In Dubai, we are witnessing a historic achievement - the return of high-rise construction records to the countries of the Middle East. Here, under the Middle East sun, a record of the highest structure was born, then it was repeated with the updating of the highest result and held on, not inferior to technical progress and contrary to it, until the end of the 19th century.
The record left its homeland a little more than 100 years. And so he returned to his hot land, which rises a high-rise spire to an undeveloped height, leaving alien arrogant giants far below.
Dubai has challenged the world. He is building a skyscraper that has already reached the sky at the highest level, but does not reveal his ultimate goal, which may be beyond the 800-meter distance from the earth. Buildings of record height are being built and projected now in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar.
The sky-high heights of one kilometer and even one mile (1609 m) are called, which local participants of the high-rise construction race claim to achieve. In an unprecedented increase in energy prices and a multiple increase in oil revenues, the Arabian countries have every opportunity to return the championship spire to the Arab region, ascended into the sky in ancient Babylon.
The Tower of Babel, erected on the left bank of the Euphrates in the flourishing Mesopotamia, was the first high-rise building in the history of mankind. Rising into the sky to a 90-meter-high ancient tower, the foundation and the lower part of the wall of which have survived to this day, only 60 meters were missing to be recognized as a skyscraper in our technological times. It was built in the biblical past, back in the second millennium BC. Called the "house of the founding of heaven and earth," a building made of unbaked brick-and-limestone, which was included in the legends, was built to connect heaven with earth. But for mankind it has not become a symbol of altitude. The Babylonian creation went down in history as it was bugging discord between people, and few people have the idea that the tower was, for its time, an architectural miracle, a building masterpiece and a high-altitude record.
The first building known to the whole world was another construction masterpiece - the lighthouse Faros. He also grew up in the Middle East.
The man-made landmark for the ships of the Mediterranean, recognized as a “miracle” along with the tomb of the king of the Mausoleum, Colossus of Rhodes, the pyramids of Giza and other construction wonders, was erected in Egyptian Alexandria by the Greek architect Sostratus in 280 BC. It rose to the sky 135 meters and was considered the tallest building in the world until the creation of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which took its place in the sky above the Field of Mars at an altitude of 317 meters only at the end of the 19th century. But the Eiffel Tower is just an openwork decoration, a feather in the hat of Paris, and Faros was a massive structure and had an applied purpose.
The building of the Faros lighthouse was so impressive that the firewood for the fire reflected in its mirrors was carried on donkeys along an internal spiral road. The lighthouse, decorated with bronze and granite, astounded the imagination of contemporaries. He influenced the architecture of churches. Later, the naval landmark inspired the first Muslims to build minarets, and even the word "manara", from which the Russian name of this part of the religious Islamic building comes from, means in Arabic "lighthouse".
The Alexandrian "wonder of the world" stood for one and a half thousand years. The lighthouse worked until the Arab conquest of Egypt in the middle of the seventh century. Nature broke it, destroying it with an earthquake in the year 700. Restored, it stood for another seven centuries and was destroyed by a new wave of tremors.
In the history of the Middle East there are not only individual high-altitude champions, but also entire cities. Such is the Yemeni city of Shibam, which was once the capital of the kingdom of Hadramaut. The oldest skyscrapers of this city date back to the 16th century. The Europeans, when they first saw in the first half of the 19th century this miracle of Arab urban development with brick houses of 8 or more floors made of brick-cheese, were amazed because this was not even in Paris.
In Europe, until the mid-19th century, houses with more than 6 floors were practically not built. This was primarily due to difficulties in delivering water to higher levels. The practice of urban development changed when the American engineer Elisha Graves Otis in 1854 invented the elevator and safety devices that brake his cabin in the event of a cable break. Otis elevator became a springboard to the sky for urban architects, especially American.
The city of Shibam, leaning against a rock, in which about seven thousand inhabitants still live, is now called "Manhattan in the desert", but it would be more correct if New York Manhattan was called "American Shibam."
The first American skyscraper is considered to be The Home Insurance Building, built in 1885 and already destroyed, with only 12 floors. The principal thing is not the height of this building, but the use of a steel frame in it, to which all the elements of the structure were attached. Now the steel frame is used in the construction of all skyscrapers, which are considered to be houses with a height of the last floor of at least 150 meters. The height is measured from the level of the sidewalk to the upper point of the structural elements of the building, including spiers and excluding television and radio antennas and flagpoles. Towers that rise beyond the 300-meter limit above the ground are called super-tall. At the end of 2007, there were more than 1,500 skyscrapers in the world. Only about forty are considered superhigh among them.
The United Arab Emirates, thanks to the development of high-rise construction, has entered a limited circle of countries whose cities have rushed to the zenith. This spring, the VIII International Congress of the World Council on Tall Buildings and Ecology of the Urban Environment was held in Dubai. Its participants, among which there were about 30 Russian specialists, discussed issues of planning, architecture, and design of urban supergiants. Holding a meeting in Dubai is a recognition of his merits in this area.
The construction of the ultra-tall Dubai Tower began in September 2004. "It will be a unique architectural structure, a milestone in the history of world urban development," said the current ruler, vice president and prime minister of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, at the opening of the construction site. It was assumed that the construction will last three years and will cost a billion dollars. But it was not without problems.
In the mid-90s, the tallest building in Dubai was the 35-story building of the World Trade Center. Officially, it is called "Burj Rashid." He was popularly called the "white elephant in the desert" because the tower looked like an alien phenomenon among low-rise gray buildings, lost in the salty sand the color of road dust. She now stands this lonely tower in the past, now lost in the palisade of Dubai's skyscrapers. Thanks to Dubai, the Arabic word "burj" (tower) will enter the languages of all the reading peoples of the earth, since it is an integral part of the names of several world records written here. These include the tallest hotel in the world, the Burj Al-Arab (Arab Tower), whose sail-like building rises directly from the sea to more than 320-meter height. It is her appearance on the horizon that means for a motorist traveling from Abu Dhabi that in 35-40 kilometers he will reach his Dubai goal.
But this tower also became a "caliph for an hour." She faded in front of the new "palm tree" that has taken root here - the Dubai Tower (Burj Dubai). This architectural and constructional miracle in the form of a desert flower rushing towards the blue sky will leave far behind the current high-altitude record holder - the 101-story skyscraper in the capital of Taiwan, Taipei, which raised its 60-meter spire to a height of 508 meters in October 2003, and will retain for a long time a world championship, looking down on all the skyscrapers of the world.
It is still not known at what height the gigantic building will attract rare Arabian clouds. How far to the moon and the sun will take off the architectural feather of the spire of this ultra-high skyscraper, it will become known only after a year. Last April, the Dubai Tower ascended 630 meters above the ground.
She broke the record of 45 years for the highest object created by man. The achievement was established in 1963 and belonged to the American television mast KVLY-TV in North Dakota. The height of the mast on stretch marks is 628.8 meters.
The new record holder has already 160 floors and has surpassed all world records of number of storeys. It continues to grow upward, and until it is announced at what level its growth will stop. Specialists close to the construction site argue that theoretically the tower spire can “prick” the sky at a height of one kilometer.
The completion date for the Dubai Tower was recently set for next September. It is being transferred for the third time. It was originally supposed that the construction of the tower would be completed in December 2007, and it would host Christmas balls. The holidays were canceled, and the celebrations were postponed until April 2009. But the festivities will not take place next spring either. The completion of construction work is expected at the end of the hot Arabian summer of 2009.
"We go higher, and this is one of the reasons for delaying the construction of the project," says Fred Dury, executive director of the local construction company, Emaar. Now work is being carried out at an altitude of 638 meters under the scorching sun, with strong high winds. Northerly winds interfere with builders more than the southern sun. Ensuring the stability of the “desert flower” under the pressure of the winds is one of the main problems that builders have to solve. The upper part of the skyscraper will be subjected to wind blows, the speed of gusts of which reaches 300 km / h. Last month, builders stood idle, according to Fred Dury, for 18 days, waiting for the vagaries of the weather.
So that the building does not tremble under the pressure of the celestial elements, British and American designers proposed to strengthen the mass of its lower part and create a triple protection system. The system includes a concrete belt that reaches 600 meters in height, a steel core rising to 200 meters and three giant supports, which have the most massive part on the lower floors. Producers run by local company Arabtec, South Korean Samsung and Belgian Besix, claim that the technical height limit has not yet been exhausted. The control of air turbulences in the lower floors is ensured by air valves created at different floor heights.
The entire elevator economy of the tower will consist of 65 lifts worth $ 36 million. There will be only one service elevator in it, rising from the first floor to the last. He will not be engaged in the carriage of passengers. Residents and visitors to the skyscraper will have to transplant between heaven and earth in double-decker cabs at a speed of 10 meters per second. On the 124th floor of the tower, there will be an observation platform from which a panorama of the city and the Gulf will open with its man-made islands and white triangles of the sails of local sambukas, bagley and shui.
The pace of work is also slowing down due to the complication of the problems of delivering building materials to the upper floors. Based on the materials of the local press, it can be concluded that the delay in construction was caused, among other things, by Emaar’s intention to build one or several additional floors in order to raise the bar for the high-altitude leader as high as possible.
The president of Emaar, Muhammad al-Abbar, is not concerned about the delay in construction. “Such accomplishments occur once in a lifetime,” he says. The Dubai leader is opposed to rush so that builders, whose number now exceeds 4,000, have the opportunity to perform their work in a quality manner.
Only by the fall of next year, Burj Dubai will appear in all its glory, breaking all world altitude records, including the highest residential floor, the largest floor space, the highest spire and other achievements in this area.
A "desert flower" made of concrete will blossom in such a depth of heavenly azure, which the builders of the world have not yet reached. With the advent of competitive projects, the company intends to raise the high-rise bar in accordance with the capabilities of the foundation, which goes to a 50-meter depth. Burj Dubai Tower with a total floor space of about 460 thousand square meters. meters will be the decoration of the new residential, commercial and entertainment center of Dubai. It is planned to spend $ 20 billion on its creation. Real estate in the center, whose address will become one of the most attractive in the world, is sold to investors on a freehold basis.
The tower is not built from ivory, but apartments in it will be very expensive. They can only be bought by a very wealthy earthling. It is an earthling, since they will be sold to all citizens of the world, regardless of nationality. Together with a warrant for an apartment, the buyer will receive a resident visa for the right to reside in the Emirates.
The opening of the Dubai Tower will mark the end of nearly one hundred years of Western dominance in a skyscraper of the world. Center for urban high-altitude returns to the East.
