Burj Khalifa, Dubai

What can you tell me about it?

Completed in 2010, the Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Emirates. It stands at a height of 828m and has 163 floors for offices, apartments, a hotel, restaurants, a fitness centre, an 11 hectare park and an observation deck.

This vast project involved more than 380 skilled engineers and on-site technicians and was completed in six years.

Why is it important?

It’s the tallest building on earth!

And by a long way as well. It’s 200m taller than the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, which previously held the title of tallest free-standing structure in the world. In fact, it took just 1,325 days from the start of excavation work for the Burj Khalifa to break the CN Tower’s record.

How was it built?

The Y-shape of the building is influenced by a flower found in the desert. The way this pattern is adapted to form the tower’s tapering, spiral shape helps air flow around the building and reduces the danger of high wind speeds on the structure.

Anything else of interest?

Dubai is very hot, which makes air conditioning the world’s tallest building even more difficult. Its cooling system, which is the equivalent of running 10,000 tons of melting ice around the building, creates 15 million gallons of condensation. This is stored beneath the building and can be reused to water the gardens in the surrounding development.