Some of you might have heard of the world's tallest skyscraper completed only a few months ago, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Being such an architectural feat, many people have questions on how it was built and its significance, and why is it in Dubai.Being the first building to rise a half a mile, its Chicago architect, Adrian Smith was not in control of where it was located, just that it was a monsterous achievement. There were many extreme height and extreme climate obstacles the designers had to achieve to create such an imense building.
The building is essentially five 30 story buildings stacked upon each other. It had to be built this way mainly for pressure reasons. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on the building in both water and air. Imagine the pressure a water pipe that is 800 meters tall would need to allow water to get to the top. You would not want to be around if this pipe ever broke. For this reason, they created a system which there was a new pressure system for each section of the building. Another water problem that came up was that the hot water was hot and the cold water was hot. They did not want hot water coming out of a cold water spicket in a five star hotel that is located in the building. To solve this problem, they used the high humidity and condensation of the area to create a system which collects water during a cooling period, collecting about 15 million gallons of cool water a year.
Air pressure and temperature were also a large concern for such a tall building. The air in the middle of the building is very cold, while the air at the top of the building is very hot. For this reason they created a air suction system that takes the hot air from the top of the building to the middle of the building and vice versa.
It seems to me that such a tall building is going to have many concerns regarding fire and life safety. While they seem to have worked everything out, I still have my doubts that this buidling could possibly be completely safe. Another problem is that in this economy, they are having trouble filling all the spaces in the builidng. While some parts of the building consist of a hotel, restaurants, apartments, and office spaces, there are many parts which cannot be filled. Even though this is a remarkable builidng, I have my doubts that it was a smart building to build. I guess only time will tell if this high of a building works in this world.
-ARCHITECTURAL RECORD
Yeah it is really funny that we some how found the same building in two seperate journals. I guess when the largest tower in the world is built, its going to make some headlines. I thinks its pretty cool how they solved their pressure head issue in the piping system by making the building into five, thirty story buildings. I couldn't imagine a pump or pipe for that matter that could handle the pressure of getting water up 800 meters, and sustaining a pressure so that the water doesnt blow the shower head off the wall. I would really hate to be the poor AutoCAD designer though who had to draw up the plans to scale for this building...
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