Reaching for the sky

Dubai has become the centre of the Middle East and everyone knows some of the luxurious hotels over there. We were lucky enough to visit this booming city last week. The mentality of 'big, bigger, biggest… and then even bigger' reigns and has now reached a new high. With the new Burj Dubai they aim to construct the tallest building in the world. The construction is over halfway and already it is the tallest structure in the region at over 400m.
This new landmark will rise higher than Toronto's CN Tower, the world's tallest freestanding structure (553.33m) and the Taipei 101 (509m), currently the world's tallest building. It is planned to rise more than 160 floors (some even whisper more than 200 floors), but the actual height is not disclosed, although some rumours say that it will be over 800m or even over 1,000m. 5,187 labourers work round the clock to finish Burj Dubai by next year.
But this construction is not the end of Dubai as the world's largest construction site: three other buildings with more than 100 floors are under way and in Business Bay, near the Burj Dubai Complex, over 250 towers are in various stages of construction… And other developers in China and even Dubai itself are already making plans to knock the Burj of its pedestal as the highest building by constructing a mile-high (1,600m) building. We all know the story of Icarus who flew too close to the sun… But that doesn't prevent us of publishing a 12 page supplement on 'Booming Dubai' in HeadQuarters Magazine at the end of June. If you are interested in reading this, we would love to send it to you.