Assignment

The Burj Dubai Project: A Symbol of Economic Strength or a

Monument to Hubris
Submitted by:
Romil Bhalla(87/09)
Shikhir Kapoor(31/09)

The building was inaugurated on January 4, 2010 and is the world’s tallest building. Initially, it
was called Burj Dubai but renamed as Burj Khalifa in honor of Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
because Dubai received a US $10 billion lifeline from Abu Dhabi to deal with the financial crisis that it
was facing. It was conceptualized in 2004 by Dubai government & Emaar. The basic reason for its
conceptualization was that Dubai wanted to draw attention of the world to itself and consolidate its
position as a major business and tourist hub in the Middle East.

Emaar Properties PSJC was responsible for constructing the tower. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
were responsible for designing the tower. Joint venture between Samsung Engineering Construction,
BESIX and Arabtec got the construction contract to build this 828 meters high building whose
construction commenced in September 2004 and was expected to be completed by December 2008.
But it got delayed due to labor unrest, bankruptcy of the company making tower’s outer cladding
and changes in the design to increase the height of the tower. Also responsible for the delay were
factors like the 2008 recession, real estate price going down and the losses that Emaar faced.

The tower was projected as an emblem of Dubai’s building prowess, financial strength and global
ambitions and it was supposed that it will make Dubai financial and tourist hub in Middle East and
will bring in additional foreign investment and business.

Design of Burj Dubai

Emaar organized a limited design competition and from that, selected the design submitted by
Adrian Smith, who was an architect at SOM. The design was inspired by Tower Palace Three, Seoul.
Burj Dubai had 3 wings forming a Y-shaped floor plan and a new structural system- Buttressed core
system, with a central core flanked by 3 wings for the building so there were no limitations on
height. One wing buttresses the other two wings and in the center there is a hexagonal concrete
core that encloses all elevators and act as a giant axle.

Buttresses core system was used because it ensured stability, distributed weight of the tower evenly
and had the strength to resist moderate earthquakes. The wings firmly anchored so that they do not
sway in wind so that the height can be increased at any stage, as the major challengewas to deal
with powerful winds at this height. The solution that was applied for this was to use series of design
models and wind tunnel. SOM altered the shape and width of the floors and also rotated the
building by 120 degrees from original layout.

Burj Dubai had 24 setbacks that reached upwards in a spiraling helical pattern, making the structure
gradually slimmer as it rose which served as a defense against the wind and also against other forces
that could destabilize the building Used concrete instead of steel; robustness and to withstand fire.
No right angles on the outer perimeter and no horizontal edges ensured that sand and dust do not
settle on tower. Outer design of the tower represented onion shaped domes to resemble Islamic
constructions. High performance exterior cladding was designed to withstand the extreme summer
temperatures in Dubai.

Other Project Features

Tower was to have 200 floors, out of which 160 were to be habitable and remaining floors
earmarked for services. First 37 floors were “The Armani Hotel Dubai”, next 68 floors made space
for 1000 residential units and topmost floors were planned to be a prime business space. Around
35000 people were expected to live, work and stay. Project was peer reviewed by experts in tall
building design, who checked its geotechnical engineering, wind engineering and structural
engineering aspects.

Economic Details

Emaar announced the budgets to be:

– For Burj Dubai- US $ 4 billion

– For Downtown Burj Dubai- US $ 20 billion

Emaar and SOM faced criticism from many of the technical experts over the economic viability of the
project. They defended the high budgets and the viability of the project with the following points:

– High efficiency ratio of net to gross area

– The structure is all concrete, the least expensive and most rigid material for tall
buildings

Construction Timeline

In early 2004, bids were invited from major global contractors and the US$ 871 million project was
awarded to a JV between Samsung, BESIX and Arabtec. Though the bid wasn’t the lowest but they
won it on their prior reputation and expertise in construction of high- rise buildings. Financing for
the project was done by 3 UAE banks- Emirates Bank International, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and
Mashreq bank (which also acted as the Facility and Security Agent).

Construction began on 21st September, 2004 and was scheduled to be completed in 4 years.
Designers and builders faced several challenges while its construction, Dubai's high temperature
being one of the prominent ones as it caused the concrete to set faster which might result in cracks
getting developed, posing a threat to the stability of the structure. Initially the construction rate was
a floor per week which was later accelerated to a floor in every 3 days. When the construction
activity was on its peak, there were 8000 workers employed on site along with 300 management
personnels.
Delays during construction

In March 2006, workers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh started riots at the site objecting to low
wages, caused damages worth US $ 1 million and stalled the work for few days. Cladding work got
delayed in November 2006, due to the bankruptcy of Schmidlin LLC UAE. The deadlock continued till
January 2007, after which the cladding contract was awarded to a JV between Arabian Aluminium
Company LLC and Hong Kong based Far East group. Even after the delays, it became the world’s
tallest building in September 2007, surpassing Toronto’s CN Towers.

Changes in Dubai real estate market

Dubai’s real estate market was hit badly in late 2008 by world economic crisis, slump in crude oil
prices and fall in world trade. It was further revealed in 2009 that Dubai had total borrowings of US$
80 billion of which US$ 50 billion was set to become due in next three years. According to Colliers
International (a property consultancy) residential property prices fell by 48% in 2009. Many of the
real estate projects were shut down in the period barring the Burj Dubai Project and Dubai Metro,
which were being pushed towards completion

Project Completion

In July 2009, Emaar postponed the opening of Burj Dubai from September 2009 to December 2,
2009. Analysts expected that opening of Burj Dubai would bring about an increase of revenue up to
US$ 1 million and will also boost its global image. In October 2009, cladding work got completed. In
November 2009, the inauguration was again postponed to January 4, 2010. Due to the crisis in the
real estate market in Dubai, Burj Dubai did not perform as per the expectations of Emaar which
thought it to become the most sought after business and residential address. The situation in the
real estate market of Dubai was to get worse, as even after the cancellation of many projects,
several new buildings were coming up.