A New World Record Opens

Monday, January 4, 2010 marks the opening of the Burj Dubai, the new record holder of the world’s tallest building at a reported 2,600 feet – over ½ of a mile tall. The Burj Dubai tower contains 57 elevators that travel at speeds of up to 40 MPH, 1,044 apartments, 49 floors of office space and a hotel, can be seen from as far as 59 miles away and is estimated to have cost $4 billion dollars.

The former record holder, the Taipei 101 tower, pales in comparison to the Burj Dubai – standing at a mere 1,671 feet. However, the Burj Dubai as a man-made structure only beats the former world’s largest existing man-made structure, the KVLY-TV mast in Blanchard, North Dakota, by only around 600 feet.

One has to look at this accomplishment with sheer amazement. The history of tallest buildings and structures goes all the way back to 2600 BC and the building of the Cheops Pyramid in Egypt at a dwarf 481 feet, and the ranks of those beating it including cathedrals in Europe, the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building was the world’s tallest for over forty years until the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Since then, it seems every few years, a new world’s tallest emerges.

My amazement in the unbelievable height of the Burj Dubai is not in the accomplishment, but in the purpose of such an accomplishment. With Dubai nearly going bankrupt late last year and its property values dropping over 50% it seems a bit extravagant at a $4 billion price tag. Then there’s the location of it in the Middle East with terrorist concerns being on our minds in today’s world. If the bringing down of the WTC Twin Towers in NYC was horrific, imagine the bringing down of the Burj Dubai. And there’s that law of gravity thing: what goes up must come down.

I remember the story of the Tower of Babel in my Sunday School classes as a kid. Though the purpose of building the Burj Dubai is not the same as the purpose of building Babel in Old Testament times, the Burj Dubai has that “spiral” similarity to it like the artist depictions of Babel in my old Sunday School books.

So tomorrow, we will have a new tallest building in the world open for business. One has to wonder how long it will take architects, designers and builders to put up a taller one.