Source: www.nce.co.uk
Dubai’s Burj Khalifa has been officially confirmed as the world’s tallest building by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has confirmed the Burj Khalifa’s status as the world’s tallest building at a height of 828m, following detailed examination of drawings submitted by building owner Emaar.
With the official completion of the building on January 4, the Burj Khalifa surpassed the previous “World’s Tallest”, Taipei 101 in Taiwan, by 320m − an unprecedented increase of 61%.
The Burj Khalifa has also surpassed previous record heights in the “Height to Tip” and “Highest Occupied Floor” categories and lists these heights at 829.84m and 584.50m respectively.
Record breaking
The building also contains a record breaking number of floors, at 163 − a record previously held by New York’s World Trade Center Towers at 110 floors. The Burj Khalifa’s observation deck becomes the second highest in the world at 452.10m, surpassed only by that of the Shanghai World Financial Center at 474m.
The Burj Khalifa has become the 16th building to hold the title of the world’s tallest building and stands an additional 773m higher, or 15 times taller, than the world’s first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building, completed in Chicago in 1885.
125 years on from the completion of the first skyscraper, the tall building typology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. The Burj Khalifa exemplifies four major trends in current tall building construction, with respect to location, function, structural material and height, said the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, based at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, is the arbiter of the criteria upon which tall building height is measured, and thus the title of “The World’s Tallest Building” determined.
