BURJ KHALIFA

The financially troubled Gulf emirate of Dubai has opened the world's tallest building, a glistening concrete, glass and steel pinnacle rising 828 metres out of the desert sands.
He renamed the building, previously known as Burj Dubai, Burj Khalifa in honour of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

Opened with a bang ... fireworks explode around the world's tallest skyscraper. Photo: Reuters

Sheikh Khalifa is also ruler of Abu Dhabi, the emirate which came to Dubai's help late last year to the tune of $US10 billion ($11.15 billion) to bail out troubled property developer Nakheel, a subsidiary of Dubai World.
"Today the United Arab Emirates achieves the tallest building ever created by the hand of man... and this great project deserves to carry the name of a great man. Today I inaugurate Burj Khalifa," Sheikh Mohammad said.
Emaar Properties, the partly government-owned developer, had maintained the suspense about the skyscraper's final height, saying only that it exceeded 800 metres.
On Monday it said the tower had more than 200 floors, only 160 of which would be inhabited, while the remaining floors were for services.
Burj Khalifa has a total built-up area of 530,000 square metres, including 170,000 square metres of residential space and more than 28,000 square metres of prime office space, Emaar said.
This amounts to 1,044 apartments and 49 floors of office space, served by 57 lifts. It also has a hotel carrying the Georgio Armani logo.
Bill Baker, a structural and civil engineer and partner in Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), which designed the tower, said it has set a new benchmark.
"We thought that it would be slightly taller than the existing tallest tower of Taipei 101. (Emaar) kept on asking us to go higher but we didn't know how high we could go," he said.
"We were able to tune the building like we tune a music instrument. As we went higher and higher and higher, we discovered that by doing that process... we were able to reach heights much higher than we ever thought we could."
A spiralling Y-shaped design by SOM architect Adrian Smith was used to support the structural core of the tower, which narrows as it ascends. Higher up it becomes a steel structure topped with a huge spire.
To reach the final stages, concrete was propelled to a height of 605 metres - a world record.
The inauguration of the tower comes, however, after the once-booming real estate sector of the emirate has crashed, halving the value of most Dubai properties in comparison with peak prices recorded in the summer of 2008.
It also comes as Dubai battles a serious debt crisis, resulting from the heavy borrowing by some of its state corporates to finance imposing property projects.