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Dubai tower steals the crown from CN |
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5/14/2007 9:23:28 AM |
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It's been the Earth's penultimate exclamation mark for three decades, but the CN Tower's days as the world's tallest free-standing structure are now officially numbered.
Canada's signature architectural creation has, at most, 100 days to go before a cloud-piercing skyscraper in the Middle East emirate of Dubai tops Toronto's 553-metre landmark en route to an eventual height somewhere on the stratospheric side of 700 metres.
Precisely how high the $1-billion Burj Dubai will rise is being kept secret, although early plans showed it soaring to 808 metres. But the U.S.-based designer of Dubai's stunning vertical megaproject has told CanWest News Service that "the Burj" - now rising at the rate of about one floor every few days and which last week surpassed Chicago's 442-metre Sears Tower, the tallest building in America - will push past the CN Tower by mid-August, give or take an unexpected delay or advance in the construction schedule.
"Approximately three months from now, the Burj Dubai will be at or above the 553-metre mark," the Chicago-based design and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill said in an e-mail.
George Efstathiou, Skidmore's managing partner for the Burj Dubai, said in an interview that he's planning a trip to Toronto this summer - the last in the CN Tower's 31-year reign as planetary pinnacle - for a respectful elevator ride up the longtime world record-holder, before it joins the likes of the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids of Egypt on the list of the globe's ex-tallest structures.
A host of other architectural giants around the world - in Russia, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Bahrain and the U.S. - have been proposed to shoot past the half-kilometre mark and, within a decade or two, make it tough for the Toronto tower to maintain a spot in the top 10.
In fact, municipal officials in Illinois were expected to approve blueprints on Wednesday for the 609-metre Chicago Spire, a corkscrew-style mixed-use building overlooking Lake Michigan that would overshadow the city's famed Sears Building and relegate the CN Tower to No. 2 in North America.
Even the Burj Dubai could be toppled from the world's-tallest title soon after its completion, set for June 2009. A second skyscraper just a few doors down along the Dubai waterfront - the Al-Burj - is designed to reach 1,200 metres, twice the height of the CN Tower, and then some.
But Efstathiou sniffs at the prospect of the Burj Dubai being trumped anytime soon.
"There are a lot of towers that are planned," he said, emphasizing the last word. "It's interesting to see how many are actually being built."
Developed with financial backing from the government of the oil-rich Gulf state, the Burj Dubai has been described as "a symbol of the city's pride and a statement of our arrival on the global scene" by Mohammed Ali Alabbar, chairman of the building's Dubai-based owner, Emaar Properties.
Dubai is one of the most lucrative tourism and real estate markets in the world. Part of the United Arab Emirates and located on the northern coast of the Arabian peninsula, Dubai has developed plans for the world's first underwater hotel, a revolving indoor ski slope and a constellation of 250 man-made islands shaped and positioned to create a miniature version of the planet's major land masses.
Dubai has forecast growth in tourism to 15 million visitors by 2010.
Efstathiou, whose company also designed the Sears Tower and the 344-metre John Hancock Center in Chicago, says technology and real estate economics have combined to fuel demand for super-tall buildings at a number of key sites around the world.
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Source: Canada.com |
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