I get excited about news like this!

[Romann]

Just completely AWESOME! I have been following this new Burj skyscraper since the plans were first released to the public and throughout its construction. And now, this half a mile high, 165 floors of usable living space needle in the sky officially opened in all its glory! This is progress and simply a stunning trophy to the Dubai skyline which will spur more construction like it.

 

You have to check out this video link! THINK BIG! Minus the financial complications that have strained the country, it's still a huge step forward in upward living.

 

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/01/04/grant.dubai.tallest.building.cnn?iref=allsearch

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1239480/Burj-Dubai-Tower-opens-claim-worlds-tallest-building-title.html

 

Not sure if there was a previous thread on this and if so, my apologies.

[+ azdr0710]

I love stuff like this, too.....

 

not to rain on your parade, but it was pure ego that brought this on....irresponsible spending and speculation....Dubai will be "suffering" (as much as an oil kingdom can) for years....there'll be a "correction" and they'll have to tone down some of this extravagant spending, maybe....

 

hey Romann, how about a trip to Dubai and we'll get one of those hotel rooms up in the Burj??

[Romann]

Bad man!

 

hey Romann, how about a trip to Dubai and we'll get one of those hotel rooms up in the Burj??

 

Don't TEASE with such thoughts!

[Guest zipperzone]

What an incredible target for future terrorist attacks. Not for me thanks.

 

It is reported that current prices are $1900 US per sq. ft. (down 50% from the original pricing thanks to the world economy)

[N.N.]

"Burj Khalifa was built primarily by workers from South Asia. Press reports indicated in 2006 that skilled carpenters at the site earned UK£4.34 a day, and labourers earned UK£2.84. According to a BBC investigation and a Human Rights Watch report, the workers were housed in abysmal conditions, their pay was often withheld, their passports were confiscated by their employers, and they were working in hazardous conditions that resulted in a high number of deaths and injuries on site."

(from Wikipedia, consistent with reports from various sources)

 

Employers confiscating workers' passports is contrary to UAE law but seems to have been common.

 

In many cases, laborers were effectively held captive and paid less than $5 a day to work in extreme heat that western tourists are routinely advised not to stay outside in.

 

Do you still like the building?

[Guest greatness]

Nope

 

I don't. We, however, admire a lot of ancient architecture built in a similar way, don't we? Unfortunately, it may be...

 

"Burj Khalifa was built primarily by workers from South Asia. Press reports indicated in 2006 that skilled carpenters at the site earned UK£4.34 a day, and labourers earned UK£2.84. According to a BBC investigation and a Human Rights Watch report, the workers were housed in abysmal conditions, their pay was often withheld, their passports were confiscated by their employers, and they were working in hazardous conditions that resulted in a high number of deaths and injuries on site."

(from Wikipedia, consistent with reports from various sources)

 

Employers confiscating workers' passports is contrary to UAE law but seems to have been common.

 

In many cases, laborers were effectively held captive and paid less than $5 a day to work in extreme heat that western tourists are routinely advised not to stay outside in.

 

Do you still like the building?

[Bart]

NN as much as I abhore slave labor, I believe you can admire a structure as engineering marvel but challenge those who finance such stuctures on the backs of basically slave labor. This is an issue that goes back as far as man and society began. The pyramids were built with slave labor, many were killed to build huge temples to dead pharohs.

 

Even here as we continue to build huge structures to house sport gods, aka, Jerry Jones's new Cowboy stadium and New York has three new such facilities, yet fans flock there to ohh and ahh. In Milwaukee, three workers fell to their death to build the retractable roof over Miller Park. Opulance on display with the new MGM center in Las Vegas, 5,500 rooms and 8 buildings. The share the worker receives is tiny compared what will be spent in side.

 

Yet none of this will ever be enough. There are those that will tear down what we have built because of capitalism, many would say our country was built on slave labor. I dont believe you are going to ever get rid of this type of activity. We still go to the store to by items from China, Philipines, Mexico, Pakistan, etc all built by workers who get paid near nothing. For those who only by US, we may have minimum wage laws and laws to prevent employing illegal aliens but they are poorly enforced and we have a government that supports illegal aliens remaining. Do you think those organic fruits and vegetables you eat from the store were picked by people paid, $8.00 an hour, with a pension and health insurance, what a laugh.

 

So I guess before necessarily being critical of the Dubai building, maybe we should take of the issues we have here first. The plight of the laborer has been an issue since before our country was founded. It lead to revolts in Europe and China and Cuba and really was the world any better off. Why when given the chance people flee Cuba, because even in a Socialist country there are the haves and have nots and it is still a matter of who you know.

 

Okay thanks for the soap box.

[BSR]

"60 Minutes" did a feature on the warp-speed development and modernization of Dubai. One issue touched upon was the exploitation of construction workers brought in from other countries. Mind you, that $5 is for a 12-hour day, and they work 6 days a week. Dubai is a bit of a paradox in that it's a desert port city. So even though the land is a desert with almost no rainfall, it's also ghastly humid. Temperatures in the 120's with near saturation-point humidity are all too common in the summer. Think about those working conditions the next time you're grumbling about how much you hate your job. That said, the workers brought in from places like Bangladesh are able to make about three times more than they would in their native countries.

 

That's a far cry from the working conditions of projects like Las Vegas's new CityCenter. All public facilities (basically, anything but private residential construction) in Vegas must use union labor. Otherwise, they risk being boycotted when they try to open for business. I'm assuming the same is true of all public projects elsewhere, Dallas football stadium included, in the country. Journeymen (the lowest rung on the construction ladder) at CityCenter made about $80,000/year, and workers from all over the country flocked here when the project started. My mother's upstairs neighbor was a supervisor on the project and said it was the best job he ever had in his life. No, those workers won't share in the profits, but on the up side, the don't share in the risk either. CityCenter was built with $8.5 billion dollars of BORROWED money, and MGM Mirage Corp. owes $13.5 billion dollars of debt due sometime over the next three years. So, were the CityCenter workers exploited? Hardly.

 

Were the Burj Khalifa and other Dubai construction workers exploitated? That's kinda tough to answer. On one hand, there's no way on earth I would (or physically could) work 12-hour days, 6-day weeks in sweltering heat for five bucks a day. On the other hand, they came of their own free will and were able to provide for their families back home far better than they could otherwise. In discussions with a lot of disgruntled workers, Dubai and its contractors did make some concessions, but apparently not out of the goodness of their hearts. They were afraid that so much anger was brewing that some workers would secretly sabotage the construction. The tower is ~2,700 feet high, over twice the height of the Empire State. Not that I had any specific plans to go to Dubai anytime soon, but still, I'd wait a few years before going up that elevator.

 

Must confess, though, I do have a bit of a fantasy about going to Dubai for their tennis tournament (they get all the top players because the prize money is sick and the appearance fees probably sicker), staying in the Burj Al Arab (two grand a night! that better be one helluva mint on my pillow), and going up to the Burj Khalifa's observation deck. Unfortunately, as soon as I spice it up with Romann as part of the fantasy, I get jarring images in my head of "Midnight Express," and it's a total buzzkill.

 

Visitors to Vegas come from all over, and I've spoken with a few from Dubai. One told me six months ago that Dubai was facing a serious credit crunch and didn't have two dirhams to rub together. I couldn't believe it at the time, but what do you know. Did you know that Dubai doesn't have oil? It does get a share of the oil revenue from the other emirates, but no Jed Clampett black gold/Texas tea of its own. Also, alcohol in Dubai flows like they just lifted Prohibition. The Muslim prohibition on alcohol? It's like the Catholic prohibition on premarital sex. No, you're not allowed, but nobody sticks to it. Finally (this was the biggest shocker to me), there are wh0rehouses in Dubai that operate pretty much out in the open. You thought the foreign construction workers were mistreated? Can you imagine what it's like for the working girls in those brothels??

[N.N.]

NN as much as I abhore slave labor, I believe you can admire a structure as engineering marvel but challenge those who finance such stuctures on the backs of basically slave labor. This is an issue that goes back as far as man and society began. The pyramids were built with slave labor, many were killed to build huge temples to dead pharohs.

We don't know the details of what labor practices prevailed in building the pyramids, and Egyptologists today dispute some of the Greeks' contentions about it having been slave labor--but I take your point that slave labor in general has a long history.

 

It would be easier for me to admire the Burj if I thought it were tasteful, but the Dubai brand of glitz is not my cup of tea. The Empire State Building was built in a pissing contest (to be taller than the Chrysler Building) but there was restraint and taste in its design. Its details still look classy 70 years later.

 

 

Yet none of this will ever be enough. There are those that will tear down what we have built because of capitalism, many would say our country was built on slave labor. I dont believe you are going to ever get rid of this type of activity.

I agree that it's a knotty problem but I don't share that level of pessimism. People once doubted the USA would ever abolish slavery, complete with rationalizations like "a man takes better care of that which he owns than that which he rents".

[N.N.]

Were the Burj Khalifa and other Dubai construction workers exploitated? That's kinda tough to answer.

To the extent that they were treated worse than what they were promised, yes they were.

 

But for all I know, maybe someone here will disagree even about that. We had a thread here recently where there was dispute about whether it's dishonest for escorts to lie about their age in their advertising.

[Romann]

Slavery spurred many national monuments around the world.

 

Do you still like the building?

 

Yes, I still do like the building and now that more information about it is flooding through the gates, it still stands as an amazing achievement that speaks highly to an idea, engineering and the ultimate completed construction of the tallest building in the world. There are many famous and well known structures around the globe that were constructed and supported solely or in good part by slave labor. The Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China not to mention good parts of our nation's capitol, specifically the White House which was built largely in support of slave labor in conjunction with other famous DC monuments that we look to as forms of liberty, freedom and democracy. That said, I don't discredit the structures because of their past and at the end of the day, they're still amazing structures that represent amazing human thought and construction that defied known standards of their time and raised the bar for future construction. The Dubai tower is one of those examples and like most great pieces of work is tarnished with controversy and scandal. I would safely bet that most of the clothes and products that we all enjoy come from factories from many nations with conditions that we can't even fathom. Though we still wear and use these products every day for their utility and the statement that they make, whatever that is, if any depending on the individual. This latest and greatest needle in the sky will spur more awesome architecture that will drive human nature to build up and instead of outward which is how cities grow today and is no longer functional with such large populations.

 

I would never endorse slavery in any respect and I fully support freedom and the right to choose based on what is best for the individual and later the population as a whole. But this tower is simply amazing (IMHO) because it brings so many once thought impossible dreams together into a tangible and fully functional structure that endorses almost a complete utopia environment even with its flaws and conspiracy behind it.

 

Those are just my thoughts on it, right or wrong.

[justaguy]

It is an amazing work of archetucture. What I'm really wondering about is the sway factor. If I recall there is a bit of sway in all tall buildings. It would be interesting to know what one this tall does.

[Romann]

Answer!

 

It is an amazing work of architecture. What I'm really wondering about is the sway factor.

 

That question is very interesting and the answer is mind boggling. The building sways 5.5 feet in each direction to deal with wind shear - all safely and within strict guidelines of material structural limitations. This is expressed by the structures very sleek lines and molded segments that allow wind to literally flow around instead of head on against the tower. This "pocket" that is created by the wind flowing around the building further insulates its overall structure integrity. Even better, it's 10 degrees cooler at the top of the building compared to the base structure which speaks to just how tall this puppy is.

 

I'm a total nerd, I know...

 

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100106/981/tsc-world-s-tallest-building-in-dubai-sw.html

[justaguy]

Thanks. Now I'm trying to imagine living in a place that sways 5.5 feet in each direction. I'm thinking a dramamine cocktail for the first two weeks.

[Romann]

It's all about the toilet stall.

 

Thanks. Now I'm trying to imagine living in a place that sways 5.5 feet in each direction.

 

Visit any tower/skyscraper and stroll into the restroom to pick your favorite toilet stall and you can see the sway factor in the movement of the bowl water. It's weird because you don't personally feel the sway though there are many visual indicators all around the building inhabitants.

[NYTomcat]

considering the WTC had a 4 foot sway I can say I never felt it even at the top. I think the sway is so gradual . Maybe we have an architect on the forum to confirm?

[justaguy]

Really? I never would have imagined that it wouldn't be noticed. You're probably right about the gradual nature of the shift. Thanks.

[NYTomcat]

Really? I never would have imagined that it wouldn't be noticed. You're probably right about the gradual nature of the shift. Thanks.

 

just a guess. they only bring me in if you get sick and need to sue the builder

[Romann]

You could be onto something...!

 

just a guess. they only bring me in if you get sick and need to sue the builder

 

Perfect unfortunate response to the 5.5 foot building sway. But honestly, it's not like the building is slapping back and forth and the sway is so gradual. I hope! I couldn't imagine being in a building too long if it's taking sudden 5.5 foot jolts back and forth though I could see in some instances how it could be useful. Puts the vibrating bed to shame.

[justaguy]

Can you imagine the view looking out the window? Even if the sway is gradual, the landscape is going to alter just that little bit.

[JoeyBryant]

For those who want to take a tour ,its like a city in itself. look how small the other buildings are in comparison.

 

I'm waiting for the next Jet Li or Jackie Chan movie to be played out on the top...in the meantime I'm still focusing on touring Seattle's Space Needle for right now Dubai's not on the list yet lol

[Guest PWIT]

Some of this was debunked by when the Build it Bigger episode World's Tallest Skyscraper was being taped. No longer have my access to LexisNexis to research and find the accompanying articles that were written, but maybe some else can help?

[GoodFella69]

It's more than twice the height of the Empire State Building, correct?

Amazing!

[KMEM]

It is a little over 1/2 mile tall but not quite twice as tall as the Empire State Bldg. 1453 vs. about 2691.

 

The most amazing thing about the Empire State Bldg is it was built in just a very little over 1 year, a pace virtually unheard of today.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

[JackTwist]

Dubai's Tallest Observation Deck Closed...

 

Article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_dubai_tallest_building