In fact, the Burj Dubai will be much higher, the developers say dozens of stories taller than skyscrapers in Taiwan, Chicago or anywhere else. But they are keeping the exact height a secret to flummox competitors in the world's furious race for the title of tallest skyscraper.
Developers refused to reveal the total number of stories, but a mock elevator at the site held a button for a 189th floor. The building's 10-foot sway in the wind means designers need to prevent whiplash in the ultra-long cables hauling up 50 elevators.
The craze for height has hit hardest in industrializing Asian countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, which boast seven of the world's 10 tallest buildings. The current tallest, at 101 floors, is the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, though Toronto's CN Tower is 180 feet higher, largely because of its huge antenna.
The Persian Gulf city of Dubai has staked its fame on engineering audacity such as its vast archipelagoes of artificial holiday islands, and the Burj, Arabic for "tower," is one of its more extreme mega-projects.
New York built skyscrapers because land was scarce; Dubai is doing it to get on the international map.
On paper, the Burj looks something like a giant space shuttle about to be launched into the clouds.
Booth took reporters to the open-air 37th floor of a neighboring building, a vertigo-inducing experience in itself, and chatted breezily while standing perilously close to the abyss.
Developers say the silvery steel-and-glass building will restore to the Middle East the honor of hosting the earth's tallest structure — a title lost in 1889 when the Eiffel Tower upset the 43-century reign of Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza.
Designers have planned for catastrophes, manmade and other, said Greg Sang, Emaar's project manager for the Burj. Sang believes the concrete-core building would withstand an airliner strike of the sort that brought down the steel-frame World Trade Center.
The tower owes its shape to American architect Adrian Smith, of the Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Smith also designed Shanghai's 1,378-foot Jin Mao tower, the world's fourth tallest.
Workers from the chief contractor, South Korea's Samsung, are already swarming over the slab, shaped in three rounded lobes like a local desert flower.
A hotel will occupy the lower 37 floors. Floors 45 through 108 will have 700 private apartments — already sold in just eight hours, the developer said.
Corporate offices and suites will fill most of the rest, except for a 123rd floor lobby and 124th floor observation deck — with an outdoor terrace for the brave. The spire will also hold communication equipment.
