All About Construction

The Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest tower  in the world, with 2716.5-feet of aluminum and steel, and its 26,000 hand-cut glass panels. The Burj Khalifa blows away the next-nearest skyscraper, which is Taiwan's 1670-foot Taipei 101, and the building has even surpassed ultra-tall, ground-cable-supported radio antennas.  Architects' vertical leapfrogging, however, isn't likely to stop at the Burj Khalifa. While the tower will be a tough one to beat, it is likely to remain at the pinnacle for only about another half-dozen years. Developers around the world have proposed numerous new skyscrapers. Some projects have leapt off the drawing boards, though plans for many record-breaking towers have been scuttled because of the global economic spasms of the past couple years. (The original name of the Burj Khalifa, the Burj Dubai, was changed at the last minute to recognize United Arab Emirates president Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who as emir of Abu Dhabi gave struggling...

Within this decade we will likely witness not only the world’s first kilometer-tall building, but also the completion of a significant number of buildings over 600 meters (around 2,000 feet) – that’s twice the height of the Eiffel Tower. Two years ago, prior to the completion of the Burj Khalifa, this building type did not exist. And yet, by 2020, we can expect at least eight such buildings to exist internationally. The term “supertall” (which refers to a building over 300 meters) is thus no longer adequate to describe these buildings: we are entering the era of the “megatall.” This term is now officially being used by the Council to describe buildings over 600 meters in height, or double the height of a supertall (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Diagram of the predicted World's 20 Tallest in the year 2020 as of Dec 2011 As we started the 21st century, just 11 short years ago, the Petronas Towers held the title of “The World’s Tallest” at 452 meters (1,483 feet) in height. T...

Vanity Height: the Use-less Space in Today’s Tallest Buildings It is noticed at Jeddah Kingdom tower, that a fair amount of the top of the building seemed to be an unoccupied spire. This prompted us to investigate the increasing trend towards extreme spires and other extensions of tall buildings that do not enclose usable space, and create a new term to describe this – Vanity Height, i.e., the distance between a skyscraper’s highest occupiable floor and its architectural top, as determined by Height Criteria. Greatest Supertall Vanity Ratio With a vanity height of nearly 124 meters within its architectural height of 321 meters, the Burj Al Arab has the highest non-occupiable-to-occupiable height ratio among completed supertalls.  39% of its height is non-occupiable. Figure 2. World’s Ten Tallest Vanity Heights The ten tallest “Vanity Heights” in today’s completed supertalls as of July 2013 data. * The highest occupied floor height as datum line. ** The...