Jan 6, 2010

Tallest building on Earth

The latest tallest building on Earth, Burj Khalifa (formerly Burj Dubai), was inaugurated in Dubai in a glittering ceremony of fireworks, lights, and musical fountains. The building touches the milestone of 828 meters (or 2,717 feet) with 162 floors. Construction started on 21 September 2004, and has been completed on 4 January 2010. The opening ceremony can be seen here



A comparison with some of the existing tallest man-made structures (not counting projects in planning or construction) produces the diagram below. If you want to consider New Zealand's tallest structure, the Auckland Sky Tower at 328 meters, you can put it at approximately the size of the Eiffel Tower on the diagram. India's highest buliding is currently the Imperial towers in Mumbai at 60 floors and 249 meters.




Having the good fortune to have seen almost all the structures in the diagram(except for the Taipei 101 & CN tower), I look forward to seeing this one.

Here's another detailed diagram comparing world edifices reaching above 400 meters benchmark. The current completed buildings are in full representation, while the in-progress constructions are shown as line drawings.




It's probably unlikely that the Burj Khalifa will remain the highest building with so many newly emerging nations and conglomerates also eyeing that coveted title. Burj's predecessor the Taipei 101 (509 meters) only held the title for 6 years, not allowing the Shanghai World Financial Centre (492 meters) to even get a chance. Previous to that the Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur (452 meters) were the highest for 6 years, and the Willis Towers, Chicago (formerly Sears Towers) was the highest for 24 years.

However, it will be difficult to match the longevity of the building that held the title for 3880 years - the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops). Here is an interesting, though very detailed diagram of the tallest buildings of the 'old' world.



Image credits: Wikipedia.org & flickr.com

1 comment:

Bal Anand said...

TOI reports that per sq feet price of apartments on Aurangzeb/Prithviraj Roads, New Delhi is much higher that the space in the Burj - http://tiny.cc/pHuKe . Also, an NRI, B R Shetty has bought two floors including 100th for 57 crores each - http://tiny.cc/up4T8 .