Thursday, January 7, 2010
Chicagoland / Architecture The Burj Khalifa: Maybe that Spire Hole Is For The Best
Posted by Whet Moser on 01.07.10 at 05:01 PM
Oh my God! In Chicago, we get bent out of joint because two supertall towers—the Chicago Spire and the Waterview Tower—are unfinished because of the real estate crash. But this section of Dubai, which is called Business Bay, is the crash on a whole different order of magnitude.
Blair Kamin's post on the Burj Khalifa got a lot of deserved attention, but you should read his B-side. The numbers are pretty jaw-dropping: 25%-30% residential vacancy, 40% commercial vacancy. What happened? Guess. "Dubai property prices inflated rapidly, with apartments changing hands — 'flipping', as it came to be known — at an astonishing rate. By the summer of last year, a 'bubble' had developed in UAE property that, all were agreed, had to burst at some time." The Burj Khalifa is profitable, but not necessarily for flippers on the secondary market.
For a well-written dissent (and discussion of the architectural links between Chicago, SOM, and the Burj Khalifa), Stephen Bayley has a good essay: "Vast in size but small in meaning, Burj is a lot more stuff, but less idea."
Comments (2)
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Oh, hell, if Americans had just built the world's tallest building on American soil people would be crowing about the superiority of American design and the resurgence of ... something or other. A bunch of Arabs outnegotiate us for 60 years and use the money to build a giant spire and now we have to make it seem insignificant, so our egos won't be too bruised.
Good for Dubai, they built one hell of a tower - now let's stop sending so much goddamn money over there.
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There are some factual errors in the article:
1. While there is some cross bracing in the Sears Tower, none of it is visible. The writer sounds like he is describing the Hancock Building
2. The Burj, according to Bill Baker, is NOT a bundled tube like the Sears Tower
And the snarky comment by Blair Kamin in the responses section is interesting:
I asked Adrian Smith, the chief designer of the Burj Khafila, whether Wright's Mile High proposal had influenced him. His answer: Not in the least. The real influence was Chicago's Y-shaped Lake Point Tower. I wish more journalists would do their homework.
Blair Kamin
on January 06, 2010
at 04:34 PM
