The Tallest Buildings in the World

The race to build the world’s tallest building has reached a new level with plans for a mile-high tower to be built near the Red Sea port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

The multi-billionaire owner of the Savoy Hotel in London has unveiled plans for the ambitious £5 billion tower, which will overtake skyscrapers planned or under construction in Kuwait and Dubai.

The Mile High Tower will be double the height of its nearest rival and visitors will be able to see Africa from the top of the tower.

Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding, which is controlled by billionaire Prince al-Walid bin Talal, will invite bids before July for contracts to build the tower in Saudi Arabia’s commercial capital. It is estimated the project will cost approximately 5 billion pounds. The project will push architecture and engineering to new limits, as the tower must be robust enough to withstand the extremes of temperature and strong desert winds in the region. Masterminded by British-based engineers, the building will be onstructed in a “mini-city” near the Red Sea port of Jeddah and ould be twice the height of the world’s tallest building.

The 51-year-old’s Kingdom Holdings has appointed a joint venture et up by Hyder Consulting and Arup, the London enginerring irms, to build the 5 billion pounds tower.

The building will be fitted with a giant computer-operated damper tretching down several floors - to counter the nausea-inducing way caused by the wind.

The structure will also be stabilized by two mini-towers, lanking the building’s base and attached to the main structure y arched sky-bridges.

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The world’s tallest skyscraper under construction in the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai will take longer than planned to finish, its builders said, putting off the opening planned for the end of this year.

The Burj Dubai tower currently stands over 1,700 feet tall. The state-owned developer Emaar Properties said completion would be postponed until sometime in 2009. It did not give specifics, but the newspaper Gulf News and the online news site ArabianBusiness.com said the delay would be four months.

“The company would rather opt for a nominal delay in total quality execution of the Burj Dubai … than compromise on any aspect of quality,” Emaar, one of the main builders in this Gulf boomtown, said in a press release without elaborating.

Emaar did not give the reason for the delay.

The final height of Burj Dubai is a closely guarded secret. Emaar’s representatives previously said the tower will stop somewhere above 2,275 feet.

Last summer, the company said the skyscraper had reached 1,680 feet, surpassing Taiwan’s Taipei 101 which has dominated the global skyline at 1,667 feet since 2004.

When completed, the Burj Dubai will have more than 160 floors, 56 elevators, luxury apartments, boutiques, swimming pools, spas, exclusive corporate suites, Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani’s first hotel, and a 124th floor observation platform.

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The world’s tallest skyscraper under construction in the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai will take longer than planned to finish, its builders said, putting off the opening planned for the end of this year.

The Burj Dubai tower currently stands over 1,700 feet tall. The state-owned developer Emaar Properties said completion would be postponed until sometime in 2009. It did not give specifics, but the newspaper Gulf News and the online news site ArabianBusiness.com said the delay would be four months.

“The company would rather opt for a nominal delay in total quality execution of the Burj Dubai … than compromise on any aspect of quality,” Emaar, one of the main builders in this Gulf boomtown, said in a press release without elaborating.

Emaar did not give the reason for the delay.

The final height of Burj Dubai is a closely guarded secret. Emaar’s representatives previously said the tower will stop somewhere above 2,275 feet.

Last summer, the company said the skyscraper had reached 1,680 feet, surpassing Taiwan’s Taipei 101 which has dominated the global skyline at 1,667 feet since 2004.

When completed, the Burj Dubai will have more than 160 floors, 56 elevators, luxury apartments, boutiques, swimming pools, spas, exclusive corporate suites, Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani’s first hotel, and a 124th floor observation platform.

More..