Some interesting facts about Al Burj Tall Tower

• The Nakheel Tower will be more than a kilometre high
• It will have over 200 floors
• It will have approximately 150 lifts
• The design structure of four separate elements allows for structural rigidity while also allowing the wind to pass freely in the spaces between the skybridges reducing the overall wind load
• Total volume of concrete will be 500,000 cu m
• All of the reinforcing bars laid end to end could stretch from Dubai to New York (1/4 of the way around the world)
• The tower will have 20 km of barrettes – (almost 400 barrettes). Barrettes are a form of pile used to make the foundation. A single foundation barrette has the capacity to support a 50 storey building.
• The building has enough cooling capacity to air-condition over 14,000 modern homes or to service 14 luxury resort hotels each with 2,000 rooms and all the public areas and amenities
• The building is so tall that it experiences five different microclimatic conditions over its height, each with individual design features
• The temperature in the atmosphere at the top of the building can be as much as 10 degrees cooler than the bottom
• Due to the high speed shuttle lifts one may be able to see the sunset twice from the bottom and again from the top of the building
• The goal is to achieve the highest LEED certification we can for a building this size
• There will be approximately 10,000 car parking spaces in Nakheel Tower
• Nakheel Tower and podium combined will be in excess of 2 million sq m – TradeArabia News Service

Nakheel to build 1km-high tower in Dubai

Dubai developer Nakheel yesterday announced plans to build a tower that could stand 1km in height, beating the city state's own world record.

The tower forms part of a 140bn dirham (£21.7bn) scheme to build a 270ha new town, called 'New Dubai', which will take a decade to build.

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, president of Nakheel's holding company, Dubai World, said that the project would be "one of a kind".

The scheme, in the Jebel Ali area of Dubai, is designed by US architect Woods Bagot and the project team includes engineer WSP.

Nakheel said that instead of a single core, the skyscraper will have four cores, a design choice that is “inspired by Islamic patterns”.

Chris O'Donnell, chief executive of Nakheel, claimed yesterday that the global credit crisis would not affect plans for the tower. He said funds for the scheme would come from a combination of 'pre-sales of land in and around the tower, and then project funding'.

The announcement came a day before the start of the Cityscape 2008 event in Dubai, the Middle East equivalent of MIPIM.

The event expects to attract 60,000 visitors from 150 countries and will include 1,500 exhibitors.

Nakheel aims for the sky

If the sky’s the limit, Nakheel is coming pretty close. Yesterday it announced plans to build a skyscraper more than a kilometre high, hundreds of metres more than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Dubai, which is just 10 minutes down the road.

The structure, which has been on the drawing board for more than three years, is to be the centrepiece of the Nakheel Harbour and Tower development. It will be built near the Ibn Battuta Mall on Sheikh Zayed Road.

Industry insiders have said that the tower, nicknamed Tall Tower, could reach 1.4 kilometres. That would make it almost double the projected 800 metres of Burj Dubai, and five times higher than the Burj Al Arab, the emirate’s iconic sail-shaped, seven-star hotel.

Nakheel, the Dubai Government’s property developer, declined to say how much the tower would cost or the overall value of the development. Designed by the Australian architects Woods Bagot, it is to include 40 other towers, between 20 and 90 floors each, a canal system and harbour.

“It will truly be a magnificent engineering feat,” said Chris O’Donnell, the chief executive of Nakheel.

Work on the tower’s foundations is already under way and is expected to take three years.

Nakheel will finance the development by pre-selling apartments and the 270 hectares of land surrounding the project, as well as bank loans, it said.
Despite the global credit crunch and a slowdown in financing for construction projects, Mr O’Donnell said Tall Tower would proceed because it was being developed over a decade.

“What’s happening globally is just a normal economic cycle,” he said. “There might be a slowdown but there definitely won’t be a crash as the fundamentals of the Middle East market are just too strong. A building project of this type was always going to take 10 years, and we will monitor the economic climate over that period when determining funding for the project.”

Mr O’Donnell added that the global economic slowdown would result in a more sophisticated investor. “Dubai has matured rapidly and property buyers are becoming increasingly discerning,” he said. “They will choose to buy property that is by the water, close to transport hubs or within an iconic project. In these times there will also be a flight to quality.”

Dubai’s property sector already has a number of world records to its name. The Burj Dubai, which is just under a year away from completion, set the record as the world’s tallest free-standing structure on Sept 12 last year when it surpassed the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada. Seven months later, it took over the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota to become the tallest man-made structure on earth, while only three weeks ago it was announced that the Burj’s height was more than 688 metres, making it the tallest man-made structure ever built. The Burj will also feature the world’s fastest lift, rising and descending at 18 metres a second. Some 56 lifts will carry roughly 40 people at a time.

Palm Deira, which is also being developed by Nakheel, is destined to be the largest man-made island in the world, five times bigger than The Palm Jebel Ali and more than seven times bigger than the almost-finished Palm Jumeirah. Nakheel has said it will be half the size of Paris when completed.

Standing at the foot of the Burj Dubai in the emirate’s new downtown district is the Dubai Mall, which will surpass all its rivals to become the largest mall – and set a number of other records – when it opens on Oct 30. Providing 1.12 million square metres of floor space, the building will feature 10 to 15 smaller malls with 1,200 shops. The mall will also have the world’s largest aquarium and largest gold souk, with more than 200 retailers, a 79,000sq/m fashion island with 70 outlets dedicated to high-end clothing, a Les Galeries Lafayette department store – the first outside Europe – and an Olympic-sized ice skating rink.

But Nakheel could be outshone this week at Cityscape if Meraas Investment Company, the private equity firm of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, announces the Dubai City Tower. That structure is rumoured to be 2.41km high, to be built in an area called “Vertical City”.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, kilometre-high towers are planned in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait’s City of Silk development.

Dubai aims to top its own world's tallest tower

With record-breaking tower nearly complete, booming Dubai shoots even higher -- a lot higher

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- With its world's tallest building nearing completion, Dubai said Sunday it is embarking on an even more ambitious skyscraper: one that will soar the length of more than 10 American football fields.

That's about two-thirds of a mile or the height of more than three of New York's Chrysler Buildings stacked end-to-end.

Babel had nothing on this place.

"This is unbelievably groundbreaking design," Chief Executive Chris O'Donnell said during a briefing at the company's sales center, not far from the proposed site. "This still takes my breath away."

The tower, which will take more than a decade to complete, will be the centerpiece of a sprawling development state-owned builder Nakheel plans to create in the rapidly growing "New Dubai" section of the city. Foundation work has already begun, O'Donnell said.

The area is located between two of the city's artificial palm-shaped islands, which Nakheel also built. The project will include a manmade inland harbor and 40 additional towers up to 90 floors high.

About 150 elevators will carry residents and workers to the Nakheel Tower's more than 200 floors, the company said. The building will be composed of four separate towers joined at various levels and centered on an open atrium.

"It does show a lot of confidence in this environment" of worldwide credit problems and a souring global economy, said Marios Maratheftis, Standard Chartered Bank's Dubai-based regional head of research.

As part of government-run conglomerate Dubai World, Nakheel has played a major role in creating modern-day Dubai, a city that has blossomed from a tiny Persian Gulf fishing and pearling village into a major business and tourism hub in a matter of decades.

Besides the growing archipelago of man-made islands for which it is best known, Nakheel is responsible for a number of the city's malls, hotels and hundreds of apartment buildings.

The company said the new project is inspired by Islamic design and draws inspiration from sites such as the Alhambra in Spain and the harbor of Alexandria in Egypt.

"There is nothing like it in Dubai," said Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Nakheel's chairman.

Perhaps not quite. But Dubai is already home to the world's tallest building, even if it remains unfinished.

That skyscraper, the Burj Dubai, or Dubai Tower in Arabic, is being built by Nakheel's chief competitor, Emaar Properties.

Emaar has kept the final height of the silvery steel-and-glass tower a closely guarded secret, saying only that it stood at a "new record height" of 2,257 feet at the start of last month. It's due to be finished next September.

The final height of Nakheel's proposed tower is likewise a secret, as is the price tag. The company would only say it will be more than a kilometer (3,281 feet) tall.

O'Donnell said he was confident that Nakheel could pay for the project despite the financial troubles roiling the world's economy.

He also brushed aside concerns by some analysts that Dubai's property market is becoming overheated and due for a potentially sharp correction.

"In Dubai, demand outstrips supply," he said. "There might be a slowdown, but there definitely won't be a crash."

Nakheel announces kilometre high skyscraper

The structure will be the centre-piece of an inner-city harbour set to become the emirate's new, unofficial capital


After more than three years on the drawing board, Nakheel has announced that it is to build a skyscraper that will be more than one kilometre high, the tallest in the world — but only minutes down the road from the current tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai.

The tower will be the centrepiece of the Nakheel Harbour and Tower development, which is planned close to Ibn Battuta shopping mall on the Sheikh Zayed Road.

Industry insiders have said that the tower could reach as high as 1.4 kilometres when finished, making it almost double the height of Emaar Properties’ Burj Dubai, which is expected to reach over 800 metres when completed towards the end of next year.

Nakheel declined to disclose the cost of the tower, which has been designed by Australian architects Woods Bagot, or the overall value of the development, which will include 40 other towers of between 20 and 90 floors, along with a canal system and harbour.

“It will truly be a magnificent engineering feat,” said Chris O’Donnell, the chief executive of Nakheel.

Foundation work on the tower is already under way and is expected to take three years to complete.

Nakheel will finance the development through a combination of pre-sales of apartments, the sale of 270 hectares of land surrounding the project and bank loans.

Despite the global credit crunch and a slowdown in financing for construction projects, Mr O’Donnell said he was confident that the project would be built successfully, owing to the fact it would be developed over 10 years. “What’s happening globally is just a normal economic cycle,” he said.

“There might be a slowdown but there definitely won’t be a crash as the fundamentals of the Middle East market are just too strong. A building project of this type was always going to take 10 years, and we will monitor the economic climate over that period when determining funding for the project.”

Mr O’Donnell added that the current global economic slowdown would result in a more discerning investor.

“Dubai has matured rapidly and property buyers are becoming increasingly discerning. They will choose to buy property that is by the water, close to transport hubs or within an iconic project,” he said

“In these times there will also be a flight to quality.”

But Nakheel could be outshone in the next few days at this week’s Cityscape if Meraas, the private equity firm of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, announces its tall tower. An advertisement on the Cityscape website yesterday showed a teaser image of the Atrium City Tower, a design by Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill that would rise higher than any tower ever built.

Other tall towers planned for the Middle East include a kilometre-high tower in Saudi Arabia, along with another kilometre-high tower in Kuwait’s City of Silk development.