Art Throughout the Ages

Dubai's Amazing Buildings

The city of Dubai has some of the most architecturally advanced buildings in the world. Two of these buildings are the Burj Khalifa and the Burj Al Arab.

The Burj Khalifa, also known as the Burj Dubai, is the tallest building in the world. It reaches a whopping height of 828 meters (2,717 feet). That’s pretty impressive! Construction for this building in September of 2004 and ended in October of 2009. In 2009 the price for square foot was $4,000. The building was created by an American architecture company called Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which was established in 1936. “The design of Burj Khalifa is derived from patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture. According to the structural engineer, Bill Baker of SOM, the building's designing corporate cultural and historical elements particular to the region such as the spiral minaret.” The building can hold 35,000 people at any given time. The building contains 57 elevators and 8 escalators. Each of the floors has a specific job, for example, the floors from 160 and up are for mechanical purposes and floors 139 to 154 are corporate suites. This amazing architectural feat was announced the world’s largest building in March of 2010; 5 months after it was built. In 2012 it was reported that 80% percent of the apartments in the building were filled up. This building is estimated to be worth $1.5 billion USD.

The second building that is truly astounding is the Burj Al Arab. The building was classified as the “tallest building in the world used exclusively as a hotel at the time of its completion”. The Burj Al Arab is a luxurious hotel in the city of Dubai. A room in this beautiful hotel runs from $2,500 and up. Pretty expensive! Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get to the actual building itself. The Burj Al Arab is 321 meters (1,053 feet) tall and contains 60 floors. The shape of the building is supposed to mimic the mast of a boat. The building was created by Tom Wright of Atkins. The hotel lies on an artificially made man beach which runs 980 feet wide. Construction on the hotel began in 1994 and ended in 1999. An interesting feature of this building is that if you look at it from the back, it resembles a cross. This was noticed only after the building was created. They were unable to fix it or remove the horizontal bar. This made a few people angry. The hotel accommodates 202 rooms. One of the most expensive rooms in the building is the Royal Suite which runs about $19,000 per night. The hotel has 2 restaurants; one of them is an Oyster bar. This is almost half the price of the Burj Khalifa coming in at a whopping $650 million USD.

These are just two of the elite buildings in the city of Dubai. If you have $19,000 to blow, I recommend staying in the Royal Suit of the Burj Al Arab. You won’t regret it (until you see the bill). These buildings were designed with the utmost technology and are unparalleled today.