Dubai now boasts world’s tallest building

BURJ Dubai, the world’s tallest building since July, has become the world’s tallest free-standing structure, reaching 1,822 feet, the developers said.

The Dubai Tower’s final height is a closely guarded secret, but its completion is expected by the end of 2008.

The building’s climb is one example of Dubai’s stratospheric rise from a sleepy desert town to one of the principal business centres in the Middle East.

The Burj Dubai surpassed Canada’s Toronto-based CN Tower on Thursday night, which at 1,822 feet, had been the world’s tallest free-standing structure since 1976.

In July, the Dubai Tower, as it is known in English, moved past Taiwan’s 1,667-foot Taipei 101, the highest skyscraper in the world since 2004.

“The Burj Dubai is setting new world records in the construction of super-tall buildings,” said Mohmmad Ali al-Abbar, chairman of Burj’s state-owned developer, Emaar Properties.

“This architectural and construction masterpiece is truly an inspirational human achievement that celebrates the can-do mindset of Dubai,” al-Abbar said to local media.

By the end of 2008, the developers say, the Burj will fulfil all four criteria for the tallest building, listed by the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The criteria include: the height of the structural top, the highest occupied floor, the top of the roof, and the tip of the spire, pinnacle, antenna, mast or flag pole.