 21, 2007, Burj Dubai officially surpassed the previous record holder (for the tallest building), Taipei 101.

On September 12, 2007, Burj Dubai became the world’s tallest free-standing structure, surpassing the CN Tower in Canada.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

The building costs $4.1 billion USD and is estimated to be completed by early 2009. It seems that the so-called Downtown Burj Dubai is going to cost $20 billion (phew!). Burj Dubai will also feature the world’s fastest elevators operating at 18 meters/sec (40 mph). And these are just a few of the world records it has achieved. There seems to be a lot more!