Press

With Google releasing new 3D imagery almost every week, urban sightseeing in Google Earth is getting better and better. Last month we mentioned the opening of the Burj Khalifa, so we thought it was probably time to look at more of the world's tallest buildings. Burj Khalifa, formerly known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 828 m.

Car enthusiasts flocked to this year’s Downtown Dubai Classic Car Show, held under the lengthy shadow of the Burj Khalifa, on Emaar Boulevard in the Downtown area. Motors dating back almost one hundred years – including this Model T Ford, which won People’s Choice at last year’s event – lined the street. Highlights included everything from a Ferrari Dino 1970 246GT, which clinched ‘Best of Show’ this year, to a 1956 Cadillac ambulance, the same model that was seen in the film Ghostbusters.

SEGA Republic recently celebrated the overwhelming public response since its opening in August 2009 by hosting SEGA Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mr Hajime Satomi. He was accompanied by President and Chief Operating Officer Mr Okitane Usui; Location Based Entertainment Division Senior Executive Producer Mr Yasuo Tazoe, Department General Manager Mr Yasutaka Sato and Project Leader Mr Shoji Mori.

Speirs and Major Associates, a Scots design company based in Edinburgh, is brightening the world one building at a time. Its most recent project was to create a dramatic lighting “ceremony” for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. A complex sequence of stroboscopes and lasers pierced the sky like a scene from a sci-fi film. But what brings some of the world’s biggest property companies to knock on the door of a small company with only 30 employees?

A high quality ternary blend concrete along with other durability enhancing measures were deployed in the substructure of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, to ensure its 100-year life span, said a top official of the project. Substructures in Dubai and in the Gulf region in general, are exposed to a shallow water table with high levels of salinity, which threatens the embedded steel reinforcement with corrosion.

Readers of Daily Commercial News may have noticed the recent article about an elevator failure that caused Burj Khalifa in Dubai, to be closed just a month after its grand opening. Its promoters were calling it the world’s first building in motion.

At least one Oregon exporter defied gravity in 2009, getting its products a half mile in the sky above Dubai during a year when the state's foreign sales sank. Workers at Warm Springs Composite Products mixed a patented brew of earth, fiberglass and recycled newspaper to make fire-resistant-rated door parts for the Burj Khalifa, which opened recently as the world's tallest building.

We all know that the biggest, and most expensive of just about everything has been used on the Burj Khalifa, but did you realise that the project also broke new ground in machinery terms? We look at some of the tower's PMV landmarks.

Over look the Dubai Fountain as you dine on delicious cuisine. And the best bit? You can order as much as you like! Book a table on the terrace, for fab views of the Burj Khalifa!

Burj Khalifa. The Sears Tower. The World Trade Center... If it's a colossal construction, then Skidmore, Owings & Merrill probably designed it. Jay Merrick gets the measure of global architecture's biggest beasts.