World's Tallest Skyscraper May Face Year-Long Delay
Last Updated: January 31, 2007 09:16 EST
By Sean Cronin
Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Burj Dubai, the world's tallest skyscraper, is facing construction delays of at least a year after a leading contractor on the project went bankrupt, leaving the tower without any external walls.
Work that should have begun in the first quarter of 2006 won't start until April at the earliest following the collapse of Switzerland-based Schmidlin Ltd. Facade Technology, said George Efstathiou, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, which designed the tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Delays to the $900 million, 160-storey skyscraper are a setback to Dubai's plans to create a 500-acre district featuring hotels, offices, apartments and the world's biggest shopping mall as it seeks to become the Middle East's No. 1 tourist hub. While the tower's internal structures have already passed the 100th storey, the lack of a facade means work on fitting out the building can't begin.
``It's very unusual for a tower to be this tall without cladding,'' Efstathiou said yesterday in an interview on the sidelines of the `Building Tall' construction conference in Dubai. ``But we have a new contractor on board and they have a local partner and a scheme to get us back on track.''
The facade for the Burj Dubai, comprising thousands of metal panels, will now be provided by Hong Kong-based Far East Aluminium Group, Efstathiou said. Schmidlin was removed from the project even though its unit in the U.A.E. survived the group's bankruptcy.
Emaar Properties
The tower is being built for Emaar Properties, the largest developer in the Middle East. The Dubai-based company didn't respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
``We are starting this year, probably in the second quarter,'' Far East Aluminium Marketing Director Ivan Leung said today in a telephone interview from Hong Kong.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, based in Chicago, designed or is working on three of the world's six tallest buildings, Efstathiou said. The Burj Dubai's exact height has yet to be publicly disclosed as rival developers vie for the world record. Emaar has said the tower will have at least 160 stories.
Schmidlin Ltd. Facade Technology, based in Aesch, Switzerland, filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 22 last year. The company said at the time that the high-risk and technologically- challenging nature of its work had led to spiraling costs, leaving it ``massively in the red'' since 2003.
Taipei 101
The world's tallest building is currently the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, measuring 1,671 feet, excluding masts, and with 101 stories, according to the Emporis Buildings architectural statistics database. Built in 2004, Taipei 101 overtook the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
Chicago's Sears Tower, built in 1974, ranks next and is the world record holder when its broadcast antennas are included, with a height of 1,729 feet. The building also has 108 floors, more than any other.
The tallest skyscrapers are still some way short of other constructions. Among freestanding structures, the 1,815-foot CN Tower in Toronto is the tallest on land and the Petronius oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, operated by Chevron Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp., the tallest overall at 2,001 feet.
Higher still is the KVLY-TV television mast in Blanchard, North Dakota, which stands at 2,063 feet with the help of guy wires and currently ranks as the world's tallest structure.
While the U.S. mast is likely to be surpassed by Burj Dubai, which means Dubai Tower in Arabic, Emaar's biggest rival in the U.A.E., government-controlled Nakheel PJSC, has also drawn up plans for a super-tall tower that may be higher.
Aziz Derraz, a spokesman for Nakheel's Dubai Waterfront development, said that though the dimensions of the building, to be known as Al Burj, are being kept secret, the tower would be ``one of the tallest in the world.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Sean Cronin in Dubai at
scronin2@bloomberg.net