The Tallest Buildings in the World

Seoul and other major cities across the nation will see a new skyline as the construction of 12 skyscrapers with over 100 stories is underway.

These buildings will stand at least 400 meters high, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs.

Seoul alone will have six skyscrapers, including Dream Tower, with 152 stories at a height of 620 meters in Yongsan, and the second Lotte World building in Jamsil. In the nation’s largest port city, Busan, four skyscrapers will be constructed, including Busan Lotte World, 120 and 510 meters high.

Korea is expected to outrun other nations in terms of number of skyscrapers with over 100 stories if all these towers are completed. Currently, the United Arab Emirates has six skyscrapers of a similar scale, followed by the United States with four and China with one.

Such constructions are expected to become a landmark and serve as a new source of tourism and regional economic growth. The existence of such high buildings also helps its neighborhood become better developed.

Some are concerned they may be hazardous in the face of natural or human disasters such as earthquakes and fire.

“We have basic guidelines for the construction of skyscrapers, which consider the city’s overall appearance and safety,'’ an official from the Seoul City Government said.

Another problem might be financing the construction.

The construction of buildings with more than 50 stories requires approximately twice the budget as those with fewer than 50. They also require high-tech methods of construction with the combination of various industries.

Consequently, projects for the construction of skyscrapers face difficulties in finding business partners or forming consortiums.

Some of the projects are pending due to finance issues, such as the construction of a skyscraper in Junggu, downtown Seoul, and a tour resort complex in Haeundae, Busan.

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..

Michael Schumacher, a veritable landmark in motor racing history, is to become an actual landmark.

To enable Schuey to continue to tower over the rest of the field, so to speak, a German company undertaking construction projects in the Gulf emirate of Dubai is building the Michael Schumacher Business Avenue. The construction project is to be highlighted by a 29-floor dual-purpose commercial/residential tower. The champion himself is expected to fly out to Dubai – where he already has his own island – to kick-start the project, which is expected to begin construction within the next three months.

Believe it or not, Schumacher won’t be the first German-speaking, former Ferrari-driving, multiple-world-championship-winning F1 driver to get a complex named after him in the Dubai development: the Niki Lauda Twin Towers are located nearby.

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The Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibtion Centre looks a lot like something out of Star Wars. Unlike the traditional high-rise building, the design for the Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibition Centre accommodates all primary functions, such as the convention centre, hotel rooms, apartments, offices and retail space in a giant sphere.

Don’t like the view? Wait a few minutes and it will change.

In skyscraper-crazy Dubai, tall isn’t enough. In a design to be unveiled today in the oil-rich emirate, David Fisher, an Italian-Israeli architect, has dreamed up a 68-story combination hotel, apartment and office tower where the floors would rotate 360 degrees. Each floor would rotate independently, creating a constantly changing architectural form.

Each story of the tower would be shaped like a doughnut and be attached to a center core housing elevators, emergency stairs and other utilities. Wind turbines placed in gaps between the doughnuts would generate electricity.

The doughnuts won’t rotate fast enough to give guests upset stomachs. A single rotation would take around 90 minutes. “It’s quite slow,” says Mr. Fisher.

The city’s planning board has endorsed a proposal for a twisting lakefront tower that would become the nation’s tallest building.

With Thursday’s approval from the Chicago Plan Commission, the design and site plan for the 2,000-foot Chicago Spire goes to the city zoning committee next week.

“This is a wonderful project, and everyone is very enthused,” said Constance Buscemi, spokeswoman for the city’s planning department.

Technorati Tags: Chicago, Fordham Spire, Tallest Building in the world

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Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper, is facing construction delays of at least a year after a leading contractor on the project went bankrupt, leaving the tower without any external walls.

Work that should have begun in the first quarter of last year won’t start until April at the earliest following the collapse of Switzerland-based Schmidlin Ltd Facade Technology, said George Efstathiou, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, which designed the tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Delays to the US$900 million, 160-storey skyscraper are a setback to Dubai’s plans to create a 202-hectare district featuring hotels, offices, apartments and the world’s biggest shopping mall as it seeks to become the Middle East’s No. 1 tourist hub. While the tower’s internal structures have already passed the 100th storey, the lack of a facade means work on fitting out the building can’t begin.

“It’s very unusual for a tower to be this tall without cladding,” Efstathiou said yesterday in an interview on the sidelines of the “Building Tall” construction conference in Dubai.

“The cladding is the enclosure of a building, so any interior work that needs dry conditions cannot be completed if it’s not in place.”

Wolfgang Rudolph, US general manager of Permasteelisa SpA’s Josef Gartner unit
“But we have a new contractor on board and they have a local partner and a scheme to get us back on track,” he said.

The facade for the Burj Dubai, comprising thousands of metal panels, will now be provided by Hong Kong-based Far East Aluminium Group, Efstathiou said.

“The cladding is the enclosure of a building, so any interior work that needs dry conditions cannot be completed if it’s not in place,” said Wolfgang Rudolph, US general manager of Permasteelisa SpA’s Josef Gartner unit, one of the world’s largest producers of so-called curtain walling.

Schmidlin Ltd Facade Technology, based in Aesch, Switzerland, filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 22 last year. The company said at the time that the high-risk and technologically-challenging nature of its work had led to spiraling costs, leaving it “massively in the red” since 2003.

Forget the kilometer-high Burj Dubai under construction in the Persian Gulf’s fast-growing city-state. A British consortium is building something even wilder, which surely qualifies as the world’s largest bona-fide gadget: The Time Residences tower, a solar powered skyscraper that will use the electricity thus generated to rotate through 360 degrees.

“We didn’t want to build just another building or tower, we wanted to create something unique - a precious place to live - a genuine contender to be one of the great buildings in the world,” said Tav Singh, director of Dubai Property Ring, the Dubai arm of UK-based property investors UK Property Group.

The completed tower will offer 200 expensive apartments for people who want to spend lots of money to screw up their circadian rhythym. Singh said they want to build many more such towers, with one for every time zone.

More..Rotating tower to be solar-powered [Gulf News]