Burj Khalifa: Everything You Need To Know About Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa

The Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa

The Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa is a mixed-use skyscraper skysc located in Dubai, U.A.E. It is the world’s tallest building, according to all three of the main criteria by which such buildings are judged. The Burj Khalifa was officially named to honor the president of the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalīfah ibn Zāyid Āl Nahyān.AI Nahyan.

Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world

At 2,722 feet from base to tip, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world. When construction finished in 2010, it claimed the record from Taipei 101, a mixed-use building in Taipei, China, that stands at 1,667 feet tall. For greater context, two Eiffel Towers could be stacked on top of each other, and the Burj Khalifa would still be taller; the Empire State building just barely passes Burj Khalifa’s midpoint. Excluding the antenna and spire, the building is 1,919 feet tall, which is still equivalent to almost six and half football fields stacked on top of each other.

However, this is only one of the many world records Dubai’s Burj Khalifa holds. The monumental skyscraper is also the tallest structure ever built (surpassing the 2,121-foot Warsaw Radio Mast), the tallest freestanding structure (surpassing Toronto’s 1,815-foot CN Tower), and the building with the most floors (surpassing the World Trade Center’s 110 floors to its 163). 

Designs

Structurally, the Burj Khalifa is designed with a Y-shaped tripartite floor geometry. The design was largely based on Samsung Tower Palace Three, a skyscraper in Seoul with a similar structure that Smith had previously worked on. Because of zoning restrictions, Tower Palace Three currently stands at 73 stories, though it was originally meant to be 93, with multiple setbacks as it grew taller. When the height was reduced, “I brought it down to a point where they still stepped but only in two-story or three-story increments,” Smith explains. “So it was almost like building a top to the building.” 

Though the original vision for Tower Palace Three didn’t come to pass in Seoul, the Smith still had the idea for a supertall structure with varied stepping from the three points of the tripod. “I had a scheme where each leg of the three tripods would drop off at different points,” he says, “and the other two legs would go up and then one of those would drop off, until just one leg would continue on.” Similarly, Smith had also designed a version where the legs stepped at varying intervals around the building, so that from a distance the building would appear to spiral. During the three-week ideas competition, Smith had presented both of these concepts to Emaar, who were drawn to the fact that in either iteration, the building was not only buildable, but also had a dynamic quality. 

After winning the competition, the architect turned his attention to refining the building to better match the heritage of the Middle East. “As I was developing the massing, I thought about the architectural elements that exist in the Middle East, not just Dubai, that people are familiar with,” he says. Thinking particularly about Islamic architecture, pointed arches came to mind as did the onion dome—though often associated with Russian Orthodox churches, this form has roots in Syria and Iran. “So I thought, ‘I’m gonna use that, and I want to use it in an abstracted way where it’s not obvious,” Smith says of the dome shape. Because of its various setbacks, when looking down at the building, a dome form appears, though when looking up from the base, the shape isn’t particularly visible. “I wanted that to be a little mysterious, but prevalent.”

Location

Burj Khalifa is located in Downtown Dubai in the United Arab Emirates near the Dubai Fountain Boardwalk. Today, the building is surrounded by other offices, shops, and restaurants including the Dubai Mall, which includes many designer retailers such as Hermés, Saint Laurant, Cartier, and Balenciaga, with other notable destinations like Burj Al Arab and Palm Jumeirah nearby. Though the city is now known for its glitzy lifestyle and wealth, when the project was first getting started, the area wasn’t much more than a plot of land with a few buildings scattered here and there. “Sheikh Mohammed was a brilliant leader and had all of this land around Dubai, and he wanted to develop this city into a world class destination,” Smith explains. The effort was, in part, to diversify Dubai’s economy away from being largely oil-based. “He told his developer friends ‘if you have a really good idea, I’ll give you the land as long as you develop it quickly,’” Smith says. “So that’s really how Dubai blossomed so quickly.”

It’s also the reason the Burj Khalifa started coming together so fast. Less than a year after Emaar had selected Smith and SOM to design the supertall structure, they’d broken ground. “We got that building in the ground, in about four or five months,” Smith recalls. At the time, the Burj Khalifa was designed as a 2297-foot tower, but since it can take about a year to excavate and lay the foundation for a building of that size, Smith used that time to further develop the structure’s design. “During that process, I was able to do a series of options which would incrementally increase the height of the building, one of them even went up to about 3117 feet,” he says. 

Height

From the base of the building to the very top—which includes a spire and antenna—the Burj Khalifa is 2,722 feet, or a little over a half of a mile. Still, this wasn’t always the case. Though excited to win the design competition, there was something in the back of Smith’s mind that didn’t feel quite right. “As I was developing it over the next three or four months, it was just nagging at me that it still wasn’t tall enough and it wasn’t completing itself,” He While construction crews excavated the building’s foundation, Smith and his team flew to Dubai to present a series of models to the developers to show different ways the building could be completed. “We modeled them as a tower where I could take the top off and put another top on,” Smith explains. The architect was advocating for something in the 850-meter range (about 2790 feet), though developers were conscious about the price implications of this additional height. But pre-sale numbers were good, interest in the building was high, and the development team made a decision immediately. As soon as Smith was done presenting, they’d decided on an option that brought the building up an additional 500 or so feet—to the 2,722 feet it stands at today. “We made the decision right there,” Smith says

Construction Cost 

Total construction costs for the  Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa were reported to amount to $1.5 billion. Though it did cost a large sum, the Burj Khalifa is not the most expensive building in the world; that title goes to Rawabi Abraj Al-Bait Tower in Saudi Arabia, which cost $15 billion. In fact, there are 11 buildings across the globe that were more expensive to build than Burj Khalifa, despite all being shorter. 

Jeddah Tower

The Burj’s record may be beaten by a Middle Eastern rival in the not-too-distant future.

The Jeddah Tower – formerly known as the Kingdom Tower – is currently under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and is designed to reach 1,000 m (3,281 ft).

As the world’s first 1-km building, it will soar 170 m (550 ft) taller than the Burj Khalifa.

It has been designed by Adrian Smith, the same architect who designed the Burj. As of 31 December 2016, a total of 38 floors have been completed, and the central core containing elevator shafts and stairwells has reached level 49.

Is it possible to build even farther into the sky? We’ll have to wait and see.

Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world

At 2,722 feet from base to tip, the Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world. When construction finished in 2010, it claimed the record from Taipei 101, a mixed-use building in Taipei, China, that stands at 1,667 feet tall. For greater context, two Eiffel Towers could be stacked on top of each other, and the Burj Khalifa would still be taller; the Empire State building just barely passes Burj Khalifa’s midpoint. Excluding the antenna and spire, the building is 1,919 feet tall, which is still equivalent to almost six and half football fields stacked on top of each other.

However, this is only one of the many world records Dubai’s Burj Khalifa holds. The monumental skyscraper is also the tallest structure ever built (surpassing the 2,121-foot Warsaw Radio Mast), the tallest freestanding structure (surpassing Toronto’s 1,815-foot CN Tower), and the building with the most floors (surpassing the World Trade Center’s 110 floors to its 163). 

World Records

At over 828 meters (2,716.5 feet) and more than 160 stories, Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa holds the following records.

• • Tallest building in the world

• • Tallest free-standing structure in the world

• • Highest number of stories in the world

• • Highest occupied floor in the world

• • Highest outdoor observation deck in the world

• • Elevator with the longest travel distance in the world

• • Tallest service elevator in the World’s highest swimming pool (125th floor)^[28]

• • World’s highest restaurant (128th floor)^[29]

Tallest of the Supertall