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By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
The world's tallest building has everything ― offices, shops, swimming pools, apartments, a hotel, a nightclub, a mosque ― everything except tenants and residents. But the 169-floor tower of superlatives has only been open since Monday.
In a bit of awkwardness, there was a last-minute name change from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa in honor of the ruler of neighboring Abu Dhabi who came through with a $25 billion bailout for the struggling Persian Gulf banking center. That has to be some kind of record for naming rights.
The Burj Khalifa is more than half a mile high, and, at 2,727 feet, more than 1,000 feet higher than the world's previous tallest building, in Taipei, Taiwan.
The tallest buildings in the U.S., birthplace of the skyscraper, are the 110-story Sears ― now Willis ― Tower in Chicago and the 102-story Empire State Building, now seventh and 14th, respectively, among the world's tallest buildings.
Indeed, the Khalifa is taller than two Empire State Buildings, but at least the architects were American, Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.
The Times of London makes the very Timesian observation: ``It is the first time the Arab world has claimed the title of the world's tallest building since 1311, when Lincoln Cathedral exceeded the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza."
The building in Dubai ― it is commonly described as looking like a giant hypodermic needle _ is so tall that it is 10 degrees cooler at the top than at the desert below, and the building is engineered to sway as much as 6 feet in high winds.
With regard to tall buildings, the fate of the twin towers at the World Trade Center is never far from anyone's mind, and the Khalifa has reportedly been built to withstand the impact of an airliner.
Every 20 to 25 stories there are specially reinforced ``refuge floors" with independent air supplies. Evacuating the building would be an arduous and time-consuming task since there are 3,000 steps from the top floor to the street.
As for those missing tenants and guests, Dubai should take heart from a movie about another fanciful and slightly unreal building project. To paraphrase the signature line of ``Field of Dreams," ``If you build it, they will come."
Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).
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