http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=5023433


after a few rumours and hints dubai has finally approved the world's second tallest tower called park square tower

it will have 150 floors, the height still is a secret but will be around 700m

the tower is only for hotel-use, but as it is so big, it will house about 6 to 7 hotels

construction is expected to start this year, the site for the new park square project, which consists of 30 commercial towers and 10 residential towers as well as 2 hotel towers, is ready to start with construction

completion date is scheduled to be 2010
tower is worth around $1.5bn
size is 2.1m sqm


sorry, no render has been published, but the architect is ARTEC

ARTEC are not architects. They are a consultant company.
http://www.artec-usa.com/

That thread is bullshit.

Why do people from dubai belive such shit, the guy didn't even give a source for his info.

The tallest building in the Park Square project is Park Lane Tower which will only be around 250m

I was at the press conference, Bonyan are behind the project, 150 floors at least, render in a few weeks, and the height is posted in UAE section. [being at the PC i am not allowed to tell anyone]...or 'they' will come after me! :runaway:

Chuck a few hundred million quid over there and BOOM ... instant skyline!!


http://tinypic.com/ebeqvt.jpg

An interesting article in the Guardian about Dubai- You gotta admire they 'go out ther & build attitude'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1652149,00.html

Yes this project has been in the pipeline for quite some time.
Rod Stewart reportedly bought the "United Kingdom" and "Australia" has been turned into the most luxurious of islands, being bought by several business men.
Really is an amazing project, same as their "Palms' project too.

An ex-pat living in dubai that was in my cab told me that they are having subsidence problems with the palms? I don't know how true this is.

probably wouldnt surprise me, looks at the amount of reclaimation and the speed they are doing it, I do worry about the quality of the work sometimes, yes it all looks stunning but if an earthquake hits what then? Do Palms and the World sink back into the seas, do their towers still stand? God forbid that ever happens to them

Did you know 16% of the worlds active cranes are in Dubai!

There's no way that can be true. There are about 2000 cranes in Dubai. In my own city of 150,000 people there are at least 50 so that means about 1% of the world's cranes are in a town of this size, and in Ireland the anti-highrise haven :hahaha:.

There's no way that can be true :D

"Al Burj"

A rival to Burj Dubai. Height is rumoured to be over 1000m...... the world's first kilometre-high super-scraper.



http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c39/KaiTak/AlBurjDay.jpg


http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c39/KaiTak/AlBurjNight.jpg

This isn't new. Has been around for almost a year.
That render's a really tall version and it has over 205 floors there. Add the spire and you can figure out the height for yourself.

BTW Burj Dubai >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Al Burj

Scroll ----->


http://img213.exs.cx/img213/585/1822005a7ia.jpg

^ Insane :eek:

OMG, Dubai is ACTUALLY gonna fall into the sea!

The joke is that most of these projects will theses built!
Imagine if the 'Palm Deira' project was built, say, in the Thames gateway in London - it's pretty hard to picture isn't it? Although i think Dubai is fast becoming the experimental city for projects like this, i think these developments should be kept in Dubai...and allowed nowhere near the UK!

http://tinypic.com/ebeqvt.jpg

Amazing - all that development and only three people on the beach!

Crazy. I have to admit, I hate the skyline and the projects less and less...

Amazing - all that development and only three people on the beach!

OMG.

That is just amazing.

Amazing - all that development and only three people on the beach!

Wow, impressive! Because the pic shows 3 people does that mean that the beach never has more than 3 people? :|

http://www.gotodubai.net/pictures/dubai/zoom/dubai_beach-1.jpg

Dubai's hotel occupancy is one of the highest in the world btw, something around 90% so I don't know what everyone's talking about.


That skyscraper project by the beach is damn ugly though. Even worse is that it ruins the rest of that area where some really nice-looking towers are being built.

I worry about Dubai - it's all well and good to build a city at this speed but eventually the economic bubble will burst, as in SE Asia a few years back.
I've also heard that although it looks impressive the place has boomed so fast it hasn't got much soul about it.

Dubai's hotel occupancy is one of the highest in the world btw, something around 90% so I don't know what everyone's talking about.


But what will happen when all these insane projects are completed?

Burj Dubai, 2/2/06

http://i1.tinypic.com/n2g3zq.jpg


Pic by Dubai-Lover.

Jesus, thats a small footprint for such a tall building...

I worry about Dubai - it's all well and good to build a city at this speed but eventually the economic bubble will burst, as in SE Asia a few years back.
I've also heard that although it looks impressive the place has boomed so fast it hasn't got much soul about it.


on the contrary, dubai has plenty of soul but the new developments tend to destroy the soul it has long had.

the location where this whole skyscraper beach project (dubai marina) is used to be one of my favourite areas in dubai. it was away from the city, dark (you could see the stars), peaceful, serene and had some amazing hotels - the royal mirage, which was so beautiful and peaceful. as amazing as the marina is, it has completely destroyed the serenity that once was characteristic of dubai's outskirts. now its set to become a busy bustling place.

But what will happen when all these insane projects are completed?

They'll just start building more.

i will judge dubai in 5 years if these development was a good idea or it was too much!..
its too fast to tell if its going in correct direction.. i will just wait

Monday February 13, 2006. The Guardian

The fastest-growing city on earth, Dubai is spending mind-boggling sums on construction and is about to swallow up P&O in its bid to be a global maritime power. Given the scale of its ambition, could it become the most important place on the planet? Adam Nicolson reports from 'Mushroom City'

It looks like a hot Grozny. On the vast invented islands offshore and in the even vaster building sites that stretch in a wide band the whole length of Dubai's now famous riviera, acre on acre of grey-faced, concrete, hollow-eyed buildings, fenced in with scaffolding and overhung by tower cranes, stare at each other across the sands. Tower blocks look abandoned rather than half-made. It is said that a fifth of the world's cranes are now at work here. An army of some 250,000 men, largely from India and Pakistan, are labouring to create the new glimmer fantasy, earning on average £150 a month, and living in camps, four to a room, 12ft by 12ft, hidden away in the industrial quarters of al Quoz. One night in one of the luxury hotels would cost six months' wages of one of the men who built it. Below and around their work sites, the new streets are chaotic with rubble and piles of steel.

The traffic is already as bad as Los Angeles. The city authorities are now giving priority to new roads, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on bridges across the Dubai Creek, five lanes in each direction, but still a taxi ride that might take 10 minutes at midday lasts an hour at either end of it. If you ask a driver to take you to some places, he laughs. "Do you want to have a very long talk?" he says.

Dubai is growing faster than any city on earth. "Mushroom City", Ravi Piyush, a plumply content dealer in the Gold Souk, said to me. "Nothing today, everything tomorrow." The World Bank reckons that the reconstruction of Iraq is going to cost $53bn. Here, along the strip of footballer-friendly sand that stretches 25 miles or so along the shores of the Persian Gulf, there is, at a rough estimate, about $100bn worth of projects either underway or planned for the near future. That is a numbing figure, ungraspable. It is the equivalent of every single dollar invested in the United States from abroad last year; almost twice the foreign investment in China.

There are the three famous offshore "palms", man-made peninsulas laden with more hotels and more "signature villas" than the entire Premiership might ever dream of. The 7,000-man workforce on one of them is too large to get on to the palm each morning without creating its own traffic jam: they are shipped in by sea from further along the coast. There's to be a Giorgio Armani Hotel and a Palazzo Versace. There's the tallest building in the world under construction, Burj Dubai, costing $800m and expected to be 800m tall when complete, but the precise figure is being kept secret in case New York's new Freedom Tower tries to top it. A billboard the size of Piccadilly Circus stands out in the desert showing the pencil-thin rocket of a tower alongside a simple rubric: "History Rising." The biggest shopping mall in the world is already here. Another, bigger, the world's largest retail development, is under construction.

There's to be an underwater hotel ($500m). One indoor ski resort, with real snow and its own black run, exists already, a weird, looming presence on the city's southern skyline. There is to be a second, with a revolving mountain. Plans are mooted for a Chess City, with 32 tower blocks of 64 floors, each in the form of a chess piece. There's to be a 60-floor apartment block in the shape of Big Ben. One company selling flats is giving away a free Jag with each one. There will be a pyramid and a building called Atlantis that will cost $600m and include a "swim-with-the-dolphins encounter programme". An Aviation City and a Cargo Village, an Aid City and a Humanitarian Free Zone, an Exhibition City and a Festival City, a Healthcare City and a Flower City, a $4bn extension to the airport and another entirely new airport along the coast towards Abu Dhabi, for which no figures are available but you can take a guess at a few billion: six runways, annual capacity 120 million passengers, 12 million tonnes of cargo.

Next to it, as the Dubai government's Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing puts it, "There will be several smaller cities that will cater to the financial, industrial, service and tourism industries." To fill these airports, Emirates, the national airline, has just placed the biggest order that Boeing has ever had: $9.7bn for 42 777s, each capable of carrying 300 passengers non-stop more than 9,000 miles across the world. They have also ordered a fleet of the biggest Airbuses on offer, each capable of carrying 555 people.

The Middle East's answer to Disneyland, called Dubailand, which is far larger than Monaco, is costing $4.5bn. It will employ 300,000 people in the various joylands, servicing 15 million visitors. A new urban railway, with 37 stops, begins construction soon. Dubai is to have its own Silicon Oasis ($1.7bn) for computer companies. A mixed development called Dubai Waterfront/Arabian Canal covers an area larger than Barbados and will house, when completed ($6bn), more people than Paris.

There's another side to Dubai. Drive south along the Gulf, away from the glamour zone of the great hotels, past the giant malls and the huge gas-fired power stations, almost to the western border of Dubai, and you come to the largest man-made harbour in the world. The unapproachably vast quays of the modern port at Jebel Ali were dredged out of the desert sands in 1979 at a place where the present emir's father, Sheikh Rashid, used to come for evenings camping with his friends. Abdulla bin Damithan, one of the port managers, showed me around in his red Audi. (This was a replacement; the BMW was in for service.) The 1.5 mile-long quays are so enormous that to look the length of them is to stare into a desert haze. Halfway along, the metal bodies of the ships and cranes disappear like mirages.

But it is no dreamy place: every minute, every towering gantry crane lifts another container off the high-stacked decks of the bulbous ships alongside, lowers it to a waiting truck that delivers it to another part of the site, or transfers it from the unimaginably huge motherships, which travel the world oceans, to the slightly less huge feeder ships that service the Gulf, the Indian trade and the Mediterranean. Nothing interrupts the movements, day and night, 365 days a year, even in July at 90% humidity, an air temperature usually over 49C and when even the seawater in the docks approaches 38C. No one works outside. More than seven million containers are moved here in the course of the year, a figure that grew 23% last year, and is set to triple within the next six years, serving a market of two billion people. It's like looking at the guts of the world, the usually hidden machinery by which things actually happen. Over on the other side of the harbour, two diminutive destroyers are tied up, the stars and stripes hanging off their sterns. This is where the American carrier battle groups patrolling the Gulf come for service - and shopping. It's the port most visited by the US navy outside the United States.

Like almost everything of any significance in Dubai, the port system belongs to the state, or to the Maktoums, the ruling family. The two are indistinguishable, and in some ways, Dubai is like Poundbury writ large - and rich: a princely vision of how the world might be. The Maktoums came here as Bedouin chieftains in the 1820s, to a small, palm-fringed trading creek, where political control was in the hands of the British. Only in 1971 did Dubai gain independence as part of the United Arab Emirates. It was already known that Abu Dhabi, by far the biggest and richest of the Emirates, was sitting on a vast mineral reserve. At current rates of production, Abu Dhabi has more than 120 years' supply of oil and gas still untapped. Dubai is nothing like so well endowed, and so from the 1960s onwards, the Maktoums have been consciously shaping Dubai as the trading and financial motor of the Emirates, and the Dubai ports system is central to their vision.

Dubai sits on the all-important strategic routeway of the modern world: China, India, Middle East, Europe and the US. That is where the money is going to be. China has just become the third biggest economy in the world and it is the fastest growing. India is set for its own acceleration. The Maktoum plan is to make Dubai the centre of a global strategic network of port facilities to rival Singapore and the huge Hong Kong-based conglomerate of Hutchison-Whampoa. They have been acquiring hard and fast and now control massive facilities in China, Hong Kong, Australia, South Korea, India, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Romania, Germany and Latin America. In a profoundly symbolic move, Dubai Ports are now manoeuvring to make a bid for the great harbours in southern Iraq.

They want more, and that desire for global control is what lies behind their bidding war for P&O, the British ports and shipping combine, which has a powerful European presence (including the giant London Gateway, planned to be Britain's biggest container port at Thurrock on the Thames), exactly what Dubai wants. Singapore wanted it too and the two commercial city states' rival bids drove up the price, adding 80% to the value of P&O's shares and valuing the company at a reported $6.8bn (just short of £4bn), an unprecedented 40 times P&O's profits last year. At the weekend, Singapore pulled out and all the signs are that when P&O's shareholders vote today, they will accept Dubai's offer. This bid alone is a measure of the hunger, the money and the drive of what is happening in the emirate. And the Arab world has backed the bid. When Dubai Ports issued a bond for $2.8bn last month to help it buy P&O, it found itself drowning in $11.4bn of subscriptions.

Why is Dubai doing this? And why so fast? What can the hunger be traced to? I spent a morning on The World, one of the big prestige projects, consisting of 300 artificial islands made of sand dredged from the sea floor and either dumped or pumped into forms that vaguely mimic the shape of the world's continents. Every week between five and 10m cubic metres of sand are delivered to the site. The islands will cost up to $30m each, and that is for the sand alone. Making the lumps habitable for the world's island-hungry rich will cost half as much again.

I was somewhere in Greenland with Hamza Mustafa, the man who is running it for Nakheel, the state-owned developer. It was another invented moment: we were there for a photo. Vijay Singh, the Fijian golfer, was going to fire some shots from Greenland over a narrow channel to Iceland, still nothing but sand, on which one of Nakheel's PR men had put a golf flag. There were helicopters, artificial grass, English marketing girls, Singh's personal trainer in shorts, his agent in shades, two photographers, their assistants, cooks, waiters and barmen, boatmen, people from a Nakheel golf development and Singh's personal course designer, who told me in detail how sewage makes courses greener. It's a perfect symbiosis: houses need golf courses and golf courses need the sewage the houses produce. How happy is that? "As long as it's got the nutrients, grass loves sand," he said.

While Singh stood beneath the chopper firing his shots, I talked to Mustafa, in the sleek Arab-modernist villa he's had built on Greenland. He has already sold 30% of the $3bn project, mostly to "local money, from the region", the rest, he says, to British and Americans. Australasia has been sold to a developer from Kuwait. Why are they buying? "No tax, good weather, an easy life, a comfortable life, affordable. I don't have to push the sales. I've got 10 islands left of the ones I want to sell at the moment. They are clamouring for them. And then I'll stop for a while. We don't want a glut." He smiled, complicit, knowing as well as I did what sales talk amounts to. "By 2015, there will be 250,000 people living here. It'll be like Venice."

I asked him why Dubai was going through this world-busting surge. One might have expected the straightforward business answer, which goes something like this: Dubai, unlike other parts of the Gulf, has little of its own oil or gas. A great deal of Arab money, invested in the US, came back from there after 9/11 and needed an outlet. The fact that oil is now pushing $70 a barrel means that the Gulf is awash with liquidity. There is clearly a role for a strategic financial centre in the Middle East: Beirut played it once, Dubai could do so now. Money has been draining out of Iran for years and Dubai, just across the Gulf, has always been a traditional place for Iranians to put their money to work. Mohammed Noor Taleb, a 75-year-old textile trader I spoke to in the souk, who had lived with his mother as a child in a tent made of palm leaves and now owned a business in Indian cottons turning over $5.2m a year, told me an old Dubai joke. A young boy is asked by his father "What is two add two?" "Am I buying or am I selling?" the boy says. Commerce is in the blood.

But Mustafa's reply came from another place entirely, evidence of the extraordinary hybridisation of cultures that is going on here: traditionalist, modernist, Arabist, internationalist, market-based, bowing to authority. For Mustafa, it all stems from the Emir of Dubai himself, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. Mohammed only became Emir on January 4, when his elder brother Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum, died after a long illness. But Mohammed has had his hand on the tiller for years. "Sheikh Mohammed has had a vision," Mustafa said, "which is that Dubai should become a fully developed city, with the best life of any city that has ever been created. The whole city is growing as a single organism. We have planned this, very carefully, he is a leader who has bestowed a great vision on us, so that in time Dubai is going to become the first ever Arab modern metropolis." Was this really about an Arabist dream of perfection? "No, this is not Arab nationalism. But what Dubai is trying to do is set an example of how Arabs should be represented. After 9/11, Arabs suffered from a lot of bad publicity. Dubai is trying to come back with the right kind of publicity. It will be a fully modern state. It will be setting the standards. It will be a place that people will look up to."

You might have to take that with a few bucketloads of salt. There is no hint of democracy in Dubai. There is a consultative council whose members are nominated by the ruling family. A group of five old Arab families control the entire emirate. The working and living conditions of the construction labourers and the domestic servants from south Asia are notoriously bad. Thirty-nine building workers died on sites last year, 22 of them simply by falling, as provision of slings and ropes is inadequate. The Dubai press is full of stories criticising companies for late payment, no payment, the confiscation of passports, imposition of penalties for minor infringements, the manoeuvrings of loan sharks and all the other expectable abuses of a poorly regulated employment system. The property laws are explicitly racist: no non-UAE national can own land outside the designated free zones. No foreign company can operate in the country without paying a UAE "sponsor" to be their local representative. No one except UAE nationals can get one of the plum jobs in a government department. Education and healthcare are free for all UAE nationals but no one else. The local press will never be seen to criticise the government and when, for example, I tried to interview the director of strategic planning in the offices of Dubai municipality, I was told I could only do so "if we have checked you out first and seen that what you will write will be favourable". Not much hybridisation there.

And yet it is not Saudi Arabia. Brokeback Mountain is soon to open in Dubai cinemas, which it never could in Saudi Arabia. There is no problem with bikinis and sunbathing on the beaches. And on a more substantial level, there is a determined effort to de-monopolise the economy, to make market competition the driver for this new model world. Local customs must be respected: no loud music during Ramadan, no eating in front of Muslims on fast days, no possibility of making a political claim on the direction of the state. And in return for those limits, the state delivers a sense of wellbeing. That is the trade-off on which Dubai is relying. A booming market, with a consciously courteous social culture and a tight police system (panic buttons in the thousand gold shops in old Dubai bring the police in two minutes) deliver a better wage than would be available at home - all this in return for surrendering anything resembling a political right.

Eduardo Ferrari, an Argentinian cameraman who has lived in Dubai for the last eight years, says he couldn't "give a damn for democracy. I live here in the most democratic country in the world. Why? Because the economy is taking you by the tip of your head and pulling you up. Every year I have more and more. In Argentina, every year I have less and less." Vishal Khemani, a 26-year-old from Mumbai, who imports Indian and Japanese textiles for Dubai wholesalers, says he loves Dubai simply because it is "very disciplined, very neat, very clean. Everything is going to timetable. I have a good job, good food. It is a cheap country." And extremely safe. There has been no hint, so far, of any terrorist attack, although you would have thought it was due for one. A western businessman, surveying the most luxurious of the Jumeirah beach hotels, said simply to me: "Everything about this place smells of western women, right? It looks like an al-Qaida target to me." There are rumours in Dubai that a terror plot was foiled last year but the processes of government are so opaque that there is no confirming that. It may be that the levels of government control in Dubai are high enough to make any terrorist operations very difficult.

Bob Gogel, CEO of Liberata, an international company specialising in the outsourcing of financial services, probably speaks for the business community as a whole. "Dubai is an unpolished gem polishing itself very quickly. You could look at it as a CD compilation - the best of London, Sydney, Miami, Las Vegas - and you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. Where else in the Middle East is going to do it? Turkey? Saudi Arabia? Lebanon? Egypt? Kuwait? You can't see it. Nowhere in the world do you get such good service. Certainly not in London. And business people like that. They've got a good plan, it's tightly controlled, they've managed to pull in some good people, they've got the oil money, and that price is not going to drop very far. The property market in Dubai is probably overheated and the Dubai stock market is due for a correction. But you try poking holes and I have trouble poking that big a hole."

This is the Dubai sandwich: at the bottom, cheap and exploited Asian labour; in the middle, white northern professional services, plus tourist hunger for glamour in the sun and, increasingly, a de-monopolised western market system; at the top, enormous quantities of invested oil money, combined with fearsome social and political control and a drive to establish another model of what modern Arabia might mean in the post-9/11 world. That is the intriguing question: can Dubai do what Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or almost anywhere else in the Arab world you might like to mention, have failed to do? Is Dubai, in fact, the fulcrum of the future global trading and financial system? Is it, in embryo, what London was to the 19th century and Manhattan to the 20th? Not the modern centre of the Arab world but, more than that, the Arab centre of the modern world.

The latest in the rediculously tall tower league:
A res tower as usual
No name for it but it's at least 88 floors high and has a huge spire:

http://i1.tinypic.com/ojdt1k.jpg


I can see they forgot to finish the spire in this render :D

And another one:

http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/2006/burjalalam/burj-al-alam-tower.jpg

Dubai tower workers riot over low pay
Labourers on tall project smash offices, cars
$1.65 million in damages done, officials say

Mar. 23, 2006. 01:00 AM
JIM KRANE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Construction on a skyscraper, expected to be the world's tallest, was interrupted when Asian workers upset over low wages and poor treatment smashed cars and offices in a riot that an official said yesterday caused nearly $1.65 million (Canadian) in damage.

The stoppage triggered a sympathy strike at Dubai International Airport, with thousands of labourers building a new terminal also laying down their tools, officials said.

Some 2,500 workers who are building the Burj Dubai tower and surrounding housing developments chased and beat security officers Tuesday night, smashed computers and files in offices, and destroyed about two dozen cars and construction machines, witnesses said.

The workers were angered because buses to their residential camp were delayed after their shifts, witnesses at the site said.

The workers, employed by Dubai-based construction firm Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke, returned to the vast site yesterday but refused to work.

Crowds of blue-garbed workers milled in the shadow of the concrete tower, now 36 storeys tall. "Everyone is angry here. No one will work," said Khalid Farouk, 39, a labourer with Al Naboodah. Other workers said their leaders were asking for pay raises: skilled carpenters earn the equivalent of $8.85 per day; labourers $4.65.

A reporter inquiring about the riots was ordered to leave the site by an Al Naboodah manager, who refused to give his name. The firm's business development manager, Jonathan Eveleigh, declined to comment when reached by telephone.

An interior ministry official who investigates labour issues, Lt. Col. Rashid Bakhit Al Jumairi said the laborers were also asking Al Naboodah, one of the Emirates' biggest construction conglomerates, for overtime pay, better medical care and humane treatment by foremen.

"They are asking for small things," said Al Jumairi, the labour investigator. "I promised them I would sit with them until everything is settled."

Labor stoppages in Gulf countries have recently become common, with some two dozen strikes last year in the United Arab Emirates alone. Most have centred on unpaid salaries and triggered a labour ministry crackdown.

The strikes and riots by Al Naboodah workers marred what otherwise appeared to be smooth construction of the Burj Dubai, which is expected to soar far beyond 100 storeys. Emaar, the tower's Dubai-based developer, is keeping the final height a secret until the $1 billion-plus Burj is complete by 2008.


http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/482/10124072bl.jpg

£5 a day wages- no wonder they can knock up all these tall towers so quickly & cheaply- That would only get be about 10 mins work for a Uk builder!!

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=331182 :lol:

Height increase for Al Burj.

It will be over a kilometre tall:


http://img423.imageshack.us/img423/1640/alburjbig20rr.jpg


http://img423.imageshack.us/img423/9727/alburjbig0wq.jpg

Unless these renderings are an April Fool's trick.

Nope, they're as real as it gets. ;)

I don't know why my thread was locked. I even posted a source of info :D
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=333241

Height increase for Al Burj.

It will be over a kilometre tall:


http://img423.imageshack.us/img423/1640/alburjbig20rr.jpg


http://img423.imageshack.us/img423/9727/alburjbig0wq.jpg

Im sorry but thats rubbish.I wouldnt want it in my city.

Looks crap and the height is ridiculous :(

Since April fool's day is over I have to admit those renders are not real. ;)

Burj Al Alam - 108 floors commercial tower - 484m... www.burjalalam.com ... approved, units are available for purchase, construction due to start at the end of this year

http://i2.tinypic.com/swyfzr.jpg

How many supertalls does Dubai have proposed now? Must be at least 30. :dizzy:

How many supertalls does Dubai have proposed now? Must be at least 30. :dizzy:

I think it's about 25 actually. Still that is pretty impressive, considering there are only about 25-30 completed super talls on the whole planet right now. :runaway:

http://i2.tinypic.com/swyfzr.jpg

Nice!

Burj Dubai ‘may go up to 200 floors’
Posted: Sunday, April 16, 2006

Burj Dubai, the world's tallest tower, is expected to go up to 200 floors, a media report said.

"It has reached floor No 40. It is over 20 per cent of the total habitable floors," Abdullah M Bin Lahej, director of construction for Emaar Properties, developer of the tower, was quoted by Gulf News as saying.

This translates into nearly 200 habitable floors, dwarfing all other man-made structures and nearly double the height of the 442-metre Sears Tower in Chicago, which has the highest habitable floor at the 108th, said the report.

The building's height, which remains a well-kept secret, could go well beyond the estimated 750m if calculated on the standard height of an average floor, it added.

Bin Lahej said major components of the tower have already been sold out.

http://homepage.mac.com/fumill/.Pictures/ZNO/islands.jpg

The Palm Deira (far right) is far too small in that picture. It is supposed to be three times the size of the Palm Jumeriah (middle one)

I quite like the design of that ridiculously tall tower, but it is ridiculously tall so if its built should be smaller. Unless all the other skyscrapers are really tall and this one is just really really tall (like the WTCs on the Manhattan skyline). But anyhow, development in Dubai is crazy, but if it all goes to plan I can really see it becoming a really exciting place to be. It still has its old town at the centre.

Abu Dhabi announces Dh100b project

SAADIYAT ISLAND DEVELOPMENT
Stunning Facts

* Infrastructure Cost: Dh5.5b
* Hotels with 7,000 rooms: 29
* Golf Courses: 2
* Villas: 8,000
* Appartments: 38,000
* Home to residents: 150,000

To be managed by: Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC)

* Owned by Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA)
* Saadiyat Island covers an area of 27 sq.km.
* It is 500 metres offshore north-east of Abu Dhabi city.
* Saadiyat Island means Island of Happiness.
* The island has sensitive mangrove reserves.
* Saadiyat will be lined to Abu Dhabi city via two causeways. Each with10-lane freeways.
* Provision for light rail transport is made.
* Abu Dhabi has 200 natural offshore islands.
* This will attract Dh100 billion worth of investment

Other mega projects in Abu Dhabi

* Al Raha Beach Development: Dh54 billion n Al Reem Island: Dh45 billion
* Abu Dhabi International Airport Redevelopment: Dh25 billion
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e357/sahmad1/3d1ea7bf.jpg

http://sniper1980.googlepages.com/saadiyat_abu_dhabi.jpg

^ They're building a whole new city with skyscrapers and everything from scratch? Insanity! :lol:

I suppose UAE has money and wants to becoem the new USA/Japan/UK with major cities and world recognised symbols to become a world power. It might be very good in terms of trading in providing a counterweight to London but further south as a trading hub between Asia, Europe and Africa due to a central location like London is central to America, Europe and not too far from African and Asia.

That city island thing is insanity.

Dubai is a very interessting place.

Burj Dubai, 29/4/06

http://i3.tinypic.com/wrzvrm.jpg

Trump tulip tower's been changed from this:

http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/6901/palmlife12nv.jpg


to this:

http://www.strategiy.com/news/20060429112014%5Ctrump-hotel.JPG

to this:

http://www.strategiy.com/news/20060429112014%5Ctrump-hotel.JPG
Hideous.

I prefer the original design personally; more original. I don't 'hate' the new one though.

I'm waiting to see what stadium Dubai comes up with.

The thing i cant understand is, dubai is building all these buildings, just wat are they thinking of filling them with? its not like they hav that many ppl that can afford to fill up these buildings and i cant see many companies rushing to fill up all the buildings in dubai, they must already hav a major oversupply of office and residential space.

I think they are trying to attract new people to the city to make another world city; however many far eastern cities have done this but most buildings are empty. I have a feeling Dubai might be different though.

I dunno, why would you want to move there? Too artificial, cn't see there being much of a community spirit in living there, also no goin down the local for a few with your mates. No ta, i ll stick to England.

Dubai World Records:

- 70% of the world's cranes are in Dubai
- 60% of the world Gold trade comes through Dubai
- The biggest development company in the world, market rank: Emaar
- 3rd biggest ports operator in the world
- The fastest growing airline: Emirates
- The biggest mideast non oil company, assest rank: Dubai Holding

70% of the worlds cranes??? lol.

http://www.pbase.com/zedz


http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/3654/59911628helicopterapril0614027.jpg

http://img431.imageshack.us/img431/7295/59911628helicopterapril0614012.jpg

http://img431.imageshack.us/img431/3797/59480702helicopterapril0613629.jpg

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/9963/59480702helicopterapril0613613.jpg

And I quote somebody from the World Forum -

"Burj Dubai is not only the tower... it is 70 highrises, a supertall, the world's largest mall, an artificial lake and an old town."

70 towers? More like 300 ;)

http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=347567&page=1&pp=20


Anyway, it's a pity because dubai may have some of the best towers and projects in the world, but it also has the worst aswell.

Dubai World Records:

- 70% of the world's cranes are in Dubai
- 60% of the world Gold trade comes through Dubai
- The biggest development company in the world, market rank: Emaar
- 3rd biggest ports operator in the world
- The fastest growing airline: Emirates
- The biggest mideast non oil company, assest rank: Dubai HoldingSorry but there is no way that 70% of the world's cranes are in Dubai. China has far more for starters. That is a boast too far.... :no:

Also Ryanair is growing faster than Emirates and is more profitable too.

You have to "Mr T" my ass to get me to work over in Dubai. The worlds most materialistic, cultureless and boring countries.

^ I think that's harsh. Right now I think it's fairly dull but in a couple of years time, once all these amazing projects (even just the ones currently UC) have been completed, then it will be an extraordinary city in its own way. Yes it's small, dusty, racist, exploitative, undemocratic, culturally superficial etc etc.... but white expats have a good life there. They can drink, party, dine in fine restaurants, fuck nice blonde Russian hookers (or each other), earn plenty of wonga, and generally enjoy the stimulation of living in such a dynamic place. Whatever people say about Dubai it is an extraordinary example of what global capitalism, concentrated oil wealth, and some business acumen, can achieve.

They can build all the ridiculous projects they want, but it will never come close to places like NY, HK, London, Paris or even Manchester for that matter in terms of a true city. It is a plastic theme park of skyscrapers and bling. People make a city, not concrete.

People make a city, not concrete.
Yeah... exactly!

I'm not a fan of this place at all. An Islamic city in the heart of the Middle East that has been taken over by white upper classes from Christian countries, it is oil-rich and has the tallest buildings in the World. Could God have made an easier place to perform a terrorist attack if he tried? Anyway, it looks awful and I don't think they will ever stop building there, by the time they have finished building one crop of skyscrapers, fashions will have changed and they will all be replaced again. All those good restaurants, luxury life-style, Russian hookers and such can be found in London and the UK or other Western European countries, only difference is the lack of year-round sunshine.

Yes you can get trendy restaurants or Russian hookers in every Eurpean city - there are loads of both in London. However it's not so blatant or accessible here. You can't just waltz into a bar or disco full of them. You have to surf on the internet for "escort agencies" and then pay an absolute fortune (£150 per hour for incall - more for outcall).

I agree that some of Dubai's projects are bizarre and tasteless. For instance why on earth would anyone want to buy a villa on a pancake-flat artificial palm island when they can buy one amidst natural beauty in the Mediterranean or Caribbean?

I also think that Dubai is building far too much at once. 20 years from now many of these projects will look shabby and dated. Will the city be caught in a noughties time warp? I think there's a danger. However there are some architectural gems in there (Burj Dubai amongst them....) and the ambition of the place is breathtaking. It probably is a very stimulating place to live so long as you're on the right side of the divide. The romance and drama of life can unfold in the strangest places. Aspects of the Dubai expat lifestyle appeal to me and I for one won't knock it until I've tried it....

I'm not going to ask how you know so much about Russian hookers. :colgate:
Maybe I'm too common to understand why anyone would want to live in such a place.

I don't. I have never paid for an escort girl in the UK. However that is how prostitution works in this country. Just type in "London escorts" in Google and see how many links it brings up. Having a browse, "window shopping" if you like, will do you no harm. ;)

I know about Russian hookers in Dubai from articles I have read in the press and from the experiences of friends of mine who have been to these bars and discos.

How did you find Riga Monkey? You have to look hard for those 'cafe-discos' but they are worth it.

Did anyone read the "Sunday Times" today. There's a huge article in the business section about Dubai planning to be a 'Global City'

Some quotes:



Dubai's £140bn Shopping List:

World's biggest Free Trade Zone - £15bn

make Emirates world's biggest airline - £20bn

Build world's biggest ports and airport - £20bn

Become biggest tourist market after America - £20bn

Build 1million new homes for 3million new residents - £25bn

Create Middle East's financial capital - £20bn

Become sporting centre & host Olympics - £20bn

Overall: £140bn.

^ Yeah I read that. Some of this stuff looks like a wish list though. For instance I don't see Dubai becoming the world's largest port simply because so little is produced there - unlike the cheap manufactured goods that pour out of the Pearl River Delta via Hong Kong and Shenzhen or from the Yangste River Delta via Shanghai. Neither does Dubai dominate such strategic straits as does Singapore nor does it serve such a huge import market as does Rotterdam. Dubai's hinterland populations are just too small and there is no manufacturing base there (though maybe they plan to create one using cheap Indian labour).

I think Emirates is a formidable airline, a major competitor to BA and other European and E/SE Asian airlines on routes between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, but Dubai itself has too small a population (most of whom are not rich - they are labourers from India and Pakistan) and it faces serious local competition from the likes of Etihad, Qatar, and Gulf Air that have copied its' business model and offer the same competitive prices on the same routes.

I also doubt that Dubai can become the biggest tourist market - it's just not that attractive - and once again the hinterland population of Arabia is just not big enough. This becomes even more of a gamble given that other small and rich Gulf states are mimicking its palm islands, supertall skyscrapers, and glossy malls. So what would Dubai offer that is unique?

How did you find Riga Monkey? You have to look hard for those 'cafe-discos' but they are worth it.It was good but I didn't score. Nice city though.... :)

It was good but I didn't score. Nice city though.... :)


You didn't what? A good looking scamp like yourself? What is the world coming to?

You didn't what? A good looking scamp like yourself? What is the world coming to?LOL! Well I'm glad you think I'm good looking! They obviously weren't so easily impressed. I wasted one evening persuing the wrong girl. I'm too honest too. I tell them that I'm only there for the weekend so they know from the outset that I'm only game for a one night stand. But then again that's what I need. If I tell them that I live there they will want me to date them first - which I don't have time to do. Nevermind. You win some, you lose some! :)

I lie that well they think they are lieing to me

Here is today's Sunday Times article as mentioned earlier:


Dubai’s building frenzy lays foundation for global power
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-2189545.html

The Gulf emirate is spending £140bn to transform itself into a capitalist powerhouse that will be a model for its neighbours. By John Arlidge

It will be the oddest housewarming party. David Beckham will compare floor tiles with his new neighbours Simon Cowell and Michael Owen. Victoria Beckham will sip Evian and talk soft furnishings with Liz Hurley. Frankie Dettori and Colin Montgomerie will be trying out the nearby golf course.

People sn1ggered when Dubai announced it was building the Palm Jumeirah, an island in the shape of a giant palm tree. “Arabs selling sand,” the critics scoffed. Last week the first £4m hacienda-style villas on the Palm were completed and the Beckhams, the first of 70,000 residents, will move in this summer.

The Palm Jumeirah is the centrepiece of the tiny emirate’s attempt to put itself on the map. It will be followed by two other palm islands, 300 artificial islands arranged in the shape of a map of the world, and the world’s tallest building, the 2,300ft Burj Dubai, a hotel, apartment and office complex. And that’s just the beginning.

In recent months Dubai’s movers and sheikhers have announced plans for 40 tax and duty-free micro-cities, a Wall Street-style financial centre, 1m new homes and the world’s biggest airport. Emirates, the national airline, is doubling the size of its fleet, and Dubai-based firms are snapping up ports, land, hotels, and billions of pounds of commercial property.

The bill for this spending spree is £140 billion — more than every single foreign dollar invested in America and China last year combined.

It begs one simple question: Why? What makes a city state where gambling is illegal take the biggest punt in history: that it can use its entire current and projected oil revenue to become a modern global power. No state, no dictator, no megalomaniac Bond villain has ever tried to pull off anything so epically extravagant.

Dubai guards its secrets but The Sunday Times spoke to key politicians and business leaders who are working to shape the emirate’s future under its leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. They set out a bold vision that could transform not just Dubai but an entire region better known for its poverty and conflict.

Dubai is racing to become the Middle East’s business and leisure hub — a Switzerland of the Gulf — to secure its future when its oil reserves run out in about 10 years, but Sheikh Mohammed wants to pull off a far bigger trick. He wants to establish a unique East-meets-West economic, social and religious model that will act as a catalyst for change in other Arab countries.

Behind the tourist razzmatazz, the office blocks, the glittering seven-star hotels, shopping malls and six-lane motorways, lies a steely resolve to create a pro-capitalist, moderate Muslim success story that will drag Dubai and its neighours into the modern world.

If that were not ambitious enough, Sheikh Mohammed wants to do it all without swallowing any of the inconveniences that usually go along with western-style development — notably democracy, human rights and a free press.

“We don’t want simply to change Dubai. We want to promote the model of Dubai in the Middle East,” said Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Sheikh Mohammed’s right-hand man. He is a cabinet minister, who also runs Nakheel, the developer behind the Palm (Nakheel means palms in Arabic).

Arab nations, he argues, have squandered an historic opportunity to use their vast oil riches to spread wealth and create peace. They must change and follow Dubai’s free-wheeling western model. “The people in the Middle East need to be given the freedom to do business,” he said. “The economic solution is the solution to every problem. We will strive to help the neighbours to be like us.”

It sounds like a propaganda script. An oil-rich Arab nation imports the American dream into the Middle East and spreads western values from Beirut to Oman. Economic growth helps to stamp out the poverty that breeds terrorism — and it’s all done without so much as a squeak of protest from religious leaders.

Critics fear Dubai’s leaders have spent too much time smoking the hubble-bubble, and even the most credulous observer has to wonder, are they for real?


DUBAI doesn’t seem real to the 6m visitors a year who have made it the fastest-growing holiday destination in the history of the travel business — but that’s just the way they like it. The temperature is 35C but Liz Deakin, a 27-year-old IT consultant from Enfield, north London, stands shivering in the snow. Dubai’s latest attraction is a giant Alpine snow dome in the desert. Watching locals pull ankle-length anoraks over their dishdashas and head off to spend a morning on the piste, she said: “You can’t take this place seriously. It’s got mosques, dunes, skiing, an underwater hotel and Versace. It’s Blingland.”

Racing across the mint-green waters of the Gulf in a speed boat from the real world to “The World”, as the islands in the shape of a map of the world are modestly known, Dubai does look like Disneyland for grown-ups.

But even the man who runs The World and is selling every country except Israel — left diplomatically off — insists that it is one of the most calculatedly realistic places on earth.

Hamza Mustafa, 32, said: “We — Arabs, Muslims — are the bad guys of the world. The whole point of the Dubai project is to change that. It’s not about being bigger and better for the sake of it. We want to create a success story that will make outsiders look at us with respect, not fear.”

It is a breathless ambition. How did a place the size of Kent — one of the seven sheikhdoms that make up the loose federation of the United Arab Emirates — get so big?


DUBAI was a trading enclave on the western shore of the Gulf when it first appeared on maps in the early 1800s. At that time, it had only a few brackish wells, two date plantations and a sheikh’s house to its name. Britain controlled the region but did not think much of it.

In 1833 the Maktoum clan of the Baniyas tribe moved into the desert state with 800 Bedouin tribesmen to establish the first sheikhdom. The Maktoums were natural-born traders. They began to use tax exemptions to lure dhows and powerful merchants away from neighbouring states, notably Iran. Soon the little seaport fiefdom had become the chief entrepot of the region.

But Dubai remained poor. As recently as 50 years ago, it was still a one-camel town with no medical care, few roads and little clean drinking water. The only decent living to be made was selling pearls, harvested from the sea bed by free divers. Most of Dubai’s native inhabitants were illiterate nomads.

That changed when oil was discovered a few years before independence from Britain in 1971. Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al-Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler at the time, was determined he would not follow his neighbours and squander the pennies from heaven. He set about making Dubai the first Arab nation to use oil to create a fast-growing, diversified economy that would endure after the black gold ran out.

He built the Middle East’s biggest airport and man-made harbour and began attracting western firms with the promise of tax-free status. In the last few years of his rule, Emirates airline was founded, with its first aircraft leased from the Pakistani carrier PIA.

When Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum took over from Sheikh Rashid in 1990, his brother Sheikh Mohammed, the crown prince, took over as effective ruler. Mohammed, now 57 and the absolute ruler since the death of Sheikh Maktoum earlier this year, exploited record oil prices to increase the economic diversification.

He encouraged the foundation of state-run property firms, established a financial-services sector, set up free-trade “cities” to encourage foreign investment in key sectors such as media and the internet, and approved vast overseas investments.

Every step of the way, he marketed “brand Dubai”. He created over-the-top tourist attractions, such as the world’s first seven-star hotel, the Burj al-Arab, where guests receive a 12-page pillow menu in their suites and French oysters are flown in daily in sea water and kept alive until the moment they are shucked and eaten by diners in the underwater al- Mahara restaurant.

He established premier sporting events with record prize money, notably the £4m Dubai World Cup horserace meeting and the £1m Dubai golf Desert Classic, and made sure Dubai firms sponsored leading sports, notably cricket and football. Emirates sponsors Test Match cricket umpires, and the airline has sunk £90m into Arsenal football club’s new stadium, which opens this summer.

Over the next three years Dubai will spend £40 billion building the free-trade micro-cities. There’s Aviation City, Cargo Village, Aid City, Exhibition City, Silicon Oasis, Festival City and Healthcare City. The new Sports City will be the centrepiece for a bid for the 2020 Olympics.

The world’s first tax-free, business park devoted to the fastest-growing new global business sector, outsourcing, is rising from the dust.

Dubailand, an enclave of theme parks, villages, and shopping malls four-and-a-half times the size of Manhattan, is the Middle East’s answer to Disneyworld. It will feature larger versions of the seven wonders of the world, including the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There will even be an authentic Dubai “Old Town” — but that isn’t finished yet.

Emirates airline is spending £20 billion doubling its fleet of Boeing and Airbus jets, setting it on a flight path to overtake British Airways as the world’s biggest long-haul carrier by 2012. Dubai’s airport is doubling in size in a £3 billion extension and another new £5 billion, six-runway airport — the biggest in the world — is being constructed. The hub, already dubbed “World Central”, will be able to handle 150m passengers a year — three times the number of foreign tourists who visit America each year.

Almost 1m homes are being built to house the 3m new workers who are expected to move to Dubai by 2015, increasing its population fourfold to 4m.

It’s hard to comprehend the scale of all this development, but if you imagine two airports twice the size of Heathrow 25 miles apart on a dusty desert strip, with 100 Canary Wharfs lined up between them and another dozen Canary Wharfs plonked offshore, you will get the picture. Small wonder the economy is expanding at a giddy 15% a year, generating a $26 billion (£13.2 billion) trade surplus, while the stock market, in spite of recent wobbles, has soared more than 500% over the past two years.

Dubai is forecast to enjoy the fastest population and economic growth in the world over the next 10 years. “This is the most optimistic, creative place on the planet,” said Donal Kilalea, 49, an Irish businessman who runs a fast-expanding sports-marketing company. “It’s not like living in a modern city state. It’s like stepping into an imagined future.”

Oil money and the vast sums of cash repatriated to the Middle East after September 11, 2001 by Arab investors fearful that their assets would be frozen in the event of a second Al-Qaeda attack on America, are fuelling the boom.

It is all helped along by light regulation — in the free-trade zones a company can be set up in only two hours — coupled with the blissful absence of income tax, corporation tax and sales tax.


BUT cash and a business-friendly environment only partly explain Dubai’s runaway growth. The “killer application” is its unique combination of history and geography.

As a historic trading nation, Dubai has always embraced outsiders, notably westerners. Christians can build their own churches and worship freely, alcohol is available, women can dress how they wish and do any job, a newly passed law allows foreigners to own freehold property, prostitution is tolerated and, while homosexuality is not, Brokeback Mountain is showing in cinemas.

“We are halfway between East and West,” said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, Sheikh Mohammed’s uncle, who is chairman of Emirates Airlines. The result is that, unlike far wealthier but more repressive states, notably Saudi Arabia, Dubai has found it easy to attract hundreds of young European, American and South African executives to run most of its big companies.

At the same time, Dubai’s location — only two hours’ flight from the Asian subcontinent — means that there is an endless supply of job-hungry, dirt-cheap labourers to do the hard work.

A 250,000-strong army of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans toil like flies caught in the cobweb of cranes. Day and night shifts ensure 24-hour working. Wages are as low as 50 pence an hour. Most labourers live in squalid barracks in the desert, with up to 20 men sharing a single room without any air conditioning.

But as it grows and flexes its international muscles, what many Dubaians and western politicians and business leaders are now asking is, will the desert dream endure or is Dubai building sandcastles that will eventually crumble? Beneath the glittering veneer there are snags that could spell trouble ahead and make neighbouring states think twice about following Dubai’s glitzy model. However much it tries to import the American dream and create a moderate Muslim model for the Middle East, Dubai remains an uneasy mix of East and West.

The economy may be textbook laissez-faire and the bustling bars, beaches and brothels where women sell themselves in twosomes and threesomes for less than £100 a night may create an impression of social liberalism but, scratch the surface and you uncover strict political and social control.

There is no parliament, no political parties, no elections, no free press, no free trade unions, no minimum wage, no charter of human rights, no right to trial by jury and little consumer protection. Only the most exalted foreigners can start their own companies outside the free-trade zones without a local Emirati sponsor, and labourers cannot get a job without agreeing to surrender their passports to their employer, which means firms can force them to work for as long as and as hard as they like because, without their papers, the workers literally can’t go anywhere else.

Foreigners — rich or poor — can get a job in the land of opportunity but they are all “guest workers” and, as such, enjoy few freedoms and little protection. As The Sunday Times reports in today’s Home section, foreigners living in Dubai, and overseas investors hoping to move there, face losing millions of pounds in the first major property scandal to hit the country. Buyers caught up in what has become known as “the Light House affair” complain that the Dubai authorities are doing little to help them.

The sense of insecurity and unease is palpable wherever Dubai’s expatriates gather. Each week, four friends — a journalist, a hotelier, a property developer and the founder of a large advertising firm — meet at the fashionable Montgomerie golf course. They don’t want to give their names because, they claim, those who question the regime can find their residence permit revoked. They say that, for all its professed openness and tolerance, Dubai is a deeply divided, repressive place.

“Press freedom is an illusion,” said the journalist. “A number of times we have run negative stories only to see government-owned companies and their friends withdraw advertising, while articles begin to appear in the Arabic press questioning whether we are ‘in tune’ with Arab and Muslim values.”

The hotelier complained that he had made Dubai his home and was building its future but will never get a UAE passport or a say in the emirate’s future. “Passports are strictly for locals and nobody will ever have a vote here.”

The property man bemoaned the treatment of workers from the Indian subcontinent. “There are protests and riots every day because some UAE firms think it’s enough to provide food and accommodation but no pay. When workers complain, they are deported. It’s feudal.”

The ad man complains about Dubai’s laws. “The courts always favour the locals, over the expats. It’s racist.”

The more that educated, articulate westerners move to Dubai to run the economy — foreigners already outnumber Emiratis eight to one — the more demands for political and social reform will grow. Pressure for social change could derail the Dubai economic express.

As Werner Burger, a 37-year-old South African who runs a local hotel and property firm, said: “Dubai has been able to achieve so much so fast because it is not a state, it is a corporation, Dubai Inc, which practises pure capitalism. People living here are employees, not citizens — whether they are a chief executive or a brickie. Everything here takes a back seat to profits. Demands for workers’ rights could upset the entire nation-building process.”

Dubai gets away with mixing the medieval and the modern by playing its trump card: cash. By paying westerners fat tax-free salaries, it knows that however much they might whinge in private, they will not rock the boat.

For now, Dubai Inc is working well — so well, in fact, that, as Dubai’s leaders hope, other countries in the region are beginning to follow its western-friendly lead, notably Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Oman, and even ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia.


DUBAI feels like it is changing the world. It’s an impression you get when you look down from the top of a half-built skyscraper being put up by the Binladin Contracting Group and watch bikini-clad tourists swimming in the sea next to local women sealing business deals on their mobile phones before heeding the call to prayer that wails out above the constant whup-whup of the pile-drivers.

High up above the dust and din of the biggest building site the world has ever seen, you can sense the money flows and feel the optimism. You feel that history is being made here.

Will this Middle East tiger achieve what Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria or almost anywhere else in the Arab world has failed to do? Will it use vast oil wealth, cheap Asian labour, northern professionals and a sprinkling of celebrity glamour to create a western-friendly economic system that will, in the end, establish the model of what modern Arabia can be? These are not questions that the Beckhams and their shiny happy friends will ponder when they celebrate the opening of the Palm Jumeirah this summer. As they cool their brows with Evian spray and hand their sunglasses to the beach butlers to clean, the talk will be of their new flashy lifestyle on the “eighth wonder of the world”. Yet, in their own way, this odd crowd, in this odd country, will be playing their part in an epic £140 billion experiment to cast the principality anew and create a beacon of hope in a region where shining examples are rare.

It's autocratic but decisive

IMAGINE that Britain was known as Windsor plc and that it was ruled by the company’s chief executive, who gave orders to a board of hand-picked loyal subordinates, who implemented policy without the need for approval from any elected body. Imagine that most of the board members were either related to the chief executive or to each other and that decisions were settled by a single mobile-phone call. That’s how Dubai works.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum is the country’s chief executive and he either owns or controls the companies that run almost everything of any significance. He takes the decisions and they are implemented by members of the executive council — an informal board of directors or cabinet.

Council members include his uncle, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, who runs Emirates airlines, and Sultan Ahmed and Khalid bin Sulayem, brothers from an aristocratic local family who between them run the Palm developer Nakheel and Dubai’s marketing effort.

Mohammed al Gergawi, who runs Dubai Holding, the firm behind the soaring, sail-shaped Burj al-Arab hotel, is married to the sister of Mohammed Alabbar, another council member, who runs Emaar, Dubai’s biggest property firm.

It may seem feudal to western eyes but the Dubai government insists that the rapid-fire decision-making that comes with autocratic rule is the only way it can achieve its aim of building a nation from scratch in a generation.

By and large, Dubaians seem happy with the arrangement. ‘Sheikh Mohammed is our Maggie Thatcher,’ said one local businessman. ‘We may not like the way he does everything, but we know he is going to transform the country and make us rich.’

Gordon Ramsey's first restaurant outside the UK, Verre at the Dubai Creek Hilton, is considered the finest restaurant in Dubai.

I'm not going to ask how you know so much about Russian hookers. :colgate:
Maybe I'm too common to understand why anyone would want to live in such a place.

Well it's quite simple: "absence of income tax, corporation tax and sales tax."

Now, if you you were making a bit more than average Joe, would you consider buying and living their half of the year - say, during winter when it is raining cats and dogs here anyway - and save yourself a few quid?

Check this out, from SSP -

Burj Dubai at the end of its concrete pour and transition to spire.
I didn't photoshop it, but it looks like it. I will put the steel structure that is supposed to be on the top when the mood strikes.
http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/3434/smallcustom0rh.jpg
One at the end of its 3 cranes and just a smaller image of the one above:
http://img286.imageshack.us/img286/6055/13vd1.jpghttp://img235.imageshack.us/img235/5643/smalllarge5il.jpg

:shrug:

Oh my god, that must take an hour for the crane operator to get up to his crane. Boy that is tall.

Yeah, the crane operator flys up there on his gold-lined magic carpet eating pork scratchings.

I think that has been photoshopped

This is the official thread & its nowhere near as high

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=352826&page=13&pp=20

Also if thats a real pic- whats the top floors supposed to be- box rooms as they look very very small- lol

Of course it's been Photoshopped.......................

Wow and I thought Willis was bad by not being clad so late into the construction :laugh:



(yes I do know the Burj Dubai pics are fake)

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2717/bdice3lz7ef.jpg

^^Har har very funny. That'll be like shoving your moms most prized kitchen knife down your throat.

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/4906/bdd9xy.jpg

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=368930 :crazy:

Give me Swiss Re or Leadenhall anyday over this OTT structures

Judging by what's been written in the World Forums today, it sounds as if the "secret" height of Burj Dubai has finally been revealed and that it will be a minimum of 808m.


http://www.arabtecuae.com/Burj/images/Center5.jpg

Judging by what's been written in the World Forums today, it sounds as if the "secret" height of Burj Dubai has finally been revealed and that it will be a minimum of 808m.


http://www.arabtecuae.com/Burj/images/Center5.jpg

808m??!! :eek: if it really gets built, it'll hold the 'world's tallest' title for some good time for sure.. it's mad!
it's a shame the new Shanghai IFC was obviously not ambitious enough! damn it!! :gaah:

From: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=9b80a9fb-373e-409e-b408-9df70561ca0d&k=31244
__________________
Chaotic Dubai builds up ... as oil dries up
'We are now ready to live without oil,' says Dubai's Department of Tourism. Transformation of city-emirate on the Gulf part of a plan 'to position Dubai as the leading centre for commerce and tourism in the world'

Deborah Stokes in
Financial Post

Saturday, July 08, 2006

There are more than 100 nationalities and every stratum of society in this city-emirate on the Gulf, from rich Arab sheikhs to expat Western executives and Asian labourers. And every day, they share the most equalizing experience: sitting in traffic jams.

"The traffic is ruining this city," says Raflek, an Indian driver, as we idle in a sea of cars on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's main thoroughfare and the most dramatic example of the transformation of this tiny emirate from another oil-rich Gulf state to a can-do capitalist mecca.

Ten years ago, there were a couple of towers along this road. Today, gleaming hotels, shopping malls and skyscrapers line up end-to-end along its several-kilometre stretch, broken up by sandy lots where construction has not yet started but the billboards are already up.

"It is getting to be like London, where all we talk about is the traffic and the weather," says Claire Malcolm, a British expat who has been working in Dubai for the past four years. The endless traffic jams that can turn a half-hour commute into a two-hour stall in the sweltering desert are the most visible growing pains in what has become the world's biggest construction zone -- all fuelled because Dubai is running out of oil.

Dubai is both a city of 1.3 million people and an emirate, one of seven federations that make up the United Arab Emirates. Smaller in size than Calgary, it is dwarfed by its reputation. In its June issue, Vanity Fair devoted 20 full pages to it, claiming "Las Vegas is a sputtering 20-watt bulb compared with this fire in the desert." Dubai's building frenzy has become cliche: One in six of the world's cranes are here; an estimated 500 skyscrapers under construction; the world's tallest building, biggest mall, most luxurious hotels.

The population is growing at a rate of 8% a year as guest workers stream in. It is estimated local Emiratis will represent only 4% of the population by 2010. Sandwiched between the sea and the desert, Dubai is sprawling out into both. Ambitious man-made islands, such as the Palm Jumeriah and the World projects, are being dredged out of the Gulf. Mini-cities and duty-free zones, where foreign companies are attracted by the "light" regulations -- no income or corporate taxes -- are pushing back the desert. There are Media and Internet City, Healthcare City and even Humanitarian City, with its Middle Eastern headquarters of organizations such as Unicef and the World Wildlife Foundation. Two dozen schools are planned for Academic City, which will include separate men's and women's universities. Then there are the infrastructure projects: roads, bridges, canals and a subway line, to be completed in 2011.

But the clock is ticking in Dubai. It is estimated Dubai's oil reserves will be depleted by 2016. Dubai's construction chaos is, in fact, part of a well-orchestrated plan for life after oil. Dubai's economy grew by 16% in 2005, compared with a growth rate for the UAE of 7%. Oil now accounts for only 6% of Dubai's income.

"We are now ready to live without oil," says Hamad Mohammed bin Mejren, manager, Department of Tourism, for the government of Dubai. Tourism is now one of Dubai's biggest earners. From six million visitors in 2005, the target is to reach 15 million annual visitors by 2010. "Our vision is to position Dubai as the leading centre for commerce and tourism in the world."

Mr. Mejren was born in 1967, the year oil was discovered in Dubai. Before that, the small town eked out a living from the Dubai Creek, which bisects it still, fishing and pearl diving.

"Even I find it difficult to keep up with everything that's happening," he says as he compares a photograph of the Sheraton Hotel, surrounded by desert in 2003, and today, obscured by towers.

Closer to home, there are voices in Alberta calling for a similar plan for the future to lessen the province's dependency on oil. "No one is interested in talking about diversity because everyone is so busy making money," says Todd Hirsch, the chief economist at the Canada West Foundation, and author of a recent report on the province's economic future titled As Good as it Gets. According to Mr. Hirsch, Alberta's booming oil economy is stifling the growth of other sectors. "We won't run out of oil -- there's so much oil here. But at some point in time, the world is going to get over its dependency on crude oil and the big question is, what will Alberta do at that point."

The man widely considered the architect of Dubai's current transformation, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, is now its ruler, having taken over from his brother after his death in January from a heart attack while visiting Australia. But the ruling Maktoum family showed evidence of foresight as early as the 1960s, when it spent massive amounts of money to deepen its port, and entered the port management business.

"Dubai is like a dictatorship. But it has been managed carefully and prudently," says Phil McArthur, a Canadian ex-pat and managing director of commercial real estate for Al-Futtaim, one of the largest private companies in Dubai, and the developer of Festival City, a major residential and resort complex along a four kilometre stretch of the Dubai Creek.

In his 10 years working in Dubai, Mr. McArthur says he has met the Sheikh a few times. "He asks questions like a chairman of a corporation: 'Who are your customers? What are you doing to attract them,'" Mr. McArthur says.

More business reforms are coming. A new law announced in March will clear up some of the uncertainty regarding foreign ownership of property, allowing limited freehold ownership and 99-year leases. The Muslim state is even changing its traditional weekends to start on Friday, rather than Thursday, in order to move closer to Western business hours.

Of course, all of this hasn't come without costs. Beyond the traffic, property prices are soaring, forcing residents to move further out of the city to cheaper accommodations. Last year, a new rental increase rule went into effect, capping increases at 15%. Media reports are now turning to the plight of Dubai's labourers, lured by the prospects of jobs and tax-free income, but finding themselves working gruelling hours in the desert heat and living in workers' camps that are a far cry from the city's five-star glitzy hotels.

But if all goes according to plan, life after oil in Dubai could be far richer and longer lasting than it was with it.

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from the UAE forum! Our forumer dubaiflo has put together a great video compiling Dubai's megaprojects - lots of amazing neverseen renders and videos... took him about 2 months to make this video... would be great if you guys dropped by and checked it out

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=379638&page=1

:cheers:

here's a 5 min preview for those who'd like to see what it's like before downloading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY0llXrOsSU

^^ Hope you don't mind, but I merged your thread with this one.

Let's keep everything on Dubai in one place.

Btw, I had a look at the preview on YouTube. It's nice, but there's no text or subtitles! It's all visual. All those amazing projects and you don't give any information about them. That's my only real criticism.

No problem... sorry I forgot about this Dubai thread

wj the trailer on youtube was made in a hurry... the actual video has description of each project.. including the heights etc of the supertalls... the trailer is almost nothing compared to the real thing

btw... to keep the discussion going.. here's the latest "insanity" from Dubai :D

Project name is Rotating Residences.... the top five stories of this tower will rotate 360 degrees at speeds which can be selected by the resident once in either three, six, 12 or 24 hours :eek:

http://i5.tinypic.com/20pxxte.jpg

Project name is Rotating Residences.... the top five stories of this tower will rotate 360 degrees at speeds which can be selected by the resident once in either three, six, 12 or 24 hours :eek:

http://i5.tinypic.com/20pxxte.jpg

lol thats really insane :runaway:

How tall it will be btw?

Burj Dubai latest -



http://i6.tinypic.com/23kwxly.jpg



http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/3812/burjdubaielevationbestucyg0.jpg

Have they released the height then? I havent been keeping up.

Barely one-third of the way up...


http://i3.tinypic.com/2465p36.jpg

lol thats really insane :runaway:

How tall it will be btw?
I think it's only 15 floors, each floor rotates on its own. I've heard of something like this being done elsewhere aswell, can't remember though

^^ In Brasil: Life's a whirl in Brazilian apartment block (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6728324/)

I think it's only 15 floors, each floor rotates on its own. I've heard of something like this being done elsewhere aswell, can't remember though

I see.Cheers :)

I don't know if you've seen this already but here's a large render of the 4 seasons hotel that's to be built soon. It's 320m, 1m smaller than the burj al arab.

http://i5.tinypic.com/242beyf.jpg

^ Bloody hell, what's the floor count on that?

^^ I think it's about 70 or a little more. This is a stand-alone tower btw, if there are any tall buildings around they're only 1/3rd of the size or something.

Aswell, one of the forumers here (SA Boy) worked on this project and he gave us the render

Look how many Dubai threads are in the construction forum -

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=537

It's mental!

I'm becoming a big fan of Dubai :cheer:

I'd hate to be one of the crane operators...



http://xs106.xs.to/xs106/06365/1b.jpg


http://xs106.xs.to/xs106/06365/2b.jpg

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l128/dubai-dreamin/457_med.jpg

Did you know 16% of the worlds active cranes are in Dubai!
cant believe that! in china, seems every city has many cranes.
as dubai only has 1.5 million people, i doubt dubai can be a world level great city.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7906/bd100606szalontaifamilyli9.jpg

WTF??!!:eek2:

are they for real? 800+m?? Dubai is an amazing place, and a CRAZY place! it's got no culture, no history, no real life, but damn, they know how to impress.
how come they are also arabs and muslims, but they are so advanced and forward?:doh:

definitely will pay a visit sometime.

Dubai is a blott on the landscape to be honest. Very interesting for us skyscraper buffs, but none-the-less a blott on the landscape. (Fortunately it's in the middle of the desert...)

Oh bloody hell...

http://www.baidas.net/public/images/BDSZR%20012.jpg

Concrete Heaven... :|

^^There's more cranes on the Burj Dubai than the whole of the Birmingham skyline :D

Do they really expect to fill all these towers with tenants?

^^There's more cranes on the Burj Dubai than the whole of the Birmingham skyline :D

Yeah well that's not hard.. :fart:

Do they really expect to fill all these towers with tenants?

Heh. They're not playing by the normal rules of economics and development processes.

They do have the International Cricket Council, which recently moved from London.

hmm, i didnt see this thread before

Pure insanity -



For those that want to know what's going up around burj dubai check these renders :cheers:
If all goes to plan this should be built in the space of 10 to 15 years.

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/2365/bigfatmap4gr4.jpg

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/9547/hardrenderge0.jpg




:crazy:

Do they really expect to fill all these towers with tenants?

Yes.

One of the best pictures yet :cheers:

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/4751/dsc0324wo0.jpg

Stunning picture!

Wow! this pic is better than the one in the world forum section... absulotely Amazing!!

The problem with that picture is that the better towers are shrouded by the ugly apartment blocks in the foreground.

Excellent photo there.It still has a long way to but already mutch larger than any tower built/proposed in the uk.

More pictures from my model:


http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2816/1ra1.jpg

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/172/2wb4.jpg

http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/3756/3ft1.jpg

Has a forumer made that model because thats awesome. Half them apartment blocks look shit though

malec did them

I still don't know how they're going to fill all these offices and apartments.

Another Rotterdam?

Has a forumer made that model because thats awesome. Half them apartment blocks look shit though
Half of them look shit because a lot haven't been released. All the box shaped towers are placeholders for unreleased projects or I haven't modelled them yet.

I still don't know how they're going to fill all these offices and apartments.
The only way to see what'll happen is to wait and see. Hopefully they'll pull everything off but this boom has to end somewhere

You want insanity? Take a look at these pics:




(yes I know this one was already posted)

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/172/2wb4.jpg


http://static.flickr.com/108/277009572_5f79aaac7f_o.jpg


more highrise to near the bottom right of this pic

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/6046/dubai1ir3.jpg


http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/6061/untitled71muyl6.jpg



You know what's really insane about this? All these images are of seperate areas. :nuts::nuts:

That's just fucking crazy. Absolutely mental. I've never seen anything like it.

They are effectively building several Manhattan-sized cities in the space of 5 years. How the hell are they planning for the crime, healthcare, education, transport, infrastructure, environmental and other social/technological/economic factors that will come with development on such an insanely vast scale as this?

Blimey!

Quite frankly it's ridiculous.

That's just fucking crazy. Absolutely mental. I've never seen anything like it.

They are effectively building several Manhattan-sized cities in the space of 5 years. How the hell are they planning for the crime, healthcare, education, transport, infrastructure, environmental and other social/technological/economic factors that will come with development on such an insanely vast scale as this?

10 years for the 1st pic, 15 for the 2nd, 5 for the 3rd and about 20 for the last.

It might look all fantastic and everything now but I can see a massive down hill spiral for Dubai. I can see that the whole heritage of Dubai will be lost and people will go there for doing absolutely nothing like Spain. There will be problems with selling apartments and office etc and money will significantly drop.

What is that last one? Are they offices, residences? Wouldn't that development be larger than many large cities CBD's? I'm thinking Sydney, Chicago, etc.. Are there really enough tennants lined up? How many companies are waiting for office space to fill all those buildings?

How come so many buildings are cookie cutter designs - all the same with the occasional iconic building?

I don't think dubai had much heritage anyway.

However, is that Jurmiah park in addition to the marina or seperate?

If so, is the marina allready sold out and they are going ahead with this one?

Oh Malec, do you have connections in dubai or are you planning to move there?

What is that last one? Are they offices, residences? Wouldn't that development be larger than many large cities CBD's? I'm thinking Sydney, Chicago, etc.. Are there really enough tennants lined up? How many companies are waiting for office space to fill all those buildings?

How come so many buildings are cookie cutter designs - all the same with the occasional iconic building?

Nobody knows who is willing to invest in there at the moment. Personally, I think it is a ridiculous development.

What is that last one? Are they offices, residences? Wouldn't that development be larger than many large cities CBD's? I'm thinking Sydney, Chicago, etc.. Are there really enough tennants lined up? How many companies are waiting for office space to fill all those buildings?

How come so many buildings are cookie cutter designs - all the same with the occasional iconic building?

That last one is part of the new airport project. The whole thing is to be built over 20 to 25 years, that's a seriously long timeframe. The airport itsself will be built in bits not all at once. I guess they'll do the same with the towers and gauge by how well the airport does.

What do you mean by cookie-cutter? You mean repeating the same design over and over again? Those renders are only an idea of what the skylines will look like and all apart from the ones made by me are made up of placeholders for towers that haven't been designed yet. The way it happens is when a project like this is announced plots are sold to other developers who design and build their own towers. This way you get the contribution of 100s of architects instead of just a few so you get much more variety.

My map is the only one that shows some of the real towers but even there most are placeholders (all the boxes) for ones that haven't been released or else I havn't drawn.


The marina is well underway, loads of towers are nearing completion.


BTW I'm not from Dubai and have nothing to do with it, am just a bored student with a hobby :D
I took dubai as a challenge for learing how to model in 3D because of the vast amount of insane towers there. Some have really odd shapes that are a bitch to model.

Cool, may I ask you how you get that fantastic mettalic effect on your renders and what program is that in?

So, the Park Jumeriah photo with all the towers along the sea is seperate from the marina or the same?

When is the Burj Al Alam starting construction?

The design looks incredible, like something from Coruscant.

All this construction doesnt give that natural city feel.

Is dubai over-compensating for something? lol

what is the name of that massive tower with the two spires, it looks almost as tall as the burj dubai. The one that looks like the cancelled Milennium Tower in London.

Thats probably the Al Burj. It was planned for the trunk of one of the palms but was cancelled. It is planned for somewhere else now I believe. Like the Burj Dubai, no one knows the exact height.

Over a kilometre tall, if some rumours are to be believed.

Jeez. By the time I die, I wonder how tall the worlds tallest would be by then and where...

Pure insanity???

All 1000 footers in the burj dubai cluster:

http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/5501/supertallsgl1.jpg


The 3rd one to the right of burj dubai hasn't been designed yet but is a real project. I just made up a design in the meantime.

Who'se going to be living or working at 700meters? I wouldn't like it really.

The 3rd one to the right of burj dubai hasn't been designed yet but is a real project. I just made up a design in the meantime.

Isn't that the norman foster towre?

Who'se going to be living or working at 700meters? I wouldn't like it really.

Why not? If I was to move to that city and the best apartment I could afford was 700m up that wouldn't stop me one bit

http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/2006/burj-model/burj-dubai-3d-model12.jpg



:crazy:

Crikey look at the floor count!

Remind me again what exactly is going to fill this tower?

^^ Hotel first 30 floors, apartments about 70 or 80 above than and the rest offices

^^ That thing reminds me of those dark evil towers from Lord of the Ring movies :crazy:

So from 100 floors up its offices? why would you want to work only xxx floor, in silly degree heat? I don't really see the point in building so high, other than to brag about it. But it will be amazing to see and go to the top - if there will be public access.

That's just fucking crazy. Absolutely mental. I've never seen anything like it.

They are effectively building several Manhattan-sized cities in the space of 5 years. How the hell are they planning for the crime, healthcare, education, transport, infrastructure, environmental and other social/technological/economic factors that will come with development on such an insanely vast scale as this?

you are absolutely right.. I hardly paid any attention to Dubai until recently.. one minute, i was pretty sure the contest for building the 'worlds' highest' was between the Oriental cities (HK, Shanghai, Seoul, Taipei etc..), the next minute, i saw those mad pix of Dubai :doh:
If i get it right, UAE is a country of zero taxation, there's no 'public services', healthcare, education, transport etc... everything is private enterprise, so the basic 'demand and supply' rule applies, there's not much the government need to worry about, economics works on its own.. whenever there's demand and profit opportunities, investment will be attracted. More and more infrastructure will bebuilt as consumer number/power is growing.
Also people living in these new development are mostly rich, these estates should all have their own security.. so again.. crime shouldn't be too much of a problem...
Dubai is not a conventional city, it doesn't have history, culture, or a normal social structure, its economy is purely dependent on OIL, and purely driven by real estate development..it's quite a unique model though.

Why not? If I was to move to that city and the best apartment I could afford was 700m up that wouldn't stop me one bit

i was thinking if there's a fire drill...
how long would it take you to run from your apartment to the ground floor:nuts:

^^ I'd imagine there'll be special protected lifts in case of fire. :D


BTW check out the latest marina supertall proposal in this craziness. If this gets built it'll definitely be one of my favourites. Check out the height to width ratio, also love the skygardens. This shit render is the only one so far though

http://img471.imageshack.us/img471/3521/untitled1kv7.jpg

i wouldnt mind seeing PwC move into the top floors..

looks like there a shortage of space in the middle of a fucking desert - ..:weird:

You want insanity? Take a look at these pics:




(yes I know this one was already posted)

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/172/2wb4.jpg


http://static.flickr.com/108/277009572_5f79aaac7f_o.jpg


more highrise to near the bottom right of this pic

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/6046/dubai1ir3.jpg


http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/6061/untitled71muyl6.jpg



You know what's really insane about this? All these images are of seperate areas. :nuts::nuts:


Cant deny its worth a visit, but got a feeling it'll feel abit of a ghost town!

Who the fuck is gonna fill all these buildings?

http://i9.tinypic.com/4gxpaq0.jpg

latest pic i could find.. 350 metres plus and still going.

Jesus FFing christ...makes you think doesant it..

:crazy: :crazy:

Umm whens Arena Central being built again? Thats just one short tower, jesus christ..

And dont start on about the socio-economic differnces between Britain and Dubai please, I already know!

:crazy::crazy:

http://sniper1980.googlepages.com/dubai_towers.jpg

Interesting, is this going ahead also?

:eek2: How will they be built? - the cranes and cores would have to be bendy!? lol

I knew about this tower a little while back actually. Its being built by the same people who are doing the Dubai Towers in Istanbul. It's in the Lagoons I think.

I'm still not quite sure how all these towers are going to be filled with tennants...

Proposals for a new megatall in DIFC (which is between burj dubai and the emirates towers) are under design. This first one is by Atkins (who also did the burj al arab and numerous other towers in dubai, generally the best ones). It's really :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:
Pic taken by Altin from a convention called "cityscape"

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v705/altind/ATKINS-DIFCCentral.jpg


A more conservative one by the guys who did the emirates towers:

http://i17.tinypic.com/485qcxu.jpg


Apparantly there were more proposals on display.

The first is blobitecture. Its not that nice I dont think. The second looks a lot more... normal.

http://img348.imageshack.us/img348/679/asdpy0.jpg

also king of high vacancy %ages :lol:

It's reached the 100th floor.



Today 18.01.2007

http://i1.tinypic.com/2hfucxs.jpg

http://i3.tinypic.com/33xajuw.jpg


The Three Icons of Dubai .. from left ..The Trade Center - held the record fer the tallest building in the region around 10 years bak , The Eirates Towers - currently holding tht same record (completed Buildings only) and the MIGHTY BURJ DUBAI ... it doesnt need any intro ..:P
http://i3.tinypic.com/312bv2f.jpg

Dubai skyscraper touted as tallest-to-be reaches 100th floor
16 January 2007

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The Burj Dubai skyscraper under construction here reached its 100th story on Tuesday, nearly two-thirds of the way in its relentless climb to become the world's tallest building by next year.

With 3,000 laborers adding a new floor nearly every three days, the US$1 billion (euro770 million) spire is days away from surpassing a neighboring skyscraper that is currently the tallest in the Mideast and Europe, Dubai-based developer Emaar Properties said.

When finished in two years, the Burj Dubai is expected to rise beyond 700 meters (2,300 feet) and more than 160 floors -- dozens of stories taller than skyscrapers in Taiwan, Chicago or anywhere else. Emaar isn't releasing its plans for the final height so it can add more stories if a competing developer mounts a challenge.

Predictions on skyscraper Web sites say the cylindrical Burj will loom over the city from a height of 800 meters (2,600 feet) or more.

"The tower is a symbol of the city's pride and a statement of our arrival on the global scene as one of the world-class cities," Emaar chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar said in a prepared release.

Exhibiting a flair for the luxurious that is typical of Dubai, one of the skyscraper's high-profile tenants will be the Armani Hotel, developed with Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani. The spire will also contain private apartments and offices.

The world's tallest current building, at 101 floors and 509 meters (1,671 feet), is the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, though Toronto's CN Tower is 55 meters (180 feet) higher, largely because of its huge antenna.

The dramatic concrete and steel framework of the Burj Dubai has risen 347 meters (1,140 feet) above the surrounding desert since excavations began in January 2004. The area surrounding the tower is the site of a US$20 billion (euro15.44 billion) overall development that includes several smaller towers set amid winding canals and a gargantuan shopping mall.

Motorists on the adjacent highway get dramatic daily views of the tower's progress, with 10 cranes and the world's fastest construction hoists zipping concrete slabs and giant bundles of steel rods to dizzying heights.

The construction division of South Korean conglomerate Samsung is building the Burj Dubai, which is one of just six buildings in the world that are 100 or more stories high, Emaar said.

Samsung's three-day-per-story construction technique was pioneered on skyscrapers in South Korea and involves pumping liquid concrete into a form that is removed and jacked to a new level after fresh concrete is allowed to dry for just one day, said Beejay Kim, Samsung's Dubai-based business manager.

"We're not breaking any speed records, just the height record," Kim said.

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.

Only one building in the Middle East remains taller: the nearby Emirates Office Tower, a skyscraper resembling a razor blade that rises to 355 meters (1,165 feet). Elsewhere in the Mideast, Dubai's sail-shaped Burj al-Arab hotel stands at 321 meters (1,053 feet) and the Kingdom Center in the Saudi capital Riyadh is 302 meters (991 feet).

Europe's tallest building, the Triumph Palace in Moscow, rises to just 264 meters (866 feet).

Asked how long the Burj Dubai would hold the world record, Kim said he was unsure.

"If anyone is looking for an even taller building, we are happy to build it," he said.

The Persian Gulf city of Dubai has staked its fame on bold engineering, building attention-grabbing projects including manmade resort islands shaped like palm trees, a mall with indoor skiing, and a vast Disney World-style amusement complex that includes plans for an apartment building that rotates on its axis.

Dubai began building skyscrapers to gain international prestige, not, like Hong Kong and New York, because of a shortage of land. But Dubai's skyscraper binge has jacked up land prices so much that tall buildings are the only feasible use for coveted building lots in the city's central district.

The Burj Dubai owes its shape to American architect Adrian Smith, of the Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Smith also designed Shanghai's 420-meter (1,378-foot) Jin Mao tower, the world's fifth tallest.

The other 100-story buildings are: The Sears Tower in Chicago (110 floors); Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea (105 floors); the Empire State Building, New York (102 floors); Taipei 101 (101 floors); and the John Hancock Center, Chicago (100 floors).

With all the talk about substainability & carbon footprints etc I would be interested to find out how enviromentally friendly it is to build 100 storey buildings in the dessert. The power to keep these immense towers air conditioned etc must be massive.

The huge aspects of Dubai is impressive but most cities evolve in relation to its enviroment. Will we look back on Dubai in 30 odd years & see if it is one huge folly.

Be afraid...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6179432634249787416

Be VERY afraid! :nuts:

^^ FYI. the directors cut of the video is coming in march 2007 most likely. if i find the time :D

With all the talk about substainability & carbon footprints etc I would be interested to find out how enviromentally friendly it is to build 100 storey buildings in the dessert. The power to keep these immense towers air conditioned etc must be massive.


Burj Dubai is surely a special point when it comes to that topic, but for the average 50F Res tower with 400 apartments, i am pretty sure environmental efficiency is much higher than in 400 small town houses don't u think?

^^ FYI. the directors cut of the video is coming in march 2007 most likely. if i find the time :D



Burj Dubai is surely a special point when it comes to that topic, but for the average 50F Res tower with 400 apartments, i am pretty sure environmental efficiency is much higher than in 400 small town houses don't u think?

Not really as im sure 400 small town house in the UK wont require massive amounts of air con & electricty.

That video takes an hour to cover all the projects in Dubai :eek:

Dubai are building new verisons of the World's most famous landmarks :eek:

Eiffel Tower, Pyramids, Big Ben, Empire State Building etc... but with glass cladding and Las Vegas style neon flashing lights all over them. :(

About 20mins or so into that video

I count 10,000 towers

Over 2,000 Skyscrapers

Over 200 Supertalls

I count 10,000 towers

Over 2,000 Skyscrapers

Over 200 Supertalls

That all? :nuts:

^^ No. Probably over 5,000 skyscrapers. lol

200 supertalls? Where did you get that idea?

Dubai are building new verisons of the World's most famous landmarks :eek:

Eiffel Tower, Pyramids, Big Ben, Empire State Building etc... but with glass cladding and Las Vegas style neon flashing lights all over them. :(

About 20mins or so into that video

That'll be Dubailand. Some of that is Falcon City but if you want to see the worst part, find out about Asia Asia in the Al Bawadi development in Dubailand. They are replicating their very own Burj Dubai and alot more!

More here -

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=435135&page=13


http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/3656/photo07og7.jpg

^The scary part is that it's only around half height in that pic!

I hate the way the foreign forumers really hype up this supertall and most of (not all) of Dubai's overseemingly overrated towers going up. A bland 80 storey building would get a seal of approval just because it's tall and it's in Dubai, I find it quite hilarious. Ever heard of quality, not quantity. I'd rather have one Gherkin/LBT or the original Arena Central than hundreds of 80+ sotorey mundane clones going up.

Well of course you would, you're in the British forum.


If anything, UK buildings are hyped up just as bad... really, who in the world really cares about a 160m glass box (Broadgate Tower) or an equally bland 'Doon Street' Tower or even the Arena Central? Yes, a few novel designs like LBT, 122L, Bishopsgate redeem it for us, but we've got a few shit projects going up too.. and they are given due as unwarranted as their Dubai counterparts are.

Another one...
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=451708

1,200 metre tower -

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=452579

:weird:

http://www.willfox.com/images/skyscrapers/al_burj.jpg

^^ Remember that april fools joke where I fooled you into thinking al burj had grown to about this height and that they added more sections to the top of the tower? Well here's the real news now and check this render, also unmodified by me in any way. :lol:

http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/5282/bdubaiwaterfrontof7.th.jpg (http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bdubaiwaterfrontof7.jpg)


Think it'll be thinner than what you've shown it there:

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/8879/alburjay3.jpg

It is insane I must admit. It is too much highrises on small area and it is too big to go everything how they planed. What they plan to do to keep clean beaches and sea, I mean how can they have on that plaice one multimillion populated town, the biggest sea port in the world (according to theirs plan), the biggest airport in the world and nice clean beaches, sea and enviroment what is main thing to have tourists who visit them becouase of the fun, beaches and sea?

Give it 50 years and it'll be like Benidorm!

I think the Chaos Theory can very well apply here. One more flap of the butterfly wing, and Dubai's bubble will explode.

^^ FYI. the directors cut of the video is coming in march 2007 most likely. if i find the time :D



Burj Dubai is surely a special point when it comes to that topic, but for the average 50F Res tower with 400 apartments, i am pretty sure environmental efficiency is much higher than in 400 small town houses don't u think?

why would that be so? A skyscraper is an extremely expensive building in terms of energy and resources. A skyscraper only becomes a viable alternative where land becomes a limiting factor but the building still consumes vast resources even if it saves lovely parkland! Lets face it tall buildings in Dubai are NOT being built for this reason. Far more maintainence is required for day to day running than say a cluster of small 3 story buildings where the buildings are more likely to respond better to the occupants daily cycle and where the small buildings can weather and degrade over time without resulting in catastrophic failure! Even worse is that in dubai as in most places they are just copying the N.American model of a tall building which is hardly adaptive to extreme envionments!

I think the Chaos Theory can very well apply here. One more flap of the butterfly wing, and Dubai's bubble will explode.

:lol:

Well of course you would, you're in the British forum.


If anything, UK buildings are hyped up just as bad... really, who in the world really cares about a 160m glass box (Broadgate Tower) or an equally bland 'Doon Street' Tower or even the Arena Central? Yes, a few novel designs like LBT, 122L, Bishopsgate redeem it for us, but we've got a few shit projects going up too.. and they are given due as unwarranted as their Dubai counterparts are.

No one has ever really 'hyped up' Broadgate or Doon Street. They have recieved quite alot of critiscism.

Burj Dubai latest. A little over halfway up...

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7374/dsc01666su1zm0.jpg

http://i16.tinypic.com/2j2gwvd.jpg

This is a quote from the 50th edition of the Guiness book of records which just makes me think, my lord, how fast are we progressing.

[quote] The Future

Skyscraper buffs will contiue to argue as to which of the world's archittectual gems constitutes as the world's tallest building. There are plans being drawn up for new high-rise buildings so perhaps when Guiness World Records celebrates its centenary in 2055, there will be a building in existence thats twice the height of the current record holder!

Unreal. Everytime I look at this I find it unbelievable. I've got to go to Dubai to witness it!

Also, I hope that its the picture that was taken at a slant, and not the building!

This is so fucking tall. It's starting to look silly. The skyscrapers under construction in the foreground are roughly as tall as 1CS (left) and the Gherkin (right)
http://i19.tinypic.com/6crz8tv.jpg

http://i13.tinypic.com/6af44kk.jpg

How can the ground support such a massive structure? You'd think it would sink or topple over...

Piling the Burj

http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/1964/1pilesxe1.jpg

Monster Foundation

The 800-meter (1,827 feet) Burj Dubai has the mother of all foundations to support a super-structure that is expected to weigh 500,000 tons. The tower rests on a 3.7m-thick triangular frame foundation supported by 192 rounded steel piles or support cylinders measuring 1.5m in diameter and extending 50m (164 ft.) below the ground.

This is so fucking tall. It's starting to look silly.

Just over halfway up as well, nearly 450 metres on those photos you've posted according to seasoned observers in the thread in the world forums.

All looks very silly doesn't it!

http://i19.tinypic.com/6crz8tv.jpg

Whenever I see pictures like this I wonder if the ground will ever be as green as in the renders. :dunno:

^^ It will be :yes:

^ Can you please take that inaccurate boast about Emirates being the world's fastest growing airline out of your sig? Ryanair is growing faster by both total passenger numbers and as a percentage.

How can the ground support such a massive structure? You'd think it would sink or topple over...

I'm more concerned that it's too lanky for it's own good. The amount of pressure on the base must be huge. If it was perhaps 50% wider then it would look more stable. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were too scared to go up it. The lack of cladding also makes it look silly.

http://i19.tinypic.com/6crz8tv.jpg

Whenever I see pictures like this I wonder if the ground will ever be as green as in the renders. :dunno:

Yea i always find those renders amuseing...that shopping centre looks ridiculous..

fuck my old boots this building is insane.. they started cladding apparently.

check this page out, clear pics and the diagram including swiss re is an eye opener..
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=466683&page=60

Burj Dubai is just insane. I feel so sorry for the crane operators.

http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t68/joobn/DSC02101.jpg

Why do you seel sorry for the crane operators?
That must be one of the best veiws in Dubai :)

^^Not much to see though, is there? Desert, a big construction site - nothing that really takes your breath away. And I must say, it's got to be bitterly cold up there, plus the smog - not nice. http://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/images/smilies/crystal/arf.gif

Burj Dubai is just insane. I feel so sorry for the crane operators.

http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t68/joobn/DSC02101.jpg


Holy crud.

I feel so sorry for the crane operators.


Why?

The cladding has started on Burj Dubai.
Current height: 452.1m
Current floor: 126

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/4141/imresolt06sk9.jpg

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8426/imresolt08rp2.jpg

They took their time with it didn't they? It's an incredible looking structure. Have they revealed the height yet?

1,200 metre tower -

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=452579

:weird:

Its just crazy :nuts:
Just look at the footprint of it!!

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/1026/imresolt03bc1.jpg

Btw your link wasent working so heres another one http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=291398

Dubai marina, tallest block(s):

2007:

http://i6.tinypic.com/5218qqq.jpg


2012?
All over 200m
9 over 300m
4 over 400m
1 over 500m

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6796/marinav62gq6.jpg


Can't wait to see the insane traffic jams here :nuts:

dubai must be full of basket cases..
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/8879/alburjay3.jpg[/QUOTE]

they've got good intentions but this is beginning to get silly.. :hammer:

i cant believe all of this is just in the desert, not exactly the best place to show off these buildings, especially since the visibility in dubai never seems to be very amazing

The belly-dancing skyscraper by David Fisher:

http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/twirlingtower1.jpg

Video:
vJRDZE5xW2Y

From joobn. Soon it will overtake Taipei 101:


http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t68/joobn/imageupdate1.jpg

Its just crazy :nuts:
Just look at the footprint of it!!

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/1026/imresolt03bc1.jpg

Btw your link wasent working so heres another one http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=291398In New York and Hong Kong they built towers as a response to limited land availability. In Chicago and Dubai they have masses of room but Chicago at least has built its scrapers within a dense central urban cluster. In Dubai they want to build a 1200m building in the middle of the desert. Even the main scraper district along Sheikh Zayed Road has zero street life. Dubai is nothing like New York or Hong Kong and never will be.

Remind me again who or what will occupy these towers??

3D marina model is almost done:

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/773/marinav612texturedyv5.jpg

The building in the foreground is about the same height as One Canada Square, the tallest skyscraper in the UK.
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/2168/imresolt01th5.jpg

138 floors... will soon overtake Taipei 101. Cladding has started too -


http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/1232/imresolt28cb5.jpg

500m already! At this rate, it could be finished well within the two year deadline.

How much for an apartment in the bear?

I bet a pad in one of the eyes must cost a few bob.

From the World Forums:

http://aycu40.webshots.com/image/19319/2003715356350696960_rs.jpg

http://aycu33.webshots.com/image/20872/2003706304175724218_rs.jpg

http://aycu04.webshots.com/image/17603/2003785856747551877_rs.jpg.http://aycu02.webshots.com/image/20481/2003723172986911868_rs.jpg

http://aycu31.webshots.com/image/19030/2003720874098546085_rs.jpg.http://aycu18.webshots.com/image/16977/2003785103393516677_rs.jpg

http://aycu31.webshots.com/image/19030/2003720874098546085_rs.jpg

Bugger me! Think how many floors are below where the picture cuts off and how many there will be above when its complete. It makes me feel a bit dizzy.

These scale models really show the ludicrous height of Burj Dubai -


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1363/849355036_ff1d8adeb6_b.jpg

oh cut it out!! just because dubai is getting more exciting than ur place is no reason is bawl like kids...
how come people are going there? how come there are many repeat tourists over there

the real estate is a cylical market so it would boom,bust and boom again

yes it would be green
yes the country has culture and history...(all places do!)

your comparison to new york serves no merit...this country at least is doing its best in a short period of time so let them be

I'm lost ^^

I think dubai is cool doing all this.

Flying the flag for the middle east.