Dubai is a beautiful city and tourist hotspot in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It boasts a range of entertainment attractions and world-renowned buildings, none of which stand out as much as the Burj Khalifa. At 828 meters (2,716.5 feet), it is the tallest building in the world by a considerable margin.
The Burj Khalifa is almost 100 meters taller than the Shanghai Tower in China, which ranks second in the world, and is more than 200 meters taller than the second-tallest building in the Middle East: the Makkah Royal Clock Tower. Moreover, it is twice as tall as the Empire State Building and three times as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Below are five interesting facts about one of the greatest architectural feats in human history.
Six Other World Records
Not only is the Burj Khalifa the tallest building in the world, it also holds the following world records: tallest free-standing structure, highest number of stories, highest occupied floor, highest outdoor observation deck, tallest service elevator, and the elevator with the furthest travel distance.
The CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, previously held the Guinness World Record for the world’s tallest free-standing structure at 553.33 meters (1,815 feet). The building was completed in 1975 and was also the world’s tallest building until the completion of the Burj Khalifa in 2010. The Burj Khalifa has 160 stories, and its top floor is situated at 585.4 meters (1,920 feet), about 30 meters higher than its 360-degree outdoor observation deck. Here, visitors can marvel at the beauty of the Dubai skyline while dining at the SKY lounge.
The Burj Khalifa also boasts the most impressive elevator in the world. It runs all the way up to the 140th floor of the building and travels at 10 meters per second or 60 kilometers per hour. It takes only one minute to reach the 124th floor observation deck from the ground-floor level.
22 Million Man Hours
Construction of the Burj Khalifa began in 2004 and spanned six years until the building’s completion in 2010. About 330,000 cubic meters of concrete, equivalent to the weight of 100,000 elephants, was used during construction. The weight of aluminum used, meanwhile, is equal to five A380 aircraft. A total of 55,000 tons of reinforced steel bars were used in construction. If laid out side-by-side, these bars would extend one-quarter of the way around the planet.
Twenty-two million man hours were needed to complete the Burj Khalifa. At peak construction, more than 12,000 people worked on the building.
Scaled by “French Spiderman” Alain Robert
There are more than 2,900 steps in the Burj Khalifa, but visitors aren’t permitted to use the stairs. The elevator is the only way in which visitors can travel up and down between floors. However, one notable daredevil found another way to reach the top of the building.
In March 2011, Alain Robert, better known as the “French Spiderman,” scaled the outside of the Burj Khalifa in about six hours as a large crowd watched from the ground-floor level. He used a rope and safety harness, tethered past the 100th floor, to begin his climb and moved quickly along a central column of the metal facade.
Robert, who was 48 at the time, had already scaled dozens of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building, Taipei 101, and the Petronas Towers.
Light and Sound Shows
The Burj Khalifa doesn’t just stand out for its size. The building has often been lit up via choreographed laser, light, and music shows as part of New Year’s festivities. Shows took place with several different themes (Dreams, Kaleidoscope, Geometrics, Retro Futuristic, and Chinese New Year) twice per night during the first three months of 2021. In addition, the 2018 New Year’s Eve Dubai light show on the Burj Khalifa established a new Guinness World Record for the largest show of its kind on a single structure.
This remarkable light and sound show involved an LED system that featured in excess of 17 miles of LED lights, all of which were mounted to the building’s vertical stainless steel “fins.”
A Potential Challenger for the Tallest Building Distinction
The Burj Khalifa may not always be the tallest building in the world. In fact, it might soon become the second-tallest building in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah Economic Company began construction on the Jeddah Tower in 2013 with the intent of building it up to 1,000 meters in the sky. However, construction was delayed in 2018, at which point the tower was only one-quarter completed.
Construction of the Jeddah Tower, based in the downtown center of Kingdom City, is expected to require 80,000 tons of steel. The tower will also overtake the Burj Khalifa as having the world’s highest observatory and will feature 59 elevators, five of which will be double decker. The Chicago, Illinois-based firm of Adrian Smith+Gordon Gill Architecture designed the ambitious project. Smith previously helped design the Burj Khalifa as a member of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.